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Discussion starter · #622 · (Edited)
On this day, 3 November 1783: John Austin, a highwayman, is the last person to be publicly hanged at London's Tyburn gallows.

1838: The Times of India, the world's largest circulated English language daily broadsheet newspaper, is founded as The Bombay Times and Journal of Commerce.

1868: John Willis Menard is the first African American elected to the United States Congress. Because of an electoral challenge, he was never seated.

1883: American Old West: Self-described "Black Bart the poet" gets away with his last stagecoach robbery, but leaves a clue that eventually leads to his capture.

1911: Chevrolet officially enters the automobile market in competition with the Ford Model T.

1954: The first Godzilla film is released, marking the debut of the character of the same name.

1957: The Soviet Union launches Sputnik 2. On board is the first animal to enter orbit, a dog named Laika.

1979: Greensboro massacre: Five members of the Communist Workers Party are shot dead and seven are wounded by a group of Klansmen and neo-Nazis during a "Death to the Klan" rally in Greensboro, North Carolina, United States.

Born today:
1500: Benvenuto Cellini, Italian sculptor and painter (d. 1571).
1801: Vincenzo Bellini, Italian composer (d. 1835).
1901: André Malraux, French historian, theorist, and author (d. 1976).
1921: Charles Bronson, American actor (d. 2003).
1933: Jeremy Brett, English actor (d. 1995).
1942: Martin Cruz Smith, American author and screenwriter.
 
Discussion starter · #624 ·
On this day, 4 November 1783: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's Symphony No. 36 is performed for the first time in Linz, Austria.

1847: Sir James Young Simpson, a British physician, discovers the anesthetic properties of chloroform.

1922: In Egypt, British archaeologist Howard Carter and his men find the entrance to Pharaoh Tutankhamen's tomb in the Valley of the Kings.

1942: Second Battle of El Alamein: Disobeying a direct order by Adolf Hitler, General Field Marshal Erwin Rommel leads his forces on a five-month retreat.

1956: Soviet troops enter Hungary to end the Hungarian revolution against the Soviet Union, that started on October 23. Thousands are killed, more are wounded, and nearly a quarter million leave the country.

1962: In a test of the Nike Hercules air defense missile, Shot Dominic-Tightrope is successfully detonated 69,000 feet above Johnston Atoll. This is the last atmospheric nuclear test conducted by the United States.

1979: A mob of Iranians, mostly students, overruns the US embassy in Tehran and takes 90 hostages (53 of whom are American).

2008: Barack Obama becomes the first man of African-American descent to be elected President of the United States.

Born today:
1879: Will Rogers, American actor and screenwriter (d. 1935).
1916: Walter Cronkite, American journalist and producer (d. 2009).
 
Discussion starter · #626 ·
On this day, 5 November 1605: Gunpowder Plot: Guy Fawkes is arrested.

1757: Seven Years' War: Frederick the Great defeats the allied armies of France and the Holy Roman Empire at the Battle of Rossbach.

1831: Nat Turner, American slave leader, is tried, convicted, and sentenced to death in Virginia.

1862: American Civil War: Abraham Lincoln removes George B. McClellan as commander of the Union Army for the second and final time.

1872: Women's suffrage in the United States: In defiance of the law, suffragist Susan B. Anthony votes for the first time, and is later fined $100.

1916: The Everett Massacre takes place in Everett, Washington as political differences lead to a shoot-out between the Industrial Workers of the World organizers and local police.

1925: Secret agent Sidney Reilly, the first "super-spy" of the 20th century, is executed by the OGPU, the secret police of the Soviet Union.

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1955: After being destroyed in World War II, the rebuilt Vienna State Opera reopens with a performance of Beethoven's Fidelio.

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1995: André Dallaire attempts to assassinate Prime Minister Jean Chrétien of Canada. He is thwarted when the Prime Minister's wife locks the door.

2007: The Android mobile operating system is unveiled by Google.

