TODAY IN CRIME: November 30

1487 Albert IV, Duke of Bavaria, decreed the first German Beer Purity Law (Reinheitsgebot), stating beer should be brewed from only three ingredients—water, malt, and hops.

1523 Amsterdam banned assembly of heretics.

1678 In England, the Cavalier Parliament passed an act under King Charles II “for the more effectuall preserving the Kings Person and Government by disableing Papists from sitting in either House of Parlyament.”

1786 Leopold II, the Grand Duke of Tuscany, promulgated a penal reform, making Tuscany the first modern state to abolish the death penalty. November 30 is celebrated today worldwide as Cities for Life Day.

1804 The U. S. Senate began impeachment proceedings against Supreme Court Justice Samuel Chase, accusing him of political bias. He was acquitted.

1902 Police in Knoxville, Tennessee, captured Kid Curry Logan, second-in-command of Butch Cassidy's Wild Bunch gang, for killing two policemen in a shootout. The lawmen had tried to arrest him for robbery. Logan was sentenced to 20 years imprisonment with hard labor.

1953 Governor of Uganda Sir Andrew Cohen deposed Kabaka (king) of Buganda Edward Mutesa II for promoting Buganda's secession from the Uganda Protectorate and exiled him to London. Widespread discontent with this move forced Cohen to reinstate Mutesa in 1955 as a constitutional monarch. All of Uganda gained independence in 1962.

1957 Members of the Islam group Darul Islam under the leadership of mystic Sekarmadji Maridjan Kartosuwirjo initiated a grenade attack upon Indonesian president Sukarno during a visit to a school in Central Jakarta. The leader was slightly harmed; six children were killed and more than 100 wounded.

1971 The government of the Republic of Ireland stated that it would take the allegations of brutality against the security forces in Northern Ireland to the European Court of Human Rights. Ireland claimed that the "five techniques"—prolonged wall-standing, hooding, subjection to noise, deprivation of sleep, and deprivation of food and drink—used against detainees by Northern Ireland and the UK constituted torture.

1972 In Rome, an illegal fireworks factory on the eighth floor of an apartment building exploded, killing 15 and injuring 100.

1983 Police freed kidnap victim Alfred Heineken in Amsterdam. Five kidnappers held the beer magnate and his chauffeur in a Quonset hut near the harbor for 21 days before the Heineken family paid 11 million dollars— the highest amount paid for a kidnap victim at the time—for their release. The abductors were eventually captured and sent to prison.

1987 The Grand Assembly of Afghanistan under Mohammad Najibullah adopted the constitution of the Republic of Afghanistan.

1988 The United Nations General Assembly (151-2) censured the U.S. for denying the visa of Palestine Liberation Organization Chairman Yasser Arafat. Arafat was scheduled to speak during a scheduled debate on the Palestinian question at the U.N. in New York on December 1, but U.S. Jewish leaders as well as 51 U.S. senators opposed his visit.

1988 A furrier in New York City sued Mike Tyson for $92,000 for non-payment of purchase.

1989 A roadside bomb killed Deutsche Bank chairman Alfred Herrhausen. Ten kilos of explosives and a copper plate pierced the armor-plated limo of the head of Germany's biggest bank and struck him in the legs. He bled to death before assistance could arrive. No one was ever caught or prosecuted for the murder, although the far-left terrorist group Red Army Faction lead the list of suspects.

1993 Authorities in California arrested career criminal Richard Allen Davis on the Coyote Valley Indian reservation for a parole violation. He was quickly identified as the primary suspect in the abduction and murder of 12-year-old Polly Klaas of Petaluma.

1993 U.S. President Bill Clinton signed the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act. It required a federal background check and five-day waiting period for handgun purchases.

1998 Inga Vainshtein, the former manager of singer-songwriter Jewel, filed a $10 million lawsuit against the star and her mother, Lenedra Caroll, claiming she was fired after Caroll intentionally caused a rift between her and the singer. Vainshtein discovered Jewel in 1993 when she was performing in coffeehouses and living out of her car.

1999 Protests by anti-globalization demonstrators against a World Trade Organization meeting in Seattle, Washington, caught police unprepared and forced the cancellation of opening ceremonies. 40,000 protestors attended. Police arrested 157 individuals but released them for lack of probable cause or hard evidence; in 2004 the city paid them $250,000 in compensation.

2001 Police in Washington state arrested Gary Ridgway, the Green River Killer. DNA evidence linked semen left in four victims to a saliva swab taken by police 20 years earlier. Ridgway was convicted of 49 murders committed between 1982 and 1998 and received life in prison without parole.

2006 Same-sex marriage in South Africa became legal. With the Civil Union Act of 2006, South Africa became the fifth country in the world and the first in Africa to enact such legislation.

2017 Def Jam founder Russell Simmons stepped down from Def Jam records, his yoga lifestyle brand, CNNMoney, and other media properties after allegations of sexual misconduct. After the NYPD opened an investigation into the claims, the hip hop mogul fled to Indonesia to avoid extradition.

