On this day:

"Nov. 4, 1979 Iranian students stormed the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, taking more than 66 people hostage, “including diplomatic staff, Marine guards and local Iranian [employees] in an assault that appears to have left the government temporarily paralyzed,” according to an account by The Washington Post’s Nicholas Cumming-Bruce.

That set off a protracted crisis that would last through the end of Jimmy Carter’s first and only term as president, and into the first day of the Reagan administration. The Iranian government, led by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, said it would release the hostages if the United States agreed to extradite the deposed shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi.

But the United States refused. A week and a half later, Khomeini ordered the release of female and African American hostages, leaving 53. In April 1980, eight U.S. soldiers died in a failed rescue attempt when a helicopter collided with a transport plane. A hostage was later released due to illness. In January 1981, the United States and Iran finally reached an agreement to free the remaining 52.

By the time Iranians let them go, the hostages had spent 444 days in captivity. Thirty-six years after their capture, in December 2015, President Obama signed legislation to compensate each of the surviving 37 former hostages or the estates of 16 others who had died since their release, up to $4.4 million."

BarnBuster said:

. . . . . . . .That set off a protracted crisis that would last through the end of Jimmy Carter’s first and only term as president, and into the first day of the Reagan administration. . . . . . . . . .

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Aunt Ronnie did know how to make an entrance. I've often wondered if this deal he did led to his trading arms for hostages later.

1677
William III and Mary of England wed on William's birthday. Which led to this song. . . .

1922
The entrance to King Tut's tomb is discovered. etc, etc, . . . .

1969 - U.S.A. - PBS Established. ...

wiki wiki

Since the mid-2000s, Roper Opinion Research polls commissioned by PBS have consistently placed the service as the most-trusted national institution in the United States.

The College of Rock and Roll Knowledge
50 years of, OK we'll say it... 'Allman Joy'.... (yeah we know they had a band by that name..
On Nov. 4, 1969, a new band entered the markets with their self-titled debut LP. The record included unknown songs like "Dreams" and "Whipping Post." As you can tell by now, that band was The Allman Brothers.
The Allman Brothers Band was formed in March 1969, during large jam sessions with various musicians in Jacksonville, Florida. Duane Allman and Jai Johanny Johanson (Jaimoe) had recently moved from Muscle Shoals, where Duane participated in session work at FAME Studios for artists such as Aretha Franklin, King Curtis, and Wilson Pickett, with whom he recorded a cover of the Beatles' "Hey Jude" that went to number 23 on the national charts. Duane began to put together a new band, and invited bassist Berry Oakley to jam with the new group; the pair had met in a Jacksonville, Florida club some time earlier, and became quick friends. The group had immediate chemistry, and Duane's vision for a "different" band — one with two lead guitarists and two drummers began evolving. Then Duane got his brother involved.
Before they decided to call the band The Allman Brothers Band, they considered a couple of different names. One of the names was "Beelzebub."
How many of you bought this record when it first came out?
Happy 50th Birthday to the LP "The Allman Brothers Band"!!

The College of Rock and Roll Knowledge
1992 was a pretty good year as far as The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Inductees were concerned. On Nov. 4, 1991, they announced the 7th annual inductees. They included Jimi Hendrix ( The Jimi Hendrix Experience), Booker T & The MGs, Sam & Dave, The Yardbirds, The Isley Brothers, Johnny Cash, Bobby "Blue" Bland, Leo Fender, Bill Graham, Elmore James. Doc Pomus and Professor Longhair.
We know we will get some grief on this statement, but we gotta be honest. It was a good year, no Disco or Rap, just solid music.
Agree?