Born today:
1855: Eugene V. Debs, American union leader and socialist politician (d. 1926).
1885: Will Durant, American historian, philosopher, and author (d. 1981).
1887: Paul Wittgenstein, Austrian-American pianist (d. 1961).
1895: Walter Gieseking, French-German pianist and composer (d. 1956).
1906: Fred Lawrence Whipple, American astronomer and academic (d. 2004).
1911: Roy Rogers, American singer, guitarist, and actor (Sons of the Pioneers) (d. 1998).
1921: Georges Cziffra, Hungarian pianist and composer (d. 1994).
1941: Art Garfunkel, American singer-songwriter, guitarist, and actor (Simon & Garfunkel).
1948: Bernard-Henri Lévy, French philosopher and author.
1963: Tatum O'Neal, American actress and author.

It's Guy Fawkes Night in the UK and related places.
 
Discussion starter · #628 ·
On this day, 6 November 1913: Mohandas Gandhi is arrested while leading a march of Indian miners in South Africa.

1935: Edwin Armstrong presents his paper "A Method of Reducing Disturbances in Radio Signaling by a System of Frequency Modulation" to the New York section of the Institute of Radio Engineers. (He had previously, in 1918, invented the superheterodyne receiver, the fundamental design for almost all radios built since. He committed suicide in 1954 after being left penniless by protracted legal battles with RCA, which claimed FM radio as its own. Ultimately these battles were decided in his favor, but too late.)

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1935: Parker Brothers acquires the forerunner patents for Monopoly from Elizabeth Magie.

1944: Plutonium is first produced at the Hanford Atomic Facility and subsequently used in the Fat Man atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki, Japan.

1965: Cuba and the United States formally agree to begin an airlift for Cubans who want to go to the United States. By 1971, 250,000 Cubans had made use of this program.

Born today:
1814: Adolphe Sax, Belgian-French instrument designer, inventor of the saxophone (d. 1894).
1854: John Philip Sousa, American commander, composer, and conductor (d. 1932).
 
Discussion starter · #630 ·
On this day, 7 November 1492: The Ensisheim meteorite, the oldest meteorite with a known date of impact, strikes the earth around noon in a wheat field outside the village of Ensisheim, Alsace, France.

1775: John Murray, the Royal Governor of the Colony of Virginia, starts the first mass emancipation of slaves in North America by issuing Lord Dunmore's Offer of Emancipation which offers freedom to slaves who abandon their colonial masters in order to fight with Murray and the British.

1874: A cartoon by Thomas Nast in Harper's Weekly is considered the first important use of an elephant as a symbol for the United States Republican Party.

1908: Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid are reportedly killed in San Vicente, Bolivia.

1912: The Deutsche Opernhaus (now Deutsche Oper Berlin) opens in the Berlin neighborhood of Charlottenburg with a production of Beethoven's Fidelio.

1917: The Gregorian calendar date of the October Revolution, which gets its name from the Julian calendar date of 25 October. On this date in 1917, the Bolsheviks storm the Winter Palace.

1940: In Tacoma, Washington, the original Tacoma Narrows Bridge collapses in a mild windstorm, a mere four months after the bridge's completion. It was known as "Galloping Gertie" due to its unfortunate tendency to twist and oscillate in the wind. It was the third-longest suspension span in the world at the time. A picture shows the problem:

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2000: The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration discovers one of the country's largest LSD labs inside a converted military missile silo in Wamego, Kansas.

Born today:
1867: Marie Curie, Polish chemist and physicist, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1934).
1879: Leon Trotsky, Russian theorist and politician, founded the Red Army (d. 1940).
1903: Konrad Lorenz, Austrian zoologist, ethologist, and ornithologist, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1989).
1913: Albert Camus, French journalist, author, and philosopher, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1960).
1918: Billy Graham, American evangelist and minister.
1926: Joan Sutherland, Australian-Swiss soprano (d. 2010).
1943: Joni Mitchell, Canadian singer-songwriter and guitarist.
 
Discussion starter · #633 · (Edited)
On this day, 8 November 1519: Hernán Cortés enters Tenochtitlán and Aztec ruler Moctezuma welcomes him with a great celebration. Oops.

