This Day in History – November 6, 2011

355 Roman Emperor Constantius II promotes his cousin Julian to the rank of Caesar, entrusting him with the government of the Prefecture of the Gauls. 1528 Shipwrecked Spanish conquistador Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca becomes the first known European to set foot in Texas. 1789 Pope Pius VI appoints Father John Carroll as the first Catholic bishop in the United States. 1861 American Civil War: Jefferson Davis is elected president of the Confederate States of America. 1865 American Civil War: CSS Shenandoah is the last Confederate combat unit to surrender after circumnavigating the globe on a cruise on which it sank or captured 37 vessels. 1869 In New Brunswick, New Jersey, Rutgers College defeats Princeton University (then known as the College of New Jersey), 6-4, in the first official intercollegiate American football game. 1913 Mohandas Gandhi is arrested while leading a march of Indian miners in South Africa. 1934 Memphis, Tennessee becomes the first major city to join the Tennessee Valley Authority. 1935 Parker Brothers acquires the forerunner patents for MONOPOLY from Elizabeth Magie. 1941 World War II: Soviet leader Joseph Stalin addresses the Soviet Union for only the second time during his three-decade rule. He states that even though 350,000 troops were killed in German attacks so far, the Germans had lost 4.5 million soldiers and that Soviet victory was near. 1943 World War II: the Soviet Red Army recaptures Kiev. Before withdrawing, the Germans destroy most of the city’s ancient buildings. 1944 Plutonium is first produced at the Hanford Atomic Facility and subsequently used in the Fat Man atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki, Japan. 1947 Meet the Press makes its television debut (the show went to a weekly schedule on September 12, 1948). 1962 Apartheid: The United Nations General Assembly passes a resolution condemning South Africa’s racist apartheid policies and calls for all UN member states to cease military and economic relations with the nation. 1965 Cuba and the United States formally agree to begin an airlift for Cubans who want to go to the United States. By 1971, 250,000 Cubans made use of this program. 1971 The United States Atomic Energy Commission tests the largest U.S. underground hydrogen bomb, code-named Cannikin, on Amchitka Island in the Aleutians. 1977 The Kelly Barnes Dam, located above Toccoa Falls Bible College near Toccoa, Georgia, fails, killing 39. 2005 The Evansville Tornado of November 2005 kills 25 in Northwestern Kentucky and Southwestern Indiana.]]]]> ]]>