The College of Rock and Roll Knowledge
The Man Who Sold The World, David Bowie’s third album, was released in the U.S. on Nov. 4, 1970 (April 1971 in the U.K.). There were no singles released from the album, and it charted in both countries only after a post-Ziggy Stardust And The Spiders From Mars reissue. Still, the LP was pivotal in his development as a musician and proved to be a precursor to future success—especially because this was his first record to feature guitarist Mick Ronson and drummer Woody Woodmansey, who would later become part of the Spiders From Mars.
The original 1970 US release on the Mercury Records label had a cartoon-like cover drawing by Bowie's friend Michael J. Weller, featuring a cowboy in front of the Cane Hill mental asylum. Weller suggested the idea after Bowie had asked him to create a design that would capture the music's foreboding tone. Drawing on pop art styles, he depicted a dreary main entrance block to the hospital with a damaged clock tower. For the design's foreground, he used a photograph of John Wayne to draw a cowboy figure wearing a ten-gallon hat and a rifle, which was meant as an allusion to the song "Running Gun Blues".
Original pressings on Mercury Records are hard to find and often fetch over $200 in NM condition. But buyer beware: there are far more counterfeits than originals offered for sale! One often cited distinction is matrix numbers are stamped in the dead wax of originals while fakes are hand-etched.
How many of you have this Mercury Records LP in your music library?
Happy 49th Birthday to the U.S. LP of “The Man Who Sold The World”!!

1945
The first landing of a jet on a carrier takes place on USS Wake Island when an FR-1 Fireball touches down.

1986
The Iran arms-for-hostages deal is revealed, damaging the Reagan administration.

Iran Contra

The College of Rock and Roll Knowledge
5 hrs ·
What is your favorite song that features a sax solo?
Despite Courtney Love’s misgivings about them belonging in rock ‘n’ roll, today we are remembering the man who invented the saxophone: Adolphe Sax, born on November 6th in 1814!
He was the oldest of 11 children in his family, and probably the luckiest of them as he faced many near-death experiences in his early years: he fell from a third-story window and hit his head on a stone, swallowed a pin, was burned in a gunpowder accident and burned again by a frying pan, was poisoned three times by varnish fumes, hit on the head with a cobblestone, and nearly drowned in a river.
When he was a teenager he created new designs for clarinets and flutes and a few years later he invented a new clarinet model, known as the 24-key clarinet.
In the early 1840s, Sax moved to Paris, where he had his own workshop and made instruments such as “saxhorns” and the lesser-known 7-bell trombone.
He was very successful, and as his creations started to gain recognition from the public, he met Hector Berlioz.
In 1842, he showed Berlioz an early version of the baritone saxophone, and Berlioz was so impressed that he wrote a review on the saxophone in Journal des Debats, the most influential arts publication of the day in Paris.
On June 28, 1846, he received a 15-year patent for the instrument. The patent encompassed 14 different versions of the fundamental design, split into two categories of seven instruments each and ranging from sopranino to contrabass.
Happy birthday, Adolphe, and Happy National Saxophone Day!

too larry said:

The College of Rock and Roll Knowledge
5 hrs ·
What is your favorite song that features a sax solo?
Despite Courtney Love’s misgivings about them belonging in rock ‘n’ roll, today we are remembering the man who invented the saxophone: Adolphe Sax, born on November 6th in 1814!
He was the oldest of 11 children in his family, and probably the luckiest of them as he faced many near-death experiences in his early years: he fell from a third-story window and hit his head on a stone, swallowed a pin, was burned in a gunpowder accident and burned again by a frying pan, was poisoned three times by varnish fumes, hit on the head with a cobblestone, and nearly drowned in a river.
When he was a teenager he created new designs for clarinets and flutes and a few years later he invented a new clarinet model, known as the 24-key clarinet.
In the early 1840s, Sax moved to Paris, where he had his own workshop and made instruments such as “saxhorns” and the lesser-known 7-bell trombone.
He was very successful, and as his creations started to gain recognition from the public, he met Hector Berlioz.
In 1842, he showed Berlioz an early version of the baritone saxophone, and Berlioz was so impressed that he wrote a review on the saxophone in Journal des Debats, the most influential arts publication of the day in Paris.
On June 28, 1846, he received a 15-year patent for the instrument. The patent encompassed 14 different versions of the fundamental design, split into two categories of seven instruments each and ranging from sopranino to contrabass.
Happy birthday, Adolphe, and Happy National Saxophone Day!

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Boots Randolph is my fave.

