Advertisement

On This Day: Congress OKs creation of Homeland Security

On Nov. 19, 2002, the U.S. Senate voted overwhelmingly to create a Cabinet-level Homeland Security Department.

By UPI Staff
President George W. Bush shares a laugh with Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge on November 12, 2002, one week before Congress voted to create the Cabinet-level Department of Homeland Security. Ridge became the first secretary of the department. File Photo by Michael Kleinfeld/UPI
1 of 5 | President George W. Bush shares a laugh with Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge on November 12, 2002, one week before Congress voted to create the Cabinet-level Department of Homeland Security. Ridge became the first secretary of the department. File Photo by Michael Kleinfeld/UPI | License Photo

Nov. 19 (UPI) -- On this date in history:

In 1863, U.S. President Abraham Lincoln delivered the Gettysburg Address on a Civil War battlefield in Pennsylvania.

Advertisement

In 1932, Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow carried out the first of their series of bank robberies. The notorious gangsters would meet their end just four years later.

In 1939, U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt laid the cornerstone for his presidential library at Hyde Park, N.Y. During the ceremony, he taunted reporters with the suggestion he might run for a third term.

In 1954, the first automatic toll collection machine went into service at the Union Toll Plaza on New Jersey's Garden State Parkway.

In 1969, Apollo 12 landed on the moon. Astronauts Pete Conrad and Alan Bean become the third and fourth humans to walk the on the moon.

In 1985, President Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev met for the first time in Geneva, Switzerland.

File Photo by Larry Rubenstein/UPI

In 1995, in a close presidential runoff election in Poland, former Communist Party leader Aleksander Kwasniewski defeated incumbent Lech Walesa.

Advertisement

In 1997, Bobbi McCaughey gave birth to septuplets in Des Moines, Iowa, the first time seven babies had been born and survived.

In 1998, impeachment hearings against President Bill Clinton are initiated by the United States House of Representatives.

In 2002, the U.S. Senate voted overwhelmingly to create a Cabinet-level Homeland Security Department in the largest government reorganization in more than 50 years.

In 2005, Prince Albert II formally became ruler of Monaco, assuming the throne of his late father, Prince Rainier.

Prince Albert II of Monaco and Princess Charlene arrive on the red carpet at the 2016 Princess Grace awards gala at Cipriani 25 Broadway on October 24, 2016 in New York City. File Photo by John Angelillo/UPI

In 2008, data on housing and prices sent U.S. stock markets plunging. The Dow Jones industrial average fell to a six-year low, dropping 5.1 percent to 7,997.28.

In 2012, a remodeled version of a controversial 16-foot-tall bronze statue of Pope John Paul II was unveiled at Rome's Termini Station. The statue was given a new look after complaints from the public that the original was ugly, an "eyesore" that didn't look like John Paul, who died in 2005.

Advertisement

In 2013, British biochemist Frederick Sanger, a two-time Nobel Prize winner (1958 and 1980), died at the age of 95.

Latest Headlines