Today in History — November 24

1632 – Philosopher Baruch Spinoza is born at Amsterdam in the Dutch Republic. He will turn down numerous academic appointments to keep his job as a lens grinder, even though that job didn’t promise him tenure.

1642 – On a voyage for the Dutch East India Co., Abel Tasman’s crew become the first known Europeans to spy Van Diemen’s Land (later renamed Tasmania) in Australia.

1835 – The Texas Provincial Government authorizes the creation of the oldest law enforcement agency in North America, the Texas Rangers. Their original badges were hammered out of Mexican peso coins.

1859 – Charles Darwin publishes On the Origin of Species.  He didn’t have tenure, either.

1877 – Future lawyer, judge, Senate Majority Leader, and Vice President Alben William Barkley is born at Graves County, Kentucky.

 1916 – Hiram Stevens Maxim—inventor of the first practical portable machine gun—dies at London. Hillaire Belloc would later comment on the gun’s effect on colonialism:

                            Never fear the Hottentot.
                            Whatever happens we have got
                            The Maxim gun, and they have not.

1963 – In the first shooting death to be broadcast live on national television, bar owner Jack Ruby kills Lee Harvey Oswald in the basement of Dallas police department headquarters.  Viz:

FGS