Today is Wednesday, Nov. 12, the 316th day of 2014 with 49 to follow. They include French physicist Jacques Charles in 1746; women's suffrage activist Elizabeth Cady Stanton in 1815; Baha'u'llah (born Mirza Husayn Ali), founder-prophet of the Baha'i faith, in 1817; publishers DeWitt Wallace, co-founder of Readers Digest, in 1889; U.S. Supreme Court Justice Harry Blackmun in 1908; singer Jo Stafford in 1917; actor Kim Hunter in 1922; Princess Grace of Monaco (former American movie star Grace Kelly), in 1929; cult leader Charles Manson in 1934 (age 80); actor and playwright Wallace Shawn in 1943 (age 71); sportscaster Al Michaels in 1944 (age 70); Rock and Roll Hall of Fame members Booker T. Jones in 1944 (age 70) and Neil Young in 1945 (age 69); Iranian President Hassan Rouhani in 1948 (age 66); actor Megan Mullally in 1958 (age 56); Olympic gymnast Nadia Comaneci in 1961 (age 53); writer Naomi Wolf in 1962 (age 52); former baseball slugger Sammy Sosa in 1968 (age 46); and actors Ryan Gosling in 1980 (age 34) and Anne Hathaway in 1982 (age 32). In 1799, the first North American meteor shower on record took place. Early American astronomer Andrew Ellicott Douglass said, "The whole heaven appeared as if illuminated with sky rockets." In 1892, the first professional football game was played in Pittsburgh. The Allegheny Athletic Association defeated the Pittsburgh Athletic Club, 4-0. Touchdowns at the time were worth 4 points. In 1941, the German army's drive to take Moscow was halted on the city's outskirts in World War II. In 1948, a war crimes tribunal in Japan sentenced former premier Hideki Tojo and six other World War II Japanese leaders to death by hanging. In 1980, the Voyager 1 spacecraft passed Saturn and sent back stunning pictures. In 1981, the shuttle Columbia became the first spacecraft launched twice from Earth. In 1982, former KGB chief Yuri Andropov succeeded the late Leonid Brezhnev as general secretary of the Soviet Communist Party. In 1990, Akihito was crowned the 125th emperor of Japan. In 1992, Volker Keith Meinhold became the first openly gay person on active duty in the U.S. military when, carrying a court order, he reported to work at the Moffett Naval Air Station in Mountain View, Calif., for reinstatement as a chief petty officer. In 1997, Ramzi Ahmed Yousef and Eyad Ismoil were convicted of involvement in the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center in New York. (They were sentenced to life in prison. Four others had been convicted in 1994 and also received life sentences.) In 2001, an American Airlines Airbus A300 crashed shortly after takeoff from JFK Airport in New York, killing 265 people, including five on the ground. In 2003, actor Art Carney, who won fame and Emmy Awards as sewer worker Ed Norton on the "Honeymooners" TV show in the 1950s and an Oscar in 1974 for "Harry and Tonto," died at age 85. In 2009, U.S. Army Maj. Nidal Hasan was charged with 13 counts of premeditated murder in a Fort Hood, Texas, shooting spree. Hasan, a 39-year-old psychiatrist, was convicted in August 2013 and sentenced to death. In 2013, the international Height Committee of the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat ruled that the 1,776-foot-high (including the spire) One World Trade Center in New York City, built on the site of the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, is the tallest building in the United States. It opened in 2014. A thought for the day: "True terror is to wake up one morning and discover that your high school class is running the country." -- Kurt Vonnegut