On this day...

in Christian History:


November 9, 1799: Asa Mahan, Congregational clergyman and first president of Oberlin College, is born in Verona, New York.


November 9,1956: The French philosopher and author Jean-Paul Sartre--long an admirer of the Soviet Union--denounces both the USSR and its communist system following the brutal Soviet invasion of Hungary. In the French magazine L'Express, he declared, "I condemn the Soviet invasion wholeheartedly and without any reservation. Without putting any responsibility onto the Russian people, I nevertheless insist that its current government has committed a crime.... And the crime, to me, is not just the invasion of Budapest by army tanks, but the fact that this was made possible by twelve years of terror and imbecility.... It is and will be impossible to reestablish any sort of contact with the men who are currently at the head of the [French Communist Party]. Each sentence they utter, each action they take is the culmination of 30 years of lies and sclerosis."

November 9, 1979: The United Nations Security Council unanimously called upon Iran to release all American hostages "without delay." Militants, mostly students had taken 63 Americans hostage at the U.S. embassy in Tehran, Iran, on November 4.