Today in History: Queen singer Freddie Mercury dies
Today is Sunday, Nov. 24, the 329th day of 2024. There are 37 days left in the year.
Today in history:
On Nov. 24, 1991, Queen singer Freddie Mercury died in London at age 45 of AIDS-related pneumonia.
Also on this date:
In 1859, British naturalist Charles Darwin published 'On the Origin of Species,' which explained his theory of evolution by means of natural selection.
In 1865, Mississippi became the first Southern state to enact laws that came to be known as 'Black Codes' aimed at limiting the rights of newly freed Blacks; other states of the former Confederacy soon followed.
In 1947, a group of writers, producers and directors, who would become known as the 'Hollywood Ten,' was cited for contempt of Congress for refusing to answer questions about alleged Communist influence in the movie industry.
In 1963, Jack Ruby shot and mortally wounded Lee Harvey Oswald, the accused assassin of President John F. Kennedy, in a scene captured on live television.
In 1971, a hijacker calling himself 'Dan Cooper' (but who became popularly known as 'D.B. Cooper') parachuted from a Northwest Orient Airlines 727 over the Pacific Northwest after receiving $200,000 in ransom; his fate remains unknown.
In 1974, the bone fragments of a 3.2 million-year-old hominid were discovered by scientists in Ethiopia; the skeletal remains were nicknamed 'Lucy.'
In 2012, fire raced through a garment factory in Bangladesh that supplied major retailers in the West, killing 112 people; an official said many of the victims were trapped because the eight-story building lacked emergency exits.
In 2014, it was announced that a grand jury in St. Louis County, Missouri, had decided against indicting Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson in the death of Michael Brown; the decision enraged protesters who set fire to buildings and cars and looted businesses in the area where Brown had been fatally shot.
In 2021, three white men were convicted of murder in the killing of Ahmaud Arbery, the Black man who was running through a Georgia subdivision in February 2020 when they chased and shot him.
Today's Birthdays: Basketball Hall of Famer Oscar Robertson is 86. Former NFL Commissioner Paul Tagliabue is 84. Rock drummer Pete Best is 83. Actor-comedian Billy Connolly is 82. Basketball Hall of Famer Dave Bing is 81. Basketball Hall of Fame coach Rudy Tomjanovich is 76. Filmmaker Emir Kusturica is 70. Author Arundhati Roy is 63. Actor Colin Hanks is 47. Actor Katherine Heigl is 46. Actor Sarah Hyland is 34.
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USA Today
18 minutes ago
- USA Today
Multiple journalists injured by police nonlethal rounds while covering LA protests
Multiple journalists injured by police nonlethal rounds while covering LA protests Show Caption Hide Caption Australian journalist shot with a rubber bullet in Los Angeles Australian journalist from 9News, Lauren Tomasi, was shot with a rubber bullet while reporting from the protests in Los Angeles. Multiple members of the media have been injured by nonlethal rounds fired by law enforcement while covering dayslong protests over the Trump administration's immigration crackdown in Los Angeles, prompting the Committee to Protect Journalists to sound an alarm about the intimidation of reporters. Authorities braced for a fifth day of demonstrations on June 10, with President Donald Trump ordering the National Guard and members of the U.S. Marine Corps in a show of force against unrest. The administration's stepping in has also ignited a clash between local leaders, including California Gov. Gavin Newsom, and the federal government. As officers use force against protesters, some journalists reporting on the melee have been caught by nonlethal rubber rounds and other projectiles. Adam Rose, the secretary of the Los Angeles Press Club, has documented more than 30 incidents of reporters, photographers and other media professionals impacted by police actions that range from searching a journalist's bag to firing tear gas or rubber bullets at them. In one viral video, an officer appears to aim and take fire at Australian reporter Lauren Tomasi, who yelped in pain when she was hit in the leg. More: Australian journalist shot with nonlethal bullet while reporting on LA protests The committee, which advocates for press freedom and documents cases of journalists who are killed, imprisoned or missing, said it was "greatly concerned" by the reports of officers' shooting nonlethal rounds at reporters on the ground. "Any attempt to discourage or silence media coverage by intimidating or injuring journalists should not be tolerated,' Katherine Jacobsen, program coordinator for the Committee to Protect Journalists in the U.S., Canada and the Caribbean, said in a statement. 