Today in History: November 17, the NFL’s infamous 'Heidi Game'

Today is Tuesday, Nov. 17, the 321st day of 2026. There are 44 days left in the year.

Today in history:

On Nov. 17, 1968, the last minutes of a tense NFL matchup on NBC between the New York Jets and the Oakland Raiders were preempted by the children’s film “Heidi." The network received thousands of calls from angry viewers and formally apologized.

Also on this date:

In 1800, Congress held its first session in the partially completed U.S. Capitol building in Washington, D.C.

In 1869, the Suez Canal opened in Egypt after 10 years' construction.

In 1965, North Vietnamese forces ambushed a battalion from the U.S. Army's 1st Cavalry Division during what would become known as the Battle of the Ia Drang Valley, the first significant confrontation between U.S. and North Vietnamese troops in the Vietnam War (more than 100 U.S. soldiers died in the ambush).

In 1973, President Richard Nixon told a gathering of Associated Press managing editors at a televised news conference in Orlando, Florida: “People have got to know whether or not their president is a crook. Well, I’m not a crook.”

In 1989, an estimated 10,000 to 15,000 Czechoslovakian students demonstrated in Prague against Communist rule; hundreds of thousands joined the protests in the following days. Dubbed the “Velvet Revolution” for its nonviolent nature, the protests led to the resignation of the Communist Party’s leadership on Nov. 28 that year.

In 1997, 62 people, most of them foreign tourists, were killed when militants opened fire at the Temple of Hatshepsut (haht-shehp-SOOT’) in Luxor, Egypt; the attackers were killed by police.

In 2003, Arnold Schwarzenegger, the Austrian-born actor who had become one of America’s biggest movie stars of the 1980s and ’90s, was sworn in as the 38th governor of California.

In 2020, President Donald Trump fired the nation’s top election security official, Christopher Krebs, who had refuted Trump’s unsubstantiated claims of electoral fraud and vouched for the integrity of the vote.

In 2024, Democrat Joe Biden became the first sitting U.S. president to visit the Amazon rainforest. While in Brazil, Biden used the trip to promote legislation to address global warming and the need for cleaning air, water and energy.

Today’s Birthdays: Film director Martin Scorsese (skor-SEH’-see) is 84. Actor-model Lauren Hutton is 83. Actor-director Danny DeVito is 82. Basketball Hall of Fame coach Jim Boeheim is 82. “Saturday Night Live” producer Lorne Michaels is 82. Basketball Hall of Famer Elvin Hayes is 81. TV host-entertainer RuPaul is 66. R&B singer Ronnie DeVoe (New Edition; Bell Biv DeVoe) is 59. Actor Leslie Bibb is 53. Actor Rachel McAdams is 48. Author Christopher Paolini is 43. Rapper Sada Baby is 34. Olympic gold medal runner Ruth Jebet is 30. Boxer Devin Haney is 28.