1892: The New Orleans general strike begins, uniting black and white American trade unionists in a successful four-day general strike action for the first time.

1895: While experimenting with electricity, Wilhelm Röntgen discovers the X-ray.

1898: The Wilmington Insurrection of 1898 takes place, the only instance of an attempted coup d'état in American history.

1923: Beer Hall Putsch: In Munich, Adolf Hitler leads the Nazis in an unsuccessful attempt to overthrow the German government.

1966: Former Massachusetts Attorney General Edward Brooke becomes the first African American elected to the United States Senate since Reconstruction.

1973: The right ear of John Paul Getty III is delivered to a newspaper together with a ransom note, convincing his father to pay US$2.9 million. (Rather grudgingly. See Wiki.)

Born today:
1656: Edmond Halley, English astronomer and mathematician (d. 1742).
1883: Arnold Bax, English composer and poet (d. 1953).
1922: Christiaan Barnard, South African surgeon and academic (d. 2001).

It's International Day of Radiology.
 
Discussion starter · #635 ·
On this day, 9 November 694: At the Seventeenth Council of Toledo, Egica, a king of the Visigoths of Hispania, accuses Jews of aiding Muslims, sentencing all Jews to slavery.

1620: Pilgrims aboard the Mayflower sight land at Cape Cod, Massachusetts.

1720: The synagogue of Yehudah he-Hasid is burned down by Arab creditors, leading to the expulsion of the Ashkenazim from Jerusalem.

1799: Napoleon Bonaparte leads the coup d'état of 18 Brumaire, ending the Directory government and becoming one of three Consuls (Consulate Government).

1867: The Tokugawa Shogunate hands power back to the Emperor of Japan, starting the Meiji Restoration.

1906: Theodore Roosevelt becomes the first sitting President of the United States to make an official trip outside the country, to inspect progress on the Panama Canal.

1938: The Nazi German diplomat Ernst vom Rath dies from gunshot wounds of Jewish resistance fighter Herschel Grynszpan, an act which the Nazis use as an excuse to instigate the 1938 national pogrom, also known as Kristallnacht (Crystal Night).

1965: Several U.S. states and parts of Canada are hit by a series of blackouts lasting up to 13 hours in the Northeast Blackout of 1965.

1967: The first issue of Rolling Stone Magazine is published.

1985: Garry Kasparov of the Soviet Union, 22, becomes the youngest World Chess Champion by beating Anatoly Karpov, also of the Soviet Union. But Deep Blue is stirring...

1989: Fall of the Berlin Wall. Communist-controlled East Germany opens checkpoints in the Berlin Wall allowing its citizens to travel to West Germany. This key event leads to the eventual reunification of East and West Germany and fall of communism in eastern Europe including Russia.

1998: A US federal judge orders 37 US brokerage houses to pay 1.03 billion USD to cheated NASDAQ investors to compensate for price-fixing. This is the largest civil settlement in United States history.

Born today:
1914: Hedy Lamarr, Austrian-American actress (and inventor!) (d. 2000).
1918: Spiro Agnew, American lawyer, and politician, 39th Vice President of the United States (d. 1996).
1934: Carl Sagan, American astronomer, astrophysicist, and cosmologist (d. 1996).
1936: Mikhail Tal, Latvian chess player (d. 1992).
1959: Thomas Quasthoff, German opera singer.
1965: Bryn Terfel, Welsh opera singer.

It's Day of the Skulls, or Dia de los ñatitas, in Bolivia.
 
#636 ·
November 9

1494 - Family de' Medici become rulers of Florence.

1821 - First US pharmacy college starts classes (Philadelphia).

1888 - Jack Ripper's probable last victim found.

1904 - First airplane flight to last more than 5 minutes.

1961 - PGA eliminates caucasians only rule.
 
Discussion starter · #637 ·
On this day, 10 November 1865: Major Henry Wirz, the superintendent of a prison camp in Andersonville, Georgia, is hanged, becoming the only American Civil War soldier executed for war crimes.

