TODAY IN HISTORY - NOVEMBER 21ST

1789 – North Carolina ratifies the United States Constitution and is admitted as the 12th U.S. state.

1877 – Thomas Edison announces his invention of the phonograph, a machine that can record and play sound.

1902 – The Philadelphia Football Athletics defeated the Kanaweola Athletic Club of Elmira, New York, 39–0, in the first ever professional American football night game.

1905 – Albert Einstein's paper, "Does the Inertia of a Body Depend Upon Its Energy Content?", is published in the journal Annalen der Physik. This paper reveals the relationship between energy and mass. This leads to the mass–energy equivalence formula E = mc².

1920 – Stan Musial, American baseball player and manager (d. 2013) is born.

1924 – Florence Harding, American publisher, 36th First Lady of the United States (b. 1860) dies.

1942 – The completion of the Alaska Highway (also known as the Alcan Highway) is celebrated (however, the highway is not usable by general vehicles until 1943).

1945 – The United Auto Workers strike 92 General Motors plants in 50 cities to back up worker demands for a 30-percent raise.

1948 – George Zimmer, American businessman, founded Men's Wearhouse is born.

1959 – Max Baer, American boxer, referee, and actor (b. 1909) dies.

1959 – American disc jockey Alan Freed, who had popularized the term "rock and roll" and music of that style, is fired from WABC-AM radio for refusing to deny allegations that he had participated in the payola scandal.

1969 – Ken Griffey Jr., American baseball player, Hall of Fame member and actor is born.

1969 – U.S. President Richard Nixon and Japanese Premier Eisaku Satō agree in Washington, D.C., on the return of Okinawa to Japanese control in 1972. Under the terms of the agreement, the U.S. is to retain its rights to bases on the island, but these are to be nuclear-free.

1974 – The Birmingham pub bombings kill 21 people. The Birmingham Six are sentenced to life in prison for the crime but subsequently acquitted.

1980 – A deadly fire breaks out at the MGM Grand Hotel in Paradise, Nevada (now Bally's Las Vegas). Eighty-seven people are killed and more than 650 are injured in the worst disaster in Nevada history.

1985 – United States Navy intelligence analyst Jonathan Pollard is arrested for spying after being caught giving Israel classified information on Arab nations. He is subsequently sentenced to life in prison.

1986 – Iran–Contra affair: National Security Council member Oliver North and his secretary start to shred documents allegedly implicating them in the sale of weapons to Iran and channeling the proceeds to help fund the Contra rebels in Nicaragua.

1992 – A major tornado strikes the Houston, Texas area during the afternoon. Over the next two days the largest tornado outbreak ever to occur in the US during November spawns over 100 tornadoes before ending on the 23rd.

1995 – The Dayton Agreement is initialed at the Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, near Dayton, Ohio, ending three and a half years of war in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The agreement is formally ratified in Paris, on December 14 that same year.

2010 – Margaret Taylor-Burroughs, American painter and author, co-founded the DuSable Museum of African American History (b. 1917) dies.