November History, Trivia, and Fun Facts
November History Highlights
Traditional November Information
In 1863, Abraham Lincoln, declared the last Thursday of November to be a National Day of Thanksgiving.
November is the eleventh month of the year in the Gregorian Calendar and one of four Gregorian months with the length of 30 days.
The Latin translation of “novem” is nine, for it was originally the ninth month on the Roman calendar.
November begins on the same day of the week as March every year and also February except in leap years
In Finnish, November is called marraskuu, meaning “month of the dead”
In Xhosa, November is called ngeyeNkanga, meaning “month of the small yellow daisies”
November in the Northern Hemisphere is the seasonal equivalent to May in the Southern Hemisphere and vice versa
Around November 17, the Leonids meteor shower reaches its peak
Adoption Awareness Month
Alzheimer’s Disease Awareness Month
American Diabetes Month
National Blog Posting Month
COPD Awareness Month
Crohn’s & Ulcerative Colitis Awareness Month
Epilepsy Awareness Month
Fun with Fondue Month
Georgia Pecan Month
Holy Souls in Purgatory Month
Homeless Youth Awareness Month
Lung Cancer Awareness Month
Model Railroad Month
Native American Heritage Month
No Shave November
National Novel Writing Month
Pancreatic Cancer Awareness Month
Peanut Butter Lover’s Month
Pulmonary Hypertension Awareness Month
National Pomegranate Month
Prematurity Awareness Month
Raisin Bread Month
Real Jewelry Month
Stomach Cancer Awareness Month
Sweet Potato Awareness Month
Transgender Awareness Month
November Birthday Quotes
“November always seemed to me the Norway of the year.”
“They began now to gather in the small harvest they had, and to fit up their houses and dwellings against winter, being all well recovered in health and strength and had all things in good plenty. For as some were thus employed in affairs abroad, others were exercising in fishing, about cod and bass and other fish, of which they took good store, of which every family had their portion. All the summer there was no want; and now began to come in store of fowl, as winter approached, of which this place did abound when they came first (but afterward decreased by degrees).
And besides waterfowl, there was great store of wild turkeys, of which they took many, besides venison, etc. Besides they had about a peck of meal a week to a person, or now since harvest, Indian corn to that proportion. Which made many afterward write so largely of their plenty here to their friends in England, which were not feigned but true reports.
“When I look into your eyes I can see a love restrained
“November comes and November goes,
With night coming early and dawn coming late,
The fires burn and the kettles sing,
“No warmth, no cheerfulness, no healthful ease,
“November’s sky is chill and drear,
“Over the river and through the wood,
1512 – Michelangelo’s paintings on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel in the Vatican, Italy were first exhibited. He started the work in 1508.
1570 – The All Saints’ Flood devastated the Dutch coast.
1604 – William Shakespeare’s tragedy The Tragedy of Othello, the Moor of Venice was first presented.
1611 – Shakespeare’s romantic comedy The Tempest was first presented
1755 (Earthquake & Tsunami) Lisbon, Portugal – an estimated 10,000-100,000 people were killed
1775 (Earthquake) Kashan, Iran -estimated 40,000 killed
1834 – First published reference to poker (as a Mississippi riverboat game) Originally 20 cards were used, and the 52 card deck appeared before 1850.
1867 – Harper’s Bazaar issue #1 was published. It was America’s first fashion-oriented magazine.
1879 – Thomas Edison signed the patent application for his electric lamp (approved on January 27 1880 Patent #223,898).
1884 – Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) was adopted universally at a meeting of the International Meridian Conference in Washington, DC.
1896 – Zulu groom and bride (a bare-breasted woman) appeared in National Geographic Magazine. The magazine began publication in October of 1888.
1924 – First US NHL franchise, Boston Bruins was founded. The Montreal Canadiens and Toronto Maple Leafs were the first to form and the addition of the Chicago Blackhawks, Detroit Red Wings, and New York Rangers made the Original Six teams.
1945 – First issue of Ebony magazine published by John H Johnson. The first magazine he started was ‘The Negro Digest’ (later called Black World) in 1942.
1951 – Jet magazine was founded by John H Johnson. In 1996, President Bill Clinton bestowed the Presidential Medal of Freedom on Johnson.
1952 – Operation Ivy – The United States successfully detonated the first large hydrogen bomb, codenamed “Mike” [“M” for megaton], in the Eniwetok atoll, located in the Marshall Islands in the central Pacific Ocean.
1960 – While campaigning for President of the United States, John F. Kennedy announced his idea of the Peace Corps.
