November 12 Birthday
On November 12, 1927, Stalin expelled Trotsky from the Communist Party. Trotsky had been Lenin's closest ally and the architect of the Red Army. Stalin had outmaneuvered him after Lenin's death, building alliances with the party bureaucracy. Trotsky was exiled to Kazakhstan, then to Turkey, then to France, then to Norway, and finally to Mexico, where he was killed in 1940. The expulsion marked the triumph of Stalinism over the original Bolshevik vision — what Trotsky called "the revolution betrayed." In 1944, the German battleship Tirpitz was sunk by RAF Lancaster bombers in a Norwegian fjord. The Tirpitz, sister ship of the Bismarck, had been hiding in Norwegian waters for three years, threatening Arctic convoys to the Soviet Union. The British had made twenty-three attempts to sink her. The final attack used 12,000-pound Tallboy bombs. The ship capsized. 1,000 sailors died. The wreck was cut up and sold for scrap after the war. Grace Kelly, born this day in 1929, was an Oscar-winning actress who married Prince Rainier III of Monaco and became Princess Grace. She died in a car crash in 1982 at fifty-two. People born on November 12 fall under the zodiac sign of Scorpio. The birthstone is Topaz and the birth flower is Chrysanthemum. Historical events on November 12 include 1927: Stalin expels Trotsky from the Communist Party, 1944: German battleship Tirpitz sunk by RAF in Norway, 1980: Voyager 1 spacecraft passes Saturn. Famous people born on November 12 include Grace Kelly (1929), Neil Young (1945), Ryan Gosling (1980).