Today is Friday, Nov. 21, the 325th day of 2025. There are 40 days left in the year.

Today in history:

On Nov. 21, 1944, Dick Durbin was born in East St. Louis, Illinois, turns 81 today. First elected to the U.S. House in 1982 and to the Senate in 1996, Durbin is the state’s senior senator and dean of the Illinois congressional delegation. At the end of his current term, Durbin’s 30-year Senate tenure will tie him for the longest in state history with Shelby Cullom, a Republican from Springfield, who resigned as governor to serve from 1883 to 1913 as U.S. senator. He announced in April that he won’t seek a sixth term, setting up a scramble among potential successors vying for a politically coveted six-year term.

US Sen. Dick Durbin says he won’t run for sixth term

US Sen. Dick Durbin’s retirement opens the floodgates for a number of potential successors

Sen. Dick Durbin: Why I chose to retire

Also on this date:

In 1920, on “Bloody Sunday,” the Irish Republican Army killed 14 suspected British intelligence officers in the Dublin area; British forces responded by raiding a soccer match, killing 14 civilians.

In 1964, New York City’s Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge, at the time the longest suspension bridge in the world, was opened to traffic.

In 1980, an estimated 83 million TV viewers tuned in to the CBS prime-time soap opera “Dallas” to find out “who shot J.R.” (The shooter turned out to be J.R. Ewing’s sister-in-law, Kristin Shepard.)

In 1980, 85 people died, most from smoke inhalation, after a fire broke out at the MGM Grand Hotel in Las Vegas, Nevada.

In 1985, U.S. Navy intelligence analyst Jonathan Jay Pollard was arrested and accused of spying for Israel. (Pollard later pleaded guilty to espionage and was sentenced to life in prison, but was released in 2015.)

In 1990, junk-bond financier Michael R. Milken, who had pleaded guilty to six felony counts related to violating U.S. securities laws by selling junk bonds, was sentenced by a federal judge in New York to 10 years in prison. (Milken served two.)

In 1995, Balkan leaders meeting in Dayton, Ohio, initialed a peace plan to end 3 1/2 years of ethnic fighting in Bosnia-Herzegovina.

In 2017, Zimbabwe’s 93-year-old president, Robert Mugabe, resigned; he was facing impeachment proceedings and had been placed under house arrest by the military. His resignation ended a 37-year rule beginning with Zimbabwe’s independence in 1980.

In 2021, an SUV sped through barricades and into marchers in a Christmas parade in the Milwaukee suburb of Waukesha, killing six people and injuring several others. A judge the following year sentenced Darrell Brooks Jr. to life in prison without parole for his conviction on first-degree intentional homicide and other counts.

In 2022, a powerful earthquake killed at least 162 people and injured hundreds on Indonesia’s main island of Java, sending terrified residents into streets covered with debris.

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Also in 2022, NASA’s uncrewed Orion capsule reached the moon, whipping around the far side and buzzing the lunar surface on an orbit that broke the record for distance traveled by a spacecraft designed to carry humans. The mission marked the first time an American capsule visited the moon since NASA’s Apollo program ended a half-century earlier.

Today’s Birthdays: Actor Marlo Thomas is 88. Basketball Hall of Famer Earl Monroe is 81. Actor Goldie Hawn is 80. Republican Sen. John Kennedy of Louisiana is 74. Journalist Tina Brown is 72. Actor Cherry Jones is 69. Gospel musician Steven Curtis Chapman is 63. Musician Björk is 60. Football Hall of Famer Troy Aikman is 59. Baseball Hall of Famer Ken Griffey Jr. is 56. Football Hall of Famer-TV host Michael Strahan is 54. Actor Jena Malone is 41. Actor-comedian Ronny Chieng is 40. Pop singer Carly Rae Jepsen is 40.

https://www.chicagotribune.com/2025/11/21/today-in-history-dick-durbin-turns-81/