1967 – Cool Hand Luke starring Paul Newman, George Kennedy, and Strother Martin, was released. “What we’ve got here is a failure to communicate.”
1968 – The Motion Picture Association of America’s film rating system was officially introduced, originating with the ratings G, M, R, and X.
1977 – Chiron, the farthest known asteroid was discovered by Charles Kowal. Chiron is named after the wisest of the Centaurs of Greek mythology.
1979 – Federal (US) government made a $1.5 billion loan guarantee for Chrysler. The government basically ‘cosigned’ a loan to keep the company in business.
1981 – First Class US Mail raised from 18 cents to 20 cents. Prior to the use of stamps, postage was paid for by the receiver, not the sender.
1996- The original cartoon series of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles aired its final episode. Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird invented the TMNT in 1984 in comic book form.
2012 – Google’s Gmail became the world’s most popular email (Electronic mail) service. Microsoft’s Hotmail was the leader before that. Although Yahoo actually has the most registered users, it is/was not used as much as the others.
1936 – First high-definition TV broadcast service, by BBC in London. At the time “standard definition” was 30 horizontal lines making up the picture, and the ’36 BBC hi-def had 240 lines. Today, 720 is considered the minimum for HD.
1936 – The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) was established.
1957 – The Levelland UFO Case in Levelland, Texas, generated national publicity. Officially, they called it ‘blue lightning’.
1959 – Quiz show scandal – Twenty One game show contestant Charles Van Doren admits to a Congressional committee that he had been given questions and answers in advance.
1960 – Penguin Books is found not guilty of obscenity in the trial R v Penguin Books Ltd, the Lady Chatterley’s Lover case.
1965 – Norman Morrison, a 31-year-old Quaker, set himself (suicide) on fire in front of the river entrance to the Pentagon to protest the use of napalm in the Vietnam war.
1974 – Seventy-eight people died when the Time Go-Go Club in Seoul, South Korea burned down.
1983 – President Reagan signed the bill establishing the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. holiday, held on the third Monday in January.
1988 – The Morris Worm, the first internet-distributed computer worm to gain significant mainstream media attention, was launched from MIT. It was written by a student at Cornell University, Robert Tappan Morris. His intention was to gauge the ‘size’ of the internet.
2000 – The first crew arrived at the International Space Station. The assembly of the IISS began in November 1998.
2003 – Arrested Development debuted on FOX. Despite acclaim from critics, Arrested Development received low ratings and the series was canceled in 2006.
1863 – US patent for an antifouling paint for ships’ hulls was issued to J.G. Tarr and A.H. Wonson (# 40515) for copper oxide, tar, and Naptha mixture. It helped keep ships free from barnacles growing on the hull.
1868 – First black US Congressman was elected (Republican John Willis Menard, Louisiana)
1906 – International Radio Telecommunications Com adopted “SOS” – international Morse code distress signal (· · · – – – · · ·) – as the new call for help.
1913 – The USA introduced a permanent income tax, although the US federal government imposed the first, although temporary, personal income tax, on August 5, 1861, to help finance the Civil War.
1930 – Bank of Italy became the Bank of America National Trust and Savings Association, now known as the Bank of America.
1952 – Clarence Birdseye marketed frozen peas. He had started freezing fresh fish in the 1920s.
1955 – Carlton Schwerdt and F.L. Schaffer crystallized the poliovirus. Their research laid the groundwork for the polio vaccine.
1947 – Howard Hughes piloted his huge wooden airplane, the Spruce Goose on its only flight, which lasted about a minute, over Long Beach Harbor in California.
1954 – The first Godzilla film was released and marks the first appearance of the character.
1956 – The Wizard of Oz was shown on television for the first time, on CBS. Although a moderate success when released theatrically in 1939, it is now recognized as the most-watched film in television history.
1957 – Sputnik 2 was launched, with the first live animal sent into space, a Siberian husky dog named Laika (‘barker’ in Russian).
1975 – Good Morning America premiered on ABC (David Hartman & Nancy Dussault). The initial show was called AM America, which started on January 6, 1975.
1978 – First broadcast of Diff’rent Strokes on NBC. The series starred Gary Coleman and Todd Bridges as Arnold and Willis Jackson. Dana Plato performed as Kimberly Drummond.
1983 – The Nashville Network (TNN) started on cable TV. The channel evolved to Spike TV in 2003.
1988 – Talk-show host Geraldo Rivera’s nose was broken as Roy Innis brawled with skinheads at a TV taping. He did not press charges, claiming that he did not wish to be “tied up with the roaches” and also said that “if there ever was a case of deserved violence, this was it.”