'It is incumbent upon authorities to respect the media's role of documenting issues of public interest.' The Los Angeles Police Department and the California Highway Patrol didn't immediately respond to a USA TODAY inquiry on the injured journalists. The department told the Committee to Protect Journalists it will investigate the incidents. LA protest updates: Newsom calls Trump's Marine deployment a 'blatant abuse of power' Journalists injured by rubber bullets, other nonlethal rounds Tomasi, the Australian reporter, was sore after being hit by the rubber bullet but otherwise unharmed, her employer Australia's 9News said. British freelance photographer Nick Stern had to undergo emergency surgery after also being hit in the leg with a nonlethal round, he told the BBC. Stern said he was covering the protests in Los Angeles on June 8 when he was hit by a 3-inch "plastic bullet," BBC reported. He said he was wearing his press credentials and wearing a big camera around his neck. "There was something hard sticking out of the back of my leg and my leg was getting wet from blood," he told the outlet. Stern told BBC protesters helped carry him away from the "danger area" and a medic applied a tourniquet. "I intend, as soon as I am well enough, to get back out there," he told BBC. "This is too important and it needs documenting." A New York Post photographer was also hit with a rubber bullet in the head, the outlet reported. Toby Canham was standing just off the 101 freeway in Los Angeles the evening of June 8 "when a California Highway Patrol (CHP) officer suddenly turned his weapon toward him and fired from about 100 yards away," the Post reported. He went to the hospital for whiplash and neck pain and had a bruise on his forehead. 'It's a real shame. I completely understand being in the position where you could get injured, but at the same time, there was no justification for even aiming the rifle at me and pulling the trigger, so I'm a bit pissed off about that, to be honest,' Canham said. Officers also shot Ryanne Mena, a reporter with the Southern California News Group, with pepper ball bullets, which contain a chemical akin to pepper spray, she said in a post on social media. Police briefly detained CNN correspondent Jason Carroll while he was on the air covering protests on June 9. In-studio anchors briefly lost contact with Carroll, who could be seen being led away by LAPD officers with hands behind his back. An officer can be heard telling Carroll: "We're letting you go. You can't come back. If you come back, you will be arrested." "You take a lot of risks as press. This is low on that scale of risks, but it is something that I wasn't expecting, simply because we've been out here all day," Carroll said. "I've covered any number of protests, and normally the officers realize that the press is there doing a job." What's happening in LA protests Protests began on June 6 in response to the Trump administration's crackdown with immigration raids in Southern California. Immigration and Customs Enforcement is carrying out a directive from Trump to find immigrants living in the United States without legal status. Protests have sprung up against the sweeps the agency is carrying out in various neighborhoods. The protests began largely peacefully after U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement sweeps near Los Angeles resulted in more than 40 arrests, but flared up when heavily armed, masked agents raided Los Angeles businesses. For several days, the demonstrations have grown and turned chaotic and sometimes violent, with police and protesters clashing in the streets. A tense standoff unfolded between the administration and California authorities, who say the use of the National Guard and U.S. Marines is an unlawful subversion of Newsom's authority. Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass called Trump's escalation of military presence a "deliberate attempt to create disorder and chaos in our city." On Monday, LAPD said protesters threw objects at officers near the federal courthouse, prompting use of gas canisters and other munitions. Bass said over 100 people were arrested Monday night, blaming "fringe groups" for violence. Contributing: Thao Nguyen, John Bacon, Greta Cross and Taijuan Moorman, USA TODAY
Boston Globe
23 minutes ago
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Jillian Sackler, philanthropist who defended husband's legacy, dies at 84
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Boston Globe
23 minutes ago
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Sacha Jenkins, filmmaker who mined the Black experience, dies at 53
