On This Day: Wednesday November 8, 2006

This is the 312th day of the year, with 53 days remaining in 2006.

Fact of the Day: seven dwarfs

The seven dwarfs from "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" are Dopey, Bashful, Sleepy, Grumpy, Happy, Doc, and Sneezy. They are among the first 100 Disney characters. The film (1917) was the first animated feature to become widely successful within the English-speaking world and the first to be filmed in Technicolor.

Holidays

Feast day of the Four Crowned Martyrs, St. Cuby or Cybi, St. Godfrey of Amiens, St. Deusdedit, St. Willehad, and St. Tysilio or Suliau.

Events

1685 - Fredrick William of Brandenburg issued the Edict of Potsdam, offering refuge to the Huguenots.
1793 - The Louvre opened as a museum in Paris, though only part of the collection could be viewed.
1805 - Meriwether Lewis and William Clark reached the Pacific coast after setting out from St. Louis over a year earlier.
1837 - Mount Holyoke Seminary, a women's college, opened in South Hadley, Massachusetts.
1889 - Montana became the 41st state.
1895 - William Röntgen discovered X-rays during an experiment at the University of Wurzburg.
1923 - Adolf Hitler made his first attempt at seizing power with a failed coup in Munich, Germany, the "Beer-Hall Putsch."
1932 - New York governor Franklin D. Roosevelt won his first term as the 32nd President of the United States of America by defeating incumbent Herbert Hoover.
1933 - President Franklin Roosevelt created the Civil Works Administration, to create jobs for the more than four million unemployed.
1938 - Crystal Bird Fauset of Pennsylvania became the first African-American woman to be elected to a state legislature.
1942 - Under General Dwight Eisenhower's command, British and U.S. forces invaded North Africa in "Operation Torch."
1960 - Massachusetts Senator John F. Kennedy (D) defeated Republican Vice President Richard M. Nixon to become the 35th President of the United States of America.
1988 - Republican Vice President George Bush defeated Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis for the 41st Presidency of the United States of America.
1994 - In Oregon, "Measure 16," which permitted euthanasia in regulated circumstances for the terminally ill, was voted in.
1994 - Republicans gained control of the U.S. House of Representatives for the first time in 40 years and won a majority in the Senate in midterm elections.
1997 - Chinese engineers diverted the Yangtze River to make way for the Three Gorges Dam.
2004 - Thousands of allied troops attacked the toughest strongholds of Sunni insurgents in Fallujah, Iraq, aimed at putting an end to guerrilla control of the city.

Births

1656 - Edmund Halley, British astronomer and mathematician.
1847 - Bram Stoker, English writer, best known for "Dracula."
1884 - Hermann Rorshach, Swiss psychiatrist, inventor of the inkblot test (Rorshach Test).
1900 - Margaret Mitchell, American Pulitzer Prize-winning author.
1922 - Christiaan Barnard, South African heart transplant pioneer.
1931 - Morley Safer, reporter and correspondent for CBS News.
1949 - Bonnie Raitt, American blues/R&B singer, songwriter, and guitarist.

Deaths

1674 - John Milton, English poet.

Your Reference on this Day with a Disney fact