This Day in History: Nov. 28

On this day, Nov. 28 ...

2001: Enron Corp., once the world’s largest energy trader, collapses after would-be rescuer Dynegy Inc. backs out of an $8.4 billion takeover deal. (Enron would file for bankruptcy protection four days later.)

Also on this day:

• 1520: Portuguese navigator Ferdinand Magellan reaches the Pacific Ocean after passing through the South American strait that would bear his name.
• 1861: The Confederate Congress admits Missouri as the 12th state of the Confederacy after Missouri’s disputed secession from the Union.
• 1905: Sinn Fein is founded in Dublin.
• 1907: Future movie producer Louis B. Mayer opens his first movie theater in Haverhill, Mass.
• 1909: Sergei Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 3 in D minor, Op. 30 has its world premiere in New York, with Rachmaninoff at the piano.
• 1942: Fire engulfs the Cocoanut Grove nightclub in Boston, killing 492 people in the deadliest nightclub blaze ever. 
• 1943: President Franklin D. Roosevelt, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Soviet leader Josef Stalin begins conferring in Tehran during World War II.
• 1961: Ernie Davis of Syracuse University becomes the first African-American to be named winner of the Heisman Trophy.
• 1964: The United States launches the space probe Mariner 4 on a course toward Mars, which it would fly past in July 1965, sending back pictures of the red planet.

• 1975: President Ford nominates federal Judge John Paul Stevens to the U.S. Supreme Court seat vacated by William O. Douglas.

• 1990: Margaret Thatcher resigns as British prime minister during an audience with Queen Elizabeth II, who then confers the premiership on John Major.
• 2008: Super Bowl hero Plaxico Burress accidentally shoots himself in the right thigh with a gun tucked into his waistband at a New York nightclub (Burress would be sentenced to two years in prison for a weapons conviction).
• 2017: Libyan militant Ahmed Abu Khattala is convicted in federal court in Washington of terrorism charges stemming from the 2012 Benghazi attacks that killed the U.S. ambassador and three other Americans, but the jury finds him not guilty of murder.