Born on this day
Saturday, November 27, 1880. : Sir Ralph Freeman, designer of the Sydney Harbour Bridge, is born.
Ralph Freeman was born on 27 November 1880 in London, England. After studying civil engineering at the City and Guilds of London Institute, he joined Douglas Fox & Partners, a firm of consulting engineers specialising in the design of steel bridges. He rose to become senior partner and in 1938 the firm changed its name to Freeman Fox & Partners. Freeman’s most famous design work can be seen on the Victoria Falls Bridge, completed in 1905, and the Sydney Harbour Bridge, completed in 1932.
The Sydney Harbour Bridge connects the Sydney CBD with the North Shore commercial and residential areas on Sydney Harbour. Pictures of the Harbour bridge, usually with the sails of the Sydney Opera House in the foreground, provide the image of Australia that tourists expect to see. The Sydney Harbour Bridge remains an enduring testimony to the talent of its designer, Sir Ralph Freeman.
World History
Wednesday, November 27, 1895. : Alfred Nobel draws up his last will and testament, pledging his enormous wealth toward the betterment of humanity.
Alfred Bernhard Nobel, born in Stockholm in 21 October 1833, was a Swedish chemist, engineer armaments manufacturer and the inventor of dynamite. Although a dramatist and poet, he became famous for his advances in chemistry and physics, and by the time he died on 10 December 1896, he held over 350 patents and controlled factories and laboratories in 20 countries.
On 13 April 1888, Nobel opened the newspaper to discover an obituary to himself. Although it was his brother Ludwig who had actually died, the obituary described Alfred Nobel’s own achievements, believing it was he who had died. The obituary condemned Nobel for inventing dynamite, an explosive which caused the deaths of so many. It is said that this experience led Nobel to choose to leave a better legacy to the world after his death. On 27 November 1895 at the Swedish-Norwegian Club in Paris, Nobel signed his last will and testament and set aside the bulk of his enormously wealthy estate to establish the Nobel Prizes, to be awarded annually without distinction of nationality. Nobel died of a cerebral haemorrhage on 10 December 1896.
The Nobel Prize is considered one of the most prestigious awards in the world and includes a cash prize of nearly one million dollars. The fields for which the awards can be given are physics, chemistry, physiology or medicine, literature and toward the promotion of international peace. In 1968 the prize field was extended to include economic science.
World History
Monday, November 27, 1978. : Mayor of San Francisco, George Moscone, is assassinated by former city supervisor Dan White.
George Richard Moscone, born on 24 November 1929, was the mayor of San Francisco, California, from January 1976 until he was assassinated on 27 November 1978. His assassin, Dan White, was the former city supervisor of San Francisco; White also assassinated new Supervisor Harvey Milk.
White’s motive remains unknown, but shortly before the assassinations, he resigned the office of city supervisor following the defeat of California’s Briggs Initiative, which would have required schools to fire teachers that were homosexual. White strongly opposed the Bill, and it is conjectured that he saw Mayor Moscone and the openly-gay activist Milk as the ones responsible for heading up the historic gay rights ordinance. He had also sought to be reinstated following his resignation, and was reportedly angry about Moscone’s decision not to reappoint him to the city board.
World History
Friday, November 27, 1998. : United States nuclear weapons begin being tested for possible year 2000 problems.
As the world neared the end of its second recorded millennium, there was a growing awareness of the possibility that computers could strike a problem. The year 2000 problem, or millennium bug, was a flaw in computer program design that caused some date-related processing to operate incorrectly for dates and times on and after January 1, 2000. Due to lack of foresight by computer programmers in the preceding decades, many commands depending on date were written with a two-digit year (e.g. 98 for 1998) instead of a four-digit year. It was conceived as a possibility that computers might interpret 00 as 1900 instead of 2000. It was feared that critical industries such as electricity, for example, and government functions would stop working at 12:00am on 1 January 2000.
On 27 November 1998, officials from the Pentagon in the USA stated that US nuclear weapons were being tested for potential Year 2000 problems, after it was recently discovered that up to a quarter of existing nuclear weapons systems had not been tested for year 2000 (Y2K) compliance. In the end, there were no major disasters resulting from the millennium bug, and the entire turnover was seen as a non-event.