"On November 9, 1938, in an event that would foreshadow the Holocaust, German Nazis launch a campaign of terror against Jewish people and their homes and businesses in Germany and Austria. The violence, which continued through November 10 and was later dubbed “Kristallnacht,” or “Night of Broken Glass,” after the countless smashed windows of Jewish-owned establishments, left approximately 100 Jews dead, 7,500 Jewish businesses damaged and hundreds of synagogues, homes, schools and graveyards vandalized. An estimated 30,000 Jewish men were arrested, many of whom were then sent to concentration camps for several months; they were released when they promised to leave Germany. Kristallnacht represented a dramatic escalation of the campaign started by Adolf Hitler in 1933 when he became chancellor to purge Germany of its Jewish population.

The Nazis used the murder of a low-level German diplomat in Paris by a 17-year-old Polish Jew as an excuse to carry out the Kristallnacht attacks. On November 7, 1938, Ernst vom Rath was shot outside the German embassy by Herschel Grynszpan, who wanted revenge for his parents’ sudden deportation from Germany to Poland, along with tens of thousands of other Polish Jews. Following vom Rath’s death, Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels ordered German storm troopers to carry out violent riots disguised as “spontaneous demonstrations” against Jewish citizens. Local police and fire departments were told not to interfere. In the face of all the devastation, some Jews, including entire families, committed suicide.

In the aftermath of Kristallnacht, the Nazis blamed the Jews and fined them 1 billion marks (or $400 million in 1938 dollars) for vom Rath’s death. As repayment, the government seized Jewish property and kept insurance money owed to Jewish people. In its quest to create a master Aryan race, the Nazi government enacted further discriminatory policies that essentially excluded Jews from all aspects of public life.

Over 100,000 Jews fled Germany for other countries after Kristallnacht. The international community was outraged by the violent events of November 9 and 10. Some countries broke off diplomatic relations in protest, but the Nazis suffered no serious consequences, leading them to believe they could get away with the mass murder that was the Holocaust, in which an estimated 6 million European Jews died."

On November 10, 1975, the SS Edmund Fitzgerald sinks in Lake Superior, killing all 29 crew members on board. It was the worst single accident in Lake Superior’s history.

The ship weighed more than 13,000 tons and was 730 feet long. It was launched in 1958 as the biggest carrier in the Great Lakes and became the first ship to carry more than a million tons of iron ore through the Soo Locks.

On November 9, the Fitzgerald left Superior, Wisconsin, with 26,000 tons of ore heading for Detroit, Michigan. The following afternoon, Ernest McSorely, the captain of the Fitzgerald and a 44-year veteran, contacted the Avafor, another ship traveling on Lake Superior and reported that his ship had encountered “one of the worst seas he had ever been in.” The Fitzgerald had lost its radar equipment and was listing badly to one side.
A couple of hours later, another ship made contact and was told that the Fitzgerald was holding its own. However, minutes afterward, the Fitzgeralddisappeared from radar screens. A subsequent investigation showed that the sinking of the Fitzgerald occurred very suddenly; no distress signal was sent and the condition of the lifeboats suggested that little or no attempt was made to abandon the ship.

One possible reason for the wreck is that the Fitzgerald was carrying too much cargo. This made the ship sit low in the water and made it more vulnerable to being overwhelmed by a sudden large wave. The official report also cited the possibility that the hatches to the cargo area may have been faulty, leading to a sudden shift of the cargo that capsized the boat.

The Fitzgerald was eventually found 530 feet below the surface, 17 miles from Whitefish Bay, at the northeastern tip of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. The ship had broken into two parts that were found approximately 150 feet apart. As there were no survivors among the 29 crewmembers, there will likely never be a definitive explanation of the Fitzgerald‘s sinking.

The Fitzgerald‘s sinking was the worst wreck in the Great Lakes since November 29, 1966, when 28 people died in the sinking of the Daniel J. Morrellin Lake Huron.

The disaster was immortalized in song the following year in Canadian folk singer Gordon Lightfoot’s “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald.”

BarnBuster said:

On November 10, 1975, the SS Edmund Fitzgerald sinks in Lake Superior, killing all 29 crew members on board. It was the worst single accident in Lake Superior’s history.

