November 22 birthdays & history

Famous people born on November 22

• 1890Charles de Gaulle, French general and politician, President of France
• 1984Scarlett Johansson, American actress
• 1869André Gide, French novelist, essayist, and dramatist, Nobel Prize laureate
• 1819George Eliot, English novelist and poet
• 1967Mark Ruffalo, American actor
• 1744Abigail Adams, American wife of John Adams, 2nd First Lady of the United States
• 1940Terry Gilliam, American-English actor, director, animator, and screenwriter
• 1958Jamie Lee Curtis, American actress
• 1967Boris Becker, German tennis player
• 1943Billie Jean King, American tennis player

What happened on November 22

• 1574Juan Fernández, a Spanish explorer, discovered an archipelago that now bears his name off the coast of Chile.
• 1797The Geisel School of Medicine, the fourth oldest medical school in the United States, was founded by the physician Nathan Smith.
• 1855In Birmingham, England, Albert, Prince Consort lays the foundation stone of the Birmingham and Midland Institute.
• 1869In Dumbarton, Scotland, the clipper Cutty Sark is launched.
• 1908The Congress of Manastir establishes the Albanian alphabet.
• 1935The China Clipper inaugurates the first commercial transpacific air service, connecting Alameda, California with Manila.
• 1968The Beatles released their eponymous double album, popularly known as the White Album.
• 1978The serpent labret with articulated tongue, "perhaps the finest Aztec gold ornament to survive the crucibles of the sixteenth century", was sold at Sotheby's.
• 1989NASA launches Space Shuttle Discovery on STS-33, a classified mission for the United States Department of Defense.
• 1990British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher withdraws from the Conservative Party leadership election, confirming the end of her Premiership.
• 1995Toy Story, the first feature film created using only computer-generated imagery, was released in theaters in the United States.
• 2005Four days after a federal election, delegates in the newly assembled Bundestag elected Angela Merkel as chancellor of Germany.

Also observed on November 22

• Good Spouses Day (いい夫婦の日) celebrates married couples in Japan.
• Independence Day celebrates the independence of Lebanon from France in 1943.