NOVEMBER 12th

On this date in:
1815	American suffragist Elizabeth Cady Stanton was born in Johnstown, N.Y.
1920	Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis was elected baseball's first commissioner.
1927	Josef Stalin became the undisputed ruler of the Soviet Union as Leon Trotsky was expelled from the Communist Party.
1948	Former Japanese premier Hideki Tojo and several other World War II Japanese leaders were sentenced to death by a war crimes tribunal.
1954	Ellis Island closed after processing more than 20 million immigrants since opening in New York Harbor in 1892.
1982	Yuri V. Andropov was elected to succeed the late Leonid I. Brezhnev as general secretary of the Soviet Communist Party's Central Committee.
1985	Xavier Suarez was elected Miami's first Cuban-American mayor.
1987	The American Medical Association issued a policy statement saying it was unethical for a doctor to refuse to treat someone solely because that person has AIDS or is HIV-positive.
1990	Japanese Emperor Akihito formally assumed the Chrysanthemum Throne.
1996	Jonathan Schmitz was convicted of second-degree murder for shooting Scott Amedure, a gay man who'd revealed a crush on Schmitz during a taping of "The Jenny Jones Show."
1997	Ramzi Yousef was found guilty of masterminding the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center.
1999	President Bill Clinton signed a sweeping measure knocking down Depression-era barriers and allowing banks, investment firms and insurance companies to sell each other's products.
2001	An American Airlines flight crashed near New York's Kennedy airport, killing 265 people.
2004	A jury in Redwood City, Calif., convicted Scott Peterson of murdering his pregnant wife, Laci, and dumping her body in San Francisco Bay. (Peterson was later sentenced to death.)
2006	Gerald R. Ford surpassed Ronald Reagan as the longest-lived U.S. president at 93 years and 121 days. (Ford died the following month.)
2007	Pakistani opposition leader Benazir Bhutto was placed under house arrest for the second time in four days ahead of a planned march to protest emergency rule.

Article of the day

Ellis Island closes

On this day in 1954, Ellis Island, the gateway to America, shuts it doors after processing more than 12 million immigrants since opening in 1892. Today, an estimated 40 percent of all Americans can trace their roots through Ellis Island, located in New York Harbor off the New Jersey coast and named for merchant Samuel Ellis, who owned the land in the 1770s.

On January 2, 1892, 15-year-old Annie Moore, from Ireland, became the first person to pass through the newly opened Ellis Island, which President Benjamin Harrison designated as America's first federal immigration center in 1890. Before that time, the processing of immigrants had been handled by individual states.

Not all immigrants who sailed into New York had to go through Ellis Island. First- and second-class passengers submitted to a brief shipboard inspection and then disembarked at the piers in New York or New Jersey, where they passed through customs. People in third class, though, were transported to Ellis Island, where they underwent medical and legal inspections to ensure they didn't have a contagious disease or some condition that would make them a burden to the government. Only two percent of all immigrants were denied entrance into the U.S.

Immigration to Ellis Island peaked between 1892 and 1924, during which time the 3.3-acre island was enlarged with landfill (by the 1930s it reached its current 27.5-acre size) and additional buildings were constructed to handle the massive influx of immigrants. During the busiest year of operation, 1907, over 1 million people were processed at Ellis Island.

With America's entrance into World War I, immigration declined and Ellis Island was used as a detention center for suspected enemies. Following the war, Congress passed quota laws and the Immigration Act of 1924, which sharply reduced the number of newcomers allowed into the country and also enabled immigrants to be processed at U.S. consulates abroad. After 1924, Ellis Island switched from a processing center to serving other purposes, such as a detention and deportation center for illegal immigrants, a hospital for wounded soldiers during World War II and a Coast Guard training center. In November 1954, the last detainee, a Norwegian merchant seaman, was released and Ellis Island officially closed.

Beginning in 1984, Ellis Island underwent a $160 million renovation, the largest historic restoration project in U.S. history. In September 1990, the Ellis Island Immigration Museum opened to the public and today is visited by almost 2 million people each year.

Today Birthdays

Anne Hathaway turns 26 years old today.

AP Photo/Dan Steinberg Actress Anne Hathaway ("The Devil Wears Prada") turns 26 years old today.

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