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• Today is Saturday, Nov. 30, the 334th day of 2013. There are 31 days left in the year.
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• Today's Highlight in History:
• On Nov. 30, 1782, the United States and Britain signed preliminary peace articles in Paris, ending the Revolutionary War.
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• On this date:
• In 1803, Spain completed the process of ceding Louisiana to France, which had sold it to the United States.
• In 1835, Samuel Langhorne Clemens, better known as Mark Twain, was born in Florida, Missouri.
• In 1874, British statesman Sir Winston Churchill was born at Blenheim Palace.
• In 1900, Irish writer Oscar Wilde died in Paris at age 46.
• In 1936, London's famed Crystal Palace, constructed for the Great Exhibition of 1851, was destroyed in a fire.
• In 1939, the Russo-Finnish War began as Soviet troops invaded Finland.
• In 1962, U Thant of Burma, who had been acting secretary-general of the United Nations following the death of Dag Hammarskjold the year before, was elected to a four-year term.
• In 1966, the former British colony of Barbados became independent.
• In 1981, the United States and the Soviet Union opened negotiations in Geneva aimed at reducing nuclear weapons in Europe.
• In 1982, the Michael Jackson album "Thriller" was released by Epic Records.
• In 1988, Kohlberg Kravis Roberts and Co. was declared the winner of the corporate free-for-all to take over RJR Nabisco Inc. with a bid of $24.53 billion.
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• Ten years ago: U.S. soldiers in Iraq fought back coordinated attacks throughout the northern city of Samarra. Two South Korean contractors were killed in a roadside ambush. Nathaniel Jones, a black man, died during a fight with Cincinnati po

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