Today in History: November 17, the NFL’s infamous ‘Heidi Game’

Today is Sunday, Nov. 17, the 322nd day of 2024. There are 44 days left in the year.

Today in history:

On Nov. 17, 1968, the last minutes of a tense NFL matchup on NBC between the New York Jets and the Oakland Raiders were preempted by the children’s film “Heidi.” The network received thousands of calls from angry viewers and formally apologized.

Also on this date:

In 1800, Congress held its first session in the partially completed U.S. Capitol building in Washington, D.C.

In 1869, the Suez Canal opened in Egypt.

In 1973, President Richard Nixon told a gathering of Associated Press managing editors at a televised news conference in Orlando, Florida: “People have got to know whether or not their president is a crook. Well, I’m not a crook.”

In 1989, an estimated 10,000-15,000 Czechoslovakian students demonstrated in Prague against Communist rule; hundreds of thousands joined the protests in the following days. Dubbed the “Velvet Revolution” for its nonviolent nature, the protests led to the resignation of the Communist Party’s leadership on Nov. 28.

In 1997, 62 people, most of them foreign tourists, were killed when militants opened fire at the Temple of Hatshepsut (haht-shehp-SOOT’) in Luxor, Egypt; the attackers were killed by police.

In 2003, Arnold Schwarzenegger, the Austrian-born actor who had become one of America’s biggest movie stars of the 1980s and ’90s, was sworn in as the 38th governor of California.

In 2020, President Donald Trump fired the nation’s top election security official, Christopher Krebs, who had refuted Trump’s unsubstantiated claims of electoral fraud and vouched for the integrity of the vote.

Today’s Birthdays: Film director Martin Scorsese (skor-SEH’-see) is 82. Actor-model Lauren Hutton is 81. Actor-director Danny DeVito is 80. Basketball Hall of Fame coach Jim Boeheim is 80. “Saturday Night Live” producer Lorne Michaels is 80. Basketball Hall of Famer Elvin Hayes is 79. Film director Roland Joffe is 79. Former House Speaker John Boehner (BAY’-nur) is 75. Actor Stephen Root is 73. TV host-entertainer RuPaul is 64. Actor Dylan Walsh is 61. TV host-model Daisy Fuentes is 58. R&B singer Ronnie DeVoe (New Edition; Bell Biv DeVoe) is 57. Actor Rachel McAdams is 46.

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