1871: Henry Morton Stanley locates missing explorer and missionary, Dr. David Livingstone in Ujiji, near Lake Tanganyika, famously greeting him with the words, "Dr. Livingstone, I presume?"

1951: With the rollout of the North American Numbering Plan, direct-dial coast-to-coast telephone service begins in the United States.

1958: The Hope Diamond is donated to the Smithsonian Institution by New York diamond merchant Harry Winston.

1969: National Educational Television (the predecessor to the Public Broadcasting Service) in the United States debuts the children's television program Sesame Street.

1983: Bill Gates introduces Windows 1.0.

Born today:
1483: Martin Luther, German monk and priest, leader of the Protestant Reformation (d. 1546).
1668: François Couperin, French organist and composer (d. 1733).
1697: William Hogarth, English painter, illustrator, and critic (d. 1764).
1759: Friedrich Schiller, German poet, playwright, and historian (d. 1805).
1810: George Jennings, English plumber and engineer, invented the flush toilet (d. 1882).
1919: Mikhail Kalashnikov, Russian general and weapons designer, designed the AK-47 (d. 2013).
1925: Richard Burton, Welsh actor and producer (d. 1984).
1928: Ennio Morricone, Italian trumpet player, composer, and conductor.
1939: Russell Means, American actor and activist (d. 2012).
1940: Screaming Lord Sutch, English singer-songwriter and politician (d. 1999).

Who could forget Screaming Lord Sutch?

It's World Science Day, established by UNESCO in 2001.
 
Discussion starter · #639 · (Edited)
On this day, 11 November 1215: The Fourth Lateran Council meets, defining the doctrine of transubstantiation, the process by which bread and wine are said to transform into the body and blood of Christ.

1620: The Mayflower Compact is signed in what is now Provincetown Harbor near Cape Cod.

1634: Following pressure from Anglican bishop John Atherton, the Irish House of Commons passes An Act for the Punishment for the Vice of Buggery.

1675: Gottfried Leibniz demonstrates integral calculus for the first time to find the area under the graph of y = ƒ(x).

1831: In Jerusalem, Virginia, Nat Turner is hanged after inciting a violent slave uprising.

1864: American Civil War, Sherman's March to the Sea: Union General William Tecumseh Sherman begins burning Atlanta, Georgia to the ground in preparation for his march south.

1880: Australian bushranger Ned Kelly is hanged at Melbourne Gaol.

1918: World War I: Germany signs an armistice agreement with the Allies in a railroad car in the forest of Compiègne, France. The fighting officially ends at the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month, and this is commemorated annually with a two minute silence.

1926: The United States Numbered Highway System, including U.S. Route 66, is established.

1930: Patent number US1781541 is awarded to Albert Einstein and Leó Szilárd for their invention, the Einstein refrigerator.

1992: The General Synod of the Church of England votes to allow women to become priests.

Happy birthday to:
1821: Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Russian philosopher and author (d. 1881).
1869: Victor Emmanuel III of Italy (d. 1947).
1883: Ernest Ansermet, Swiss conductor (d. 1969).
1904: Alger Hiss, American lawyer and spy (d. 1996).
1914: Howard Fast, American author and screenwriter (d. 2003).
1922: Kurt Vonnegut, American soldier, author, and academic (d. 2007).
1925: Jonathan Winters, American comedian and actor (d. 2013).
1930: Vernon Handley, English conductor (d. 2008).
1945: Daniel Ortega, Nicaraguan politician, President of Nicaragua.
1962: Demi Moore, American actress.
1974: Leonardo DiCaprio, American actor.

It's Pocky Day and Pretz Day in Japan. And Singles Day in China.
 
#640 ·
November 11

1714 - A highway in Bronx is laid out, later renamed East 233rd Street.

1933 - Billie Holiday's first hit, "Riffin' the Scotch", is released.

1972 - Dow Jones Index moves above 1,000 for the first time.

1987 - Van Gogh's "Irises" sells for record $53.6 M at auction.

1999 - Last upside down date until January 1, 6000.
 
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