2000 – William Shepherd, Sergei Krikalev, and Yuri Gidzenko entered the ISS (International Space Station)
2014 – One World Trade Center (also known as the Freedom Tower, 1 World Trade Center, One WTC, and 1 WTC) officially opened.
1841 – First wagon train arrived in California. They left Independence, Missouri on May 1, 1841.
1846 – The first U.S. patent (#4,834) for an artificial leg was granted to Benjamin F. Palmer of Meredith, New Hampshire.
1873 – A patent (#144,182) for a gold crown was issued to Dr. John B. Beers of San Francisco, California on “artificial crowns for teeth”.
1879 – James Jacob Ritty and his brother John invented the first cash register, to stop the stealing by his bartenders in the Pony House Restaurant saloon in Dayton, Ohio.
1904 – First stadium built specifically for football opened (Harvard Stadium). Officially, when referring to more than one stadium, they should be called ‘stadia.’ But ‘stadiums’ works too.
1914 – Vogue held the first model show (“Fashion Fete” in New York City), although individual American stores had shown models wearing the latest fashions since the early 1900s.
1922 – The entrance to King Tutankhamen’s tomb was discovered in Egypt, in the Valley of the Kings, by English archaeologist Howard Carter.
1939 – First air-conditioned automobile (Packard) was exhibited, Chicago, Ill. The A/C option was available for $274 until 1941. WW II stopped the production of many luxury items. It wasn’t until 1953 that air conditioning was commercially available in cars again.
1948 – TS Eliot won the Nobel Prize for literature “for his outstanding, pioneer contribution to present-day poetry.”
1952 – The United States government established the National Security Agency, or NSA.
1979 – 500 Iranian “students” seized the US embassy, took 90 hostages (444 days) in the “Iran hostage crisis”
1979 – Blockbuster film Jaws was shown on TV for the first time, on ABC. Originally released in 1975, it was the first modern-day “blockbuster.” When released, critic Roger Ebert called it “a sensationally effective action picture, a scary thriller that works all the better because it’s populated with characters that have been developed into human beings”.
1981 – The Fall Guy premiered on ABC. It starred Lee Majors, Douglas Barr, and Heather Thomas.
2008 – Barack Obama was elected President of the United States.
1605 – Gunpowder Plot – an attempt to blow up the English Parliament. The plot discovered and leader Guy Fawkes was tortured and later executed. He was caught with 36 barrels of gunpowder at the House of Lords.
1639 – First post office in the colonies was set up in Massachusetts, with permission from King William and Queen Mary. The United States Post Office (USPO) was created on July 26, 1775, by decree of the Second Continental Congress.
1781 – John Hanson was elected first “President of US in Congress assembled.” The other short-term presidents before George Washington was inaugurated on April 30, 1789, were Elias Boudinot, Thomas Mifflin, Richard Henry Lee, John Hancock, Nathaniel Gorham, Arthur St. Clair, and Cyrus Griffin.
1852 – American Society of Civil Engineers and Architects was founded.
1895 – Patent attorney George B. Selden of Rochester, New York, received the first US patent (#549,160) for a gasoline-driven automobile.
1917 – Supreme Court decision (Buchanan v Warley) struck down Lousiville, Kentucky, ordinance requiring blacks & whites to live in separate areas. The USSC held that a Louisville, Kentucky, city ordinance prohibiting the sale of real property to blacks violated the Fourteenth Amendment.
1935 – Parker Brothers launched the board game of Monopoly. Marvin Gardens is actually a misspelling of ‘Marven Gardens’, an actual locale in Atlantic City.
1956 – The Nat King Cole Show debuted on NBC. It was the first variety program to be hosted by an African-American. The last episode of The Nat King Cole Show aired on December 17, 1957.
1959 – American Football League (AFL) was announced, with 8 teams – The New York Titans, Boston Patriots, Buffalo Bills, Houston Oilers, Los Angeles Chargers, Denver Broncos, Oakland Raiders, and Dallas Texans.
1966 – Patrick Troughton appeared as The Doctor in The Power of the Daleks as the Second Doctor. He had a fleeting appearance in the prior week’s episode – which, as of today, no known copies exist, although there is a full-length animated reconstruction of its missing episode.
2007 – The Android mobile phone operating system was unveiled by Google.
2009 – US Army Major Nidal Malik Hasan (US Army Medical Corps) killed 13 and wounded 43 at Fort Hood, Texas in the largest mass shooting ever at a US military installation. Although it has been officially labeled as workplace violence, many people consider it an act of terrorism.
2013 – India launched the Mars Orbiter Mission, its first interplanetary probe.