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Advertisement Mr. Jenkins later served a stint as the music editor of Vibe magazine and wrote for publications such as Spin and Rolling Stone, before turning his attention to the screen. Advertisement 'There's a huge void, right?' he said in a 2022 interview with Okayplayer. 'There weren't a lot of documentaries about hip-hop for the longest time. I think hip-hop generated some of the strongest, most powerful storytellers of our generation with the music so it's only natural that we would create projects in the film and television realm that would have resonance.' He joined Mass Appeal, a New York-based media and content company, as the chief creative officer in 2012. Three years later, he directed 'Fresh Dressed,' a documentary that chronicled the rise of urban and hip-hop fashion, tracing elements of Black style from the antebellum plantations of the South to the world's fashion tents. Other notable documentaries included 'Wu-Tang Clan: Of Mics and Men' (2019), an Emmy-nominated four-part series that depicted the members of the groundbreaking hip-hop group from Staten Island as 'human-scaled -- determined, gifted, anxious, fallible,' music critic Jon Caramanica wrote in a review in The New York Times. 'Bitchin': The Sound and Fury of Rick James' (2021) explored the radiant and sordid career of the punk funk master, who minted anthems of debauchery including the 1980s hits 'Super Freak' and 'Give It to Me Baby,' but who also crossed the line from personal hedonism to criminal abuse. The film premiered at the 2021 Tribeca Film Festival. Mr. Jenkins dipped further back into history with 'Louis Armstrong's Black & Blues' (2022), which drew heavily from the personal writings of the artist known as Satchmo, from his reel-to-reel audio diaries and from his letters, read by rapper Nas. The film shed light on the inner racial struggles of a jazz giant who generally kept mum on the topic while becoming a global celebrity beloved by white audiences. Advertisement Mr. Jenkins's films 'were homecomings for Black folk who watch these films with the hope that it's us behind the camera,' artist and writer DJ Lynnée Denise, wrote in an essay. She argued that his work stood in contrast to white directors Ken Burns and Martin Scorsese, whose documentaries about Black music 'replicate centuries of symbolic and material imbalance between Black performers and white industry.' Sacha Sebastian Jenkins was born Aug. 22, 1971, in Philadelphia, the younger of two children of Horace B. Jenkins, an Emmy-winning filmmaker, and Monart Renaud, a visual artist from Haiti. His family moved to Silver Spring, Md., a suburb of Washington, and after his parents separated, his father moved to Harlem and the rest of the family settled in Astoria. Mr. Jenkins came of age in New York at a fertile time in hip-hop culture, as it was spreading from such areas as the South Bronx toward the mainstream. 'We grew up writing graffiti, dancing in the street, rapping in staircases,' he said. People were 'plugging turntables into lampposts on the street.' He became enmeshed in the graffiti art scene, but, as he recalled in an interview last year with the multimedia company Idea Generation, he spent 'more time thinking about graffiti and writing about graffiti and publishing magazines about graffiti than doing graffiti.' After launching Graphic Scenes X-Plicit Language and Beat-Down newspaper, he joined forces with two friends, Elliott Wilson and Jeff Mao, to form Ego Trip magazine, which covered hip-hop and a variety of topics, including skateboarding and punk rock. 'White kids who like rock love hip-hop by this point,' he said. 'You can't keep putting people in boxes.' Advertisement In the late 1990s, Ego Trip expanded to books, including 'Ego Trip's Big Book of Racism!' which caught the eye of producers at VH1. The cable network enlisted the Ego Trip team to develop satirical shows including 'TV's Illest Minority Moments,' which lampooned the media's depictions of people of color, and 'The (White) Rapper Show,' a reality competition. Mr. Jenkins also published several books, including collaborating with Eminem on the rapper's 2008 book 'The Way I Am.' In addition to his wife, Mr. Jenkins leaves a son, Marceau, a stepdaughter, Djali Brown-Cepeda, and a grandson. Mr. Jenkins's tart views on race in America were on display in 'Everything's Gonna Be All White,' his 2022 Showtime docuseries that sought to tell 'a tale of two Americas, one white, one not,' featuring pointed commentary about racism from a broad swath of people of color. The documentary touched on the notion of a Black Jesus, the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol attack, and 'white noise,' which Mr. Jenkins argued happens to people of color when they internalize messaging from the white power structure. 'It's a subliminal fuzz, constant, like a ringing in your ear,' he said in an interview that year with the film and television news site The Credits. 'It's always there, right, but you become used to it. If you focus on that frequency, it's going to confuse you, encourage you to make the wrong decisions, like not being conscious of casting folks of color in a film about folks of color.' This article originally appeared in
