Way back when: Today in history
BY GENE CURTIS
Wednesday, November 14, 2012
11/14/12 at 2:24 AM
1940 - Cold claims 159 lives
Sub-freezing weather claimed 159 lives and sent temperatures to record lows - including in Tulsa - during a four-day assault. Among the dead was a man who froze to death in an Oklahoma City community camp cottage. Tulsa's temperature dipped to a record 12 degrees on Nov. 13, but that record lasted only two days before the mercury dropped to 11 degrees.
1968 - Yale to go co-educational
Yale University announced that it would admit 500 women students in the fall of 1969, ending a 266-year tradition at the New Haven, Conn., school that admitted only male students since it was founded. President Kingman Brewster Jr. said the Yale faculty had approved admitting women with a vote and a standing ovation and called the decision "a major advance in the quality of Yale education."
1987 - Bomb hidden in chocolates
Seven people were killed and 37 were wounded in the lobby of Beirut's American University Hospital when a bomb hidden in a box of chocolates carried by a nervous-acting blond woman exploded. Police Col. Mounir Maalouli said the device contained TNT, a rifle grenade and dozens of nails that lodged in the victims' bodies. A Lebanese soldier said the woman had the box of chocolates on her lap as she constantly watched the elevators before the explosion that also killed her.
1989 - Navy stand-down ordered
An unprecedented 48-hour stand-down was ordered by the Navy designed to stem a string of deadly accidents. Adm. Carlisle A.H. Trost, the chief of naval operations, ordered Navy commanders throughout the world to "leave no stone unturned" during a "safety stand-down." The order required a review of basic safety and operating procedures. Since Oct. 29, nine people had been killed or lost at sea and at least 45 people injured. The Navy counted 101 "operation and training related" fatalities between Jan. 1 and Nov. 1, including an explosion aboard the USS Iowa April 19 that killed 47 sailors.
Associated Images:
The battleship USS Iowa fires its 16-inch guns in 1987, two years before a fatal explosion that was part of the reason for a Navy stand-down. Associated Press file
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