1789 – Pope Pius VI appointed Father John Carroll as the first Catholic bishop in the United States. He is also known as the founder of Georgetown University.
1860 – Abraham Lincoln (R-Ill) elected 16th American President. His election prompted seven southern slave states to form the Confederacy before he took the office.
1861 – Jefferson Davis was elected to a 6-year term as Confederate president. After the war was over, Davis was captured and he was accused of treason but was not tried and was released after two years.
1862 – The direct telegraphic link between New York and San Francisco was established.
1869 – First intercollegiate football (soccer) game (Rutgers 6, Princeton 4). There were two games that season, and each team won one game. At that time, American Football was closer to the game of rugby.
1947 – Meet the Press was first televised as a local program in Washington DC. Meet the Press began on radio in 1945 as American Mercury Presents: Meet the Press.
1962 – The United Nations General Assembly passed a resolution condemning South Africa’s apartheid policies and called for all UN member states to cease military and economic relations with the nation.
1965 – Cuba and the United States formally agreed to begin an airlift for Cubans who want to go to the United States.
1975 – First appearance of the Sex Pistols in the UK
1990 – Arsenio Hall earned his star on Hollywood’s Walk of Fame. Joanne Woodward, Olive Borden, Ronald Colman, Louise Fazenda, Preston Foster, Burt Lancaster, Edward Sedgwick, and Ernest Torrence were the first to get stars, in 1956.
2001 – 24 premiered on FOX – Starring Kiefer Sutherland as Counter Terrorist Unit (CTU) agent Jack Bauer.
2012 – US territory Puerto Rico voted to become a US State.
2012 – Tammy Baldwin (D) became the first openly gay politician to be elected to the United States Senate.
1665 – The first edition of the London Gazette was printed. At the time it was called “The Oxford Gazette”.
1786 – The oldest musical organization in the United States was founded as the Stoughton Musical Society.
1874 – The first cartoon depicting the elephant as a Republican Party symbol, by Thomas Nast. He is also known as being the first to draw our modern version of Santa Clause.
1876 – The patent (#184,207) for the first US cigarette manufacturing machine was issued to Albert Hook of New York City.
1885 -The Canadian Pacific Railway, connecting the Atlantic and Pacific coasts, was completed.
1908 – Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid were reportedly killed in San Vicente, Bolivia.
1908 – Professor Ernest Rutherford announced in London that he had isolated a single atom of matter. The experiment took place in the days before.
1910 – The first air freight shipment (from Dayton, Ohio, to Columbus, Ohio) took place, by the Wright brothers and department store owner Max Moorehouse.
1913 – Great Lakes Storm of 1913 lasted until November 10th. It killed over 250 people and was concentrated around Lake Huron.
1914 – The first issue of The New Republic magazine was published.
1916 – Jeannette Rankin (R) became the first woman elected to the United States Congress.
1929 – The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) opened to the public.
1932 – First broadcast of Buck Rogers in the 25th century on CBS-radio. The Buck Rogers comic strip made its first newspaper appearance on January 7, 1929.
1944 – Franklin D. Roosevelt (D) was elected for a record fourth term as President of the United States of America.
1967 – President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967, establishing the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
1967 – Carl B. Stokes (D) was elected as Mayor of Cleveland, Ohio, becoming the first African American mayor of a major American city.
1975 – The New Original Wonder Woman TV movie aired as a ‘test’ pilot for the series, Wonder Woman on ABC, starred Lynda Carter. It had very little in common with the 1974 TV movie entitled Wonder Woman starring Cathy Lee Crosby,
1976 – Gone With the Wind was televised for the first time. Gone with the Wind was originally a novel written by Margaret Mitchell, first published in 1936. The film was released in 1939.
1989 – Douglas Wilder (D) won the governor’s seat in Virginia, becoming the first elected African-American governor in the United States.
1991 – Magic Johnson announces that he is infected with HIV and retired from the NBA.
2003 – Star Wars: Clone Wars debuted on The Cartoon Network. In addition to the feature films, this series is also generally considered ‘canon’ – which means it officially happened in the Star Wars universe.
2006 – At O’Hare International Airport, UFO Sighting Near Gate C-17 twelve employees reported seeing a metallic saucer-shaped craft hovering over the airport. The FAA stance concluded that the sighting was caused by a weather phenomenon and that the agency would not be investigating the incident, which many think is odd in the post-2001 security-enhanced world of airport security.
1519 – First meeting of Moctezuma II & Hernán Cortés in Tenochtitlan, Mexico. #bigmistake Little is known about him, except that was the leader of the Aztecs and was killed in the Spanish conquest of Mexico. “Montezuma’s Revenge’ is named after him.