The ship weighed more than 13,000 tons and was 730 feet long. It was launched in 1958 as the biggest carrier in the Great Lakes and became the first ship to carry more than a million tons of iron ore through the Soo Locks.

On November 9, the Fitzgerald left Superior, Wisconsin, with 26,000 tons of ore heading for Detroit, Michigan. The following afternoon, Ernest McSorely, the captain of the Fitzgerald and a 44-year veteran, contacted the Avafor, another ship traveling on Lake Superior and reported that his ship had encountered “one of the worst seas he had ever been in.” The Fitzgerald had lost its radar equipment and was listing badly to one side.
A couple of hours later, another ship made contact and was told that the Fitzgerald was holding its own. However, minutes afterward, the Fitzgeralddisappeared from radar screens. A subsequent investigation showed that the sinking of the Fitzgerald occurred very suddenly; no distress signal was sent and the condition of the lifeboats suggested that little or no attempt was made to abandon the ship.

One possible reason for the wreck is that the Fitzgerald was carrying too much cargo. This made the ship sit low in the water and made it more vulnerable to being overwhelmed by a sudden large wave. The official report also cited the possibility that the hatches to the cargo area may have been faulty, leading to a sudden shift of the cargo that capsized the boat.

The Fitzgerald was eventually found 530 feet below the surface, 17 miles from Whitefish Bay, at the northeastern tip of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. The ship had broken into two parts that were found approximately 150 feet apart. As there were no survivors among the 29 crewmembers, there will likely never be a definitive explanation of the Fitzgerald‘s sinking.

The Fitzgerald‘s sinking was the worst wreck in the Great Lakes since November 29, 1966, when 28 people died in the sinking of the Daniel J. Morrellin Lake Huron.

The disaster was immortalized in song the following year in Canadian folk singer Gordon Lightfoot’s “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald.”

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This one touched my family, in an indirect way. Mamma's brother was the assistant engineer on the Fitzgerald for several years. He went to another ship to take the head engineer job in '74. Everyone was talking about how lucky he was. In '77 he got sick, and went into port for tests. He had lung cancer and died within the month.

This uncle was the highest earner in our family. Always looked forward to when the Great Lakes froze, and he would come home for a few weeks in winter. Christmas was always brighter when he made it home by then.

too larry said:

This one touched my family, in an indirect way. Mamma's brother was the assistant engineer on the Fitzgerald for several years. He went to another ship to take the head engineer job in '74. Everyone was talking about how lucky he was. In '77 he got sick, and went into port for tests. He had lung cancer and died within the month.

This uncle was the highest earner in our family. Always looked forward to when the Great Lakes froze, and he would come home for a few weeks in winter. Christmas was always brighter when he made it home by then.

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He probably knew many of the crew

BarnBuster said:

He probably knew many of the crew

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Yes. I was 14 at the time, and not the most aware person on the planet, but even I noticed he wasn't himself during that time.

And in a crazy twist of fate, a distant cousin on the Larry side of the family is/was a folk singer of moderate fame, and everyone confused him with Gordon Lightfoot and was always asking him to sing the wreck of the EF. It would piss him off, and he never would sing it. I can't remember his name, but his sister was an actress {played with Jerry Lewis in a Cat on a Hot Tin Roof} and his brother was a doctor. Bunch of damn misfits.

At the 11th hour on the 11th day of the 11th month of 1918, the Great War ends. At 5 a.m. that morning, Germany, bereft of manpower and supplies and faced with imminent invasion, signed an armistice agreement with the Allies in a railroad car outside Compiégne, France. The First World War left nine million soldiers dead and 21 million wounded, with Germany, Russia, Austria-Hungary, France, and Great Britain each losing nearly a million or more lives. In addition, at least five million civilians died from disease, starvation, or exposure.

On June 28, 1914, in an event that is widely regarded as sparking the outbreak of World War I, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the Austro-Hungarian empire, was shot to death with his wife by Bosnian Serb Gavrilo Princip in Sarajevo, Bosnia. Ferdinand had been inspecting his uncle’s imperial armed forces in Bosnia and Herzegovina, despite the threat of Serbian nationalists who wanted these Austro-Hungarian possessions to join newly independent Serbia. Austria-Hungary blamed the Serbian government for the attack and hoped to use the incident as justification for settling the problem of Slavic nationalism once and for all. However, as Russia supported Serbia, an Austro-Hungarian declaration of war was delayed until its leaders received assurances from German leader Kaiser Wilhelm II that Germany would support their cause in the event of a Russian intervention.

