MOMENTS IN TIME - Oct. 28, 2010

The History Channel

* On Nov. 1, 1512, the ceiling of Rome’s Sistine Chapel, one of Italian artist Michelangelo’s finest works, is exhibited to the public for the first time. The most famous panel is The Creation of Adam, a painting in which the arms of God and Adam are stretching toward each other.

* On Nov. 4, 1922, British archaeologist Howard Carter and his workmen discover a step leading to the tomb of King Tutankhamen in the Valley of the Kings in Egypt. The most splendid architectural find was a stone sarcophagus containing three nested coffins. Inside the final, solid gold coffin was the mummy of the boy-king Tutankhamen, preserved for more than 3,000 years.

* On Nov. 5, 1930, Sinclair Lewis is awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature for his novels “Main Street” (1920), “Babbitt” (1922), “Arrowsmith” (1925) and “Elmer Gantry” (1927). In 1926, he had turned down the Pulitzer Prize awarded him for “Arrowsmith.”

* On Nov. 2, 1947, the Hughes Flying Boat — the largest aircraft ever built — is piloted by designer Howard Hughes on its first and only flight. Built with laminated birch and spruce, the massive wooden aircraft had a wingspan longer than a football field and was designed to carry more than 700 men into battle.

* On Nov. 7, 1957, The Gaither Report called for by President Dwight D. Eisenhower to review the nation’s defense readiness and urges a vigorous $30 billion campaign to build fallout shelters to protect American citizens. It suggested that American citizens were completely unprotected from nuclear attack.

* On Nov. 3, 1964, residents of the District of Columbia cast ballots in a presidential election for the first time. The passage of the 23rd Amendment in 1961 gave citizens of the nation’s capital the right to vote for a president and vice president.

* On Nov. 6, 1982, Shirley Allen is arrested in Missouri for poisoning her husband, Lloyd Allen, with ethylene glycol, commonly known as anti-freeze. Lloyd Allen was Shirley’s sixth husband and the second to die from mysterious causes.

(c) 2010 King Features Synd., Inc.