1601 -The Bodleian Library was established in Oxford, England.
1731 – In Philadelphia, Benjamin Franklin (with members of his Junto Club) opened the first US library. Plans had begun in earnest in July, and Ben retired as the Librarian in 1734.
1789 – Bourbon Whiskey was first distilled from corn (by Elijah Craig, Bourbon Ky). That’s what his namesake’s website says. (http://heavenhill.com/)
1895 – Wilhelm Röntgen observed X-rays for the first time during an experiment at Würzburg University, Germany. It earned him the first Nobel Prize in Physics in 1901, and element 111, roentgenium, was named after him.
1904 – U.S. patent (#774,250) for a separable electric attachment plug was issued to inventor and manufacturer Harvey Hubbell of Bridgeport, Connecticut. It is essentially the plug we use today.
1910 – The first US patent (#974,785) for an “electric insect destroyer” (Bug Zapper) was issued to William H. Frost of Spokane, Washington.
1960 – John F. Kennedy defeated Richard Nixon to become the 35th president of the United States.
1965 – Days of our Lives premiered on NBC. The original title sequence voiced by MacDonald Carey is still used.
1966 – Ronald Reagan was elected Governor of California. His career path also included lifeguard, actor, cheerleader, and US President.
1972 – Home Box Office (HBO) was launched, in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. The first broadcast was a 1971 film, Sometimes a Great Notion, starring Paul Newman and Henry Fonda.
1979 – Nightline premiered on ABC. Frank Reynolds was the original presenter, Ted Koppel took over shortly after the program began.
1980 – Voyager 1 space probe discovered the 15th moon of Saturn. We’ve counted 62 moons and dozens of moonlets around the planet to date.
1995 – General Hospital character Stone Cates died of AIDS on the show, right after he was informed that he had infected his lover Robin Scorpio with HIV.
2001 – The Tick premiered on FOX. Creator Ben Edlund published his first Tick comic book in 1988.
2010 – Conan debuted on TBS
1842 – The first U.S. design patent (Design Patent # D1) was issued for typefaces and borders patented by George Bruce of New York City.
1857 – The Atlantic was founded in Boston, Massachusetts.
1872 – The Great Boston Fire of 1872. 13 people died.
1887 – The United States received rights to Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.
1888 – Jack Ripper’s 5th, and probably last victim, Mary Jane Kelly, was found on her bed. His first four victims were Mary Ann Nichols, Annie Chapman, Elizabeth Stride, and Catherine Eddowes.
1906 – Theodore Roosevelt became the first sitting President of the United States to make an official trip outside the country. He did so to inspect progress on the Panama Canal.
1925 – Robert A. Millikan confirmed the existence of cosmic rays from outer space in a speech to the National Academy of Sciences at Madison, Wisconsin. He also helped find the charge in an electron, which is a key part of the constants in physics.
1938 – Al Capp, cartoonist of Lil’l Abner created Sadie Hawkins Day. It was now “celebrated” on the first Saturday after November 9th.
1953 – Supreme Court ruled Major League baseball exempt from anti-trust laws. Basically, it was a mechanism to make sure a player could not just quit one team to work for another team.
1957 – Gordon Gould began writing his description of a laser (light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation).
1961 – The X-15 rocket plane achieved a world record speed of 4,093 mph (Mach 6.04) and reached 101,600 feet (over 19 miles) altitude, piloted by US Air Force Major Robert M. White.
1965 – Several U.S. states and parts of Canada were 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 was published.
1985 – Garry Kasparov, 22, of the Soviet Union became the youngest World Chess Champion by beating Anatoly Karpov, also of the Soviet Union.
1989 – The Berlin Wall fell. It was constructed by the German Democratic Republic (GDR, East Germany) starting on August 13, 1961.
1994 – The chemical element Darmstadtium (#110) was discovered/created in Germany. It was named in honor of the city of Darmstadt, where it was discovered.
1997 – In the Montreal Screwjob, wrestler Bret Hart lost his final match in the WWF via submission to Shawn Michaels.
2011 – At 2:00 PM EST, all US TV and radio stations in the Emergency Alert System were tested simultaneously, the first nationwide test of the system since the 1997 inception of the EAS.
1775 – The United States Marine Corps was founded at Tun Tavern in Philadelphia by Samuel Nicholas.
1871 – Henry Morton Stanley in Ujiji, Central Africa, encountered David Livingstone with the immortal words: ‘Dr. Livingstone, I presume?’
1885 – The world’s first motorcycle, designed by Gottlieb Daimler, made its first