On July 28, Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia, and the tenuous peace between Europe’s great powers collapsed. On July 29, Austro-Hungarian forces began to shell the Serbian capital, Belgrade, and Russia, Serbia’s ally, ordered a troop mobilization against Austria-Hungary. France, allied with Russia, began to mobilize on August 1. France and Germany declared war against each other on August 3. After crossing through neutral Luxembourg, the German army invaded Belgium on the night of August 3-4, prompting Great Britain, Belgium’s ally, to declare war against Germany.

For the most part, the people of Europe greeted the outbreak of war with jubilation. Most patriotically assumed that their country would be victorious within months. Of the initial belligerents, Germany was most prepared for the outbreak of hostilities, and its military leaders had formatted a sophisticated military strategy known as the “Schlieffen Plan,” which envisioned the conquest of France through a great arcing offensive through Belgium and into northern France. Russia, slow to mobilize, was to be kept occupied by Austro-Hungarian forces while Germany attacked France.

The Schlieffen Plan was nearly successful, but in early September the French rallied and halted the German advance at the bloody Battle of the Marne near Paris. By the end of 1914, well over a million soldiers of various nationalities had been killed on the battlefields of Europe, and neither for the Allies nor the Central Powers was a final victory in sight. On the western front—the battle line that stretched across northern France and Belgium—the combatants settled down in the trenches for a terrible war of attrition.

In 1915, the Allies attempted to break the stalemate with an amphibious invasion of Turkey, which had joined the Central Powers in October 1914, but after heavy bloodshed the Allies were forced to retreat in early 1916. The year 1916 saw great offensives by Germany and Britain along the western front, but neither side accomplished a decisive victory. In the east, Germany was more successful, and the disorganized Russian army suffered terrible losses, spurring the outbreak of the Russian Revolution in 1917. By the end of 1917, the Bolsheviks had seized power in Russia and immediately set about negotiating peace with Germany. In 1918, the infusion of American troops and resources into the western front finally tipped the scale in the Allies’ favor. Germany signed an armistice agreement with the Allies on November 11, 1918.

World War I was known as the “war to end all wars” because of the great slaughter and destruction it caused. Unfortunately, the peace treaty that officially ended the conflict—the Treaty of Versailles of 1919—forced punitive terms on Germany that destabilized Europe and laid the groundwork for World War II

An American Airlines flight out of John F. Kennedy (JFK) Airport in New York City crashes into a Queens neighborhood after takeoff on November 12, 2001, killing 265 people. Although some initially speculated that the crash was the result of terrorism, as it came exactly two months after the September 11 attacks, the cause was quickly proven to be a combination of pilot error and wind conditions.

Flight 587 took off at 9:14 a.m., bound for the Dominican Republic with 260 passengers and crew on board. Just ahead of the Airbus 300 jet, also using runway 31, was a Japan Air 747. Even with the standard four-mile distance between them, the 747 created some wake turbulence that hit Flight 587 just minutes after takeoff. As the plane climbed to 13,000 feet, there were two significant shudders and then a violent heave.

Unfortunately, the pilots of Flight 587 overreacted to the wake turbulence and their subsequent maneuvers put too much strain on the tail section of the plane. The tail, along with the rudder in the rear, broke off completely and fell into Rockaway Bay. Without this part of the plane, Flight 587 crashed to the ground.

As Flight 587 was in its final moments, Kevin McKeon was in his house on Queens’ Rockaway Peninsula. In an instant, his house virtually exploded; he was thrown out into his yard as the plane fell onto his house. In all, 10 homes were set ablaze, and five people on the ground, as well as all 260 people on the plane, lost their lives. The disaster hit Rockaway especially hard, as the community was still reeling from the September 11 attacks, in which 65 area residents lost their lives.