Today in history, November 19: Zimbabwe’s ruling party ZANU-PF dismisses Robert Mugabe as its leader,, Clinton impeachment inquiry begins

Zimbabwe’s ruling party ZANU-PF dismisses Robert Mugabe as its leader, starting the process of removing the 93-year-old president from power and the impeachment inquiry against US President Bill Clinton began on this day in 1998. 

Highlights in history on this date:

1521: War between French and Valois breaks out in Italy.
1703: Death of the Man in the Iron Mask, a prisoner in the Bastille prison in Paris.
1 807: France invades Portugal.
1828: Franz Schubert, Austrian composer, dies from typhus aged 31.
1863: US President Abraham Lincoln delivers the Gettysburg Address, calling for “government of the people, by the people and for the people”.
1893: The first newspaper colour supplement is published in the Sunday paper New York World.
1924: Sir Lee Stack, British governor of Sudan, is killed in Cairo.
1941: HMAS Sydney sinks off Western Australia after a brief battle with the German raider Kormoran, killing all 645 men aboard the Sydney and 80 of the Kormoran’s crew.
1946: First UNESCO conference opens in Paris at which the organisation attains full status as an agency.
1947: Prince Philip of Greece is given title of Duke of Edinburgh on the eve of his wedding to Princess Elizabeth.
1949: Prince Rainier is sworn in as 30th ruling Prince of Monaco.
1969: First reports emerge that US troops shot Vietnamese civilians in My Lai village in March.
1977: Egypt’s President Anwar Sadat arrives in Israel on his first peace mission to that nation.
1988: Christina Onassis, daughter of Greek tycoon Aristotle Onassis, dies aged 37 in Argentina.
1996: Cuban leader Fidel Castro and Pope John Paul II meet in a historic first encounter in Rome.

1997: Bobbie McCaughey gives birth in the US to four boys and three girls, believed to be the world’s first surviving set of septuplets.
1998: The impeachment inquiry against US President Bill Clinton opens with testimony by independent counsel Kenneth Starr.
2003: The South African cabinet approves a plan to spend approximately 1.9 billion rand to launch a program to provide antiretroviral drugs to AIDS patients free of charge.
2005: Prince Albert II of Monaco is enthroned, succeeding his father Prince Rainier.

2011: Muammar Gaddafi’s former heir apparent Seif al-Islam is captured by revolutionary fighters just over a month after his father was killed.
2015: Officials in France confirm the suspected ringleader of the Paris terror attacks, Abdelhamid Abaaoud, has been killed in a police raid.
2016: US President-elect Donald Trump demands the cast of the Broadway hit show Hamilton offer an apology after his running mate Mike Pence was booed at a performance.
2017: Zimbabwe’s ruling party ZANU-PF dismisses Robert Mugabe as its leader, starting the process of removing the 93-year-old president from power.
2018: The chairman of Japanese car giant Nissan, Carlos Ghosn, is arrested on suspicion of “financial misconduct”.

THOUGHT FOR TODAY:
“It is always brave to say what everyone thinks.” – George Duhamel, French author (1884-1966).