Today in History
On Nov. 27, 1945, General George C. Marshall was named special U.S. envoy to China by President Harry S. Truman to try to end hostilities between the Nationalists and the Communists.
In 1942, during World War II, the Vichy French navy scuttled its ships and submarines in Toulon (too-LOHN') to keep them out of the hands of German troops.
In 1978, San Francisco Mayor George Moscone (mahs-KOH'-nee) and City Supervisor Harvey Milk, a gay-rights activist, were shot to death inside City Hall by former supervisor Dan White.
In 1983, 181 people were killed when a Colombian Avianca Airlines Boeing 747 crashed near Madrid's Barajas airport.
In 1989, a bomb blamed on drug traffickers destroyed a Colombian Avianca Boeing 727, killing all 107 people on board and three people on the ground.
Doctors in France performed the world's first partial face transplant on a woman disfigured by a dog bite; Isabelle Dinoire received the lips, nose and chin of a brain-dead woman in a 15-hour operation.
The State Department released a letter from its top lawyer to WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, warning that an expected imminent release of classified cables would put "countless" lives at risk, threaten global counterterrorism operations and jeopardize U.S. relations with its allies.
Movie director Irvin Kershner ("The Empire Strikes Back") died in Los Angeles at age 87.
Reflecting its lessening oil clout, OPEC decided to keep its output target on hold and sit out falling crude prices.