Today in HistoryToday is Thursday, November 9, the 313th day of 2006. There are 52 days left in the year.

ON THIS DATE<$>:

In 1872, fire destroyed nearly 1,000 buildings in Boston.

In 1965, the great Northeast blackout occurred as a series of power failures lasting up to 13.5 hours left 30 million people in seven states and two Canadian provinces without electricity.

In 1976, the U.N. General Assembly approved ten resolutions condemning apartheid in South Africa, including one characterising the white-ruled government as “illegitimate.”

In 1986, Israel revealed it was holding Mordechai Vanunu, a former nuclear technician who’d vanished after providing information to a British newspaper about Israel’s nuclear weapons program. (Vanunu was convicted of treason and served 18 years in prison.)

In 1989, communist East Germany threw open its borders, allowing citizens to travel freely to the West; joyous Germans danced atop the Berlin Wall.

THOUGHT FOR TODAY

“Half the world is composed of people who have something to say and can’t, and the other half who have nothing to say and keep on saying it.” — Robert Frost, American poet (1874-1963).