Today is Tuesday, November 24, the 328th day of 2009. There are 37 days left in the year.

Highlights in history on this date:

• 1859 - British naturalist Charles Darwin publishes “On the Origin of Species,” explaining his theory of evolution.

• 1874 - Barbed wire is patented by American Joseph F. Glidden.

• 1936 - Germany and Japan sign anti-Comintern pact.

• 1942 - Germans suffer heavy losses in Battle of Stalingrad in Soviet Union in World War II.

• 1947 - A group of writers, producers and directors known as the “Hollywood 10” are cited for contempt by Congress for refusing to answer questions about alleged Communist influence in the movie industry.

• 1950 - U.N. forces launch an offensive on Korea’s western front in an effort to knock out the main Chinese Communist forces south of Manchuria.

• 1956 - The U.N. General Assembly presses Britain, France and Israel for withdrawal of their troops from Egypt. The United States joins the Soviet and Arab-Asian blocs in voting in favor of the withdrawals.

• 1961 - U.N. Security Council calls on U.N. members to make Africa a nuclear weapons-free zone.

• 1963 - Lee Harvey Oswald, accused assassin of U.S. President John F. Kennedy, is shot to death by Jack Ruby in Dallas, Texas.

• 1964 - Belgian paratroopers, Congolese army and mercenaries recapture Stanleyville in the Congo from rebels.

• 1970 - Japanese writer Yukio Mishima, who wants to lead Japan back to the way of the samurai, leads sword attack on army general’s office in Tokyo, then kills himself in traditional hara-kiri fashion.

• 1971 - Hijacker Dan Cooper parachutes from a Northwest Airlines 727 over Washington state with $200,000 in ransom. His fate remains unknown.

• 1974 - U.S. President Gerald Ford and Soviet leader Leonid I. Brezhnev, meet in Vladivostok, and reach tentative agreement to limit number of offensive strategic nuclear weapons.

Today’s Birthdays:

Baruch Spinoza, Dutch philosopher (1632-1677); Abdel-Illah, crown prince of Iraq (1913-1958); William F. Buckley, Jr., U.S. magazine publisher and conservative thinker (1925-2008); Alfredo Kraus, Spanish tenor (1927-1999); Arthur Chaskalson, first chief justice of South African Constitutional Court (1931--); Billy Connolly, Scottish actor/comedian (1942--).

Thought For Today:

There is a great deal of difference in believing something still, and believing it again—W.H. Auden, British poet (1907-1973).