2018 Marriott Hotels revealed a massive data breach. In one of largest-ever company hacks, cyber-criminals accessed information on as many as 500 million guests, including names, addresses, email addresses, phone numbers, unencrypted passport numbers, credit card information, arrival and departure information, VIP status, and loyalty information for linked companies like airlines. An investigation revealed the attack went undetected for years.

2019 A gun battle between a drug cartel and security forces at the city hall in Villa Unión, Mexico, killed 19 people—four police officers, two civilians, and 14 criminals. Seeking to retake control of the northern state of Coahuila, members of the Cartel del Noreste—made up of former members of the bloody Los Zetas Cartel—sprayed town offices with bullets from heavily armed pickup trucks painted with skulls and fought Mexican police for more than 90 minutes. Police confiscated various long-range guns, thousands of rounds of ammunition, and 25 vehicles, four with high-caliber guns, in the town about 40 miles south of Eagle Pass, Texas.

TODAY IN CRIME: October 26

1881 Wyatt Earp, his two brothers, and "Doc" Holliday confronted Ike Clanton's gang in a gunfight at the OK Corral in Tombstone, Ariz. Three members of Clanton's gang were killed; Earp's brothers were wounded.

1892 Ida B. Wells published Southern Horrors: Lynch Law in All Its Phases. In 2020 the Pulitzer Prize Board awarded Wells a special citation "[f]or her outstanding and courageous reporting on the horrific and vicious violence against African Americans during the era of lynching."

1909 Korean nationalist and independence activist An Jung-geun assassinated Itō Hirobumi, President of the Privy Council of Japan, who forced the Emperor of Korea to sign the Eulsa Treaty, an agreement that stripped Korea of its diplomatic sovereignty and placed all Korean affairs under Imperial Japanese control. After six trials, An was hanged.

1956 During the Hungarian Revolution, Hungarian secret police forces massacred more than 100 students, workers, and townspeople of the town of Mosonmagyaróvár who had gathered to peacefully demonstrate against Soviet occupation. Fighting spread throughout the country.

1970 In Atlanta, Muhammad Ali faced off against Jerry Quarry in his first boxing match after a three-year hiatus, still awaiting the appeal of his conviction for draft evasion. He knocked out Quarry in the third round. The U.S. Supreme Court overturned his conviction in 1971.

1979 Kim Jae-kyu, the head of the Korean Central Intelligence Agency, shot and killed South Korean President Park Chung-hee at a KCIA safe house in Seoul after a banquet. Kim and his associates also killed four bodyguards and a presidential chauffeur before being captured, tortured, and executed. It is still unclear whether the attack was unplanned and impulsive or deliberate and premeditated, whether Kim was motivated by jealousy of Park's chief bodyguard, a loyalist who had gained too much favor with the dictator, whether Kim was attempting to seize power himself or to restore democracy with the help of the American CIA, or suffering temporary insanity due to hepatic encephalopathy.

1991 Former Washington Mayor Marion Barry arrived at the Federal Correctional Complex in Petersburg, VA, to begin serving a six-month sentence for cocaine possession. He was released in April 1992 and went on to win re-election in 1994.

1993 A Washington, D.C., circuit court convicted Deborah Gore Dean, a central figure in the Reagan-era HUD scandal, of twelve felony counts of defrauding the U.S. government and lying to the U.S. Congress.

1995 Mossad agents assassinated Fathi Shaqaqi, co-founder and Secretary-General of the Islamic Jihad Movement in Palestine, in his hotel in Malta, a stopover on his way home to Damascus after securing the promise of funding from Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi. The assassination and a crackdown by Israel and the Palestinian National Authority left the PIJ considerably weakened.

1995 A Texas jury sentenced Yolanda Saldivar to life in prison for the murder of popular singer Selena, her former employer. Saldivar shot and killed the “Queen of Tejano music” March 31, 1995, after being fired for embezzlement.

1996 Federal prosecutors cleared security guard Richard Jewell as a suspect in the Olympic park bombing. Because leaks in the investigation lead to his being identified as a suspect, Jewell filed defamation suits against the FBI, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, ABC, NBC, CNN, the New York Post, two radio stations, and Piedmont College. He reached monetary settlements with most.

1998 The Recording Industry Association of America lost its case against the sale of MP3 players when a U.S. federal judge refused to issue an injunction against the devices. MP3 players are used to play music downloaded from the Internet.

1999 Britain's House of Lords voted to end the right of hereditary peers to vote in Britain's upper chamber of Parliament.

2000 A wave of protests in the Ivory Coast forced Robert Guéï to step down as president after the presidential election. He fled the country while the duly elected Laurent Gbagbo took office. Gbagbo in turn refused to step down after his defeat in the presidential election ten years later.

2001 U.S. President George W. Bush signed the USA Patriot Act into law, giving authorities unprecedented ability to search, seize, detain, or eavesdrop in their pursuit of possible terrorists.

2002 A three-day hostage siege by Chechen rebels at a Moscow theater ended when Russian special forces pumped a knockout gas into the building, killing 129 of the 800-plus captives. All 50 hostage-takers were killed by the gas or gunshot wounds.