Today in History....November 12

* 1847, Sir James Young Simpson, British physician, is the first to use chloroform as an anesthetic

* 1920, Italy and the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes sign the Treaty of Rapallo

* 1927, Leon Trotsky is expelled from the Soviet Communist Party, leaving Joseph Stalin with undisputed control of the Soviet Union

* 1942, the World War II naval Battle of Guadalcanal began. (The Allies ended up winning a major victory over the Japanese.)

* 1946, a branch of the Exchange National Bank in Chicago opens the first ten drive-up teller windows

* 1948, in Tokyo, an international war crimes tribunal sentences seven Japanese military and government officials to death, including General Hideki Tojo, for their roles in World War II

* 1970, the Oregon Highway Division attempts to destroy a rotting beached Sperm whale with explosives, leading to the now-infamous exploding whale incident

* 1971, as part of Vietnamization, US President Richard M. Nixon sets February 1, 1972 as the deadline for the removal of another 45,000 American troops from Vietnam

* 1979, in response to the hostage situation in Tehran, US President Jimmy Carter orders a halt to all Iranian petroleum imports into the United States

* 1980, NASA space probe Voyager I makes its closest approach to Saturn and takes first images of its rings

* 1981, the 2nd shuttle mission of Columbia 2. It was the 1st time a spacecraft was launched twice

* 1982, Lech Walesa, Solidarity leader, is released from a Polish prison after eleven months

* 1990, Tim Berners-Lee publishes a formal proposal for the World Wide Web

* 1997, Ramzi Yousef is found guilty of masterminding the 1993 World Trade Center bombing

* 2002, in an audiotaped message, a voice purported to be that of Osama bin Laden praised terrorist strikes in Bali and Moscow and threatened Western nations over any attack on Iraq

* 2004, a jury in Redwood City, Calif., convicted Scott Peterson of murdering his pregnant wife, Laci, and dumping her body in San Francisco Bay. (Peterson, who maintains his innocence, was later sentenced to
death.)

* 2006, Gerald R. Ford surpassed Ronald Reagan as the longest-lived U.S.
president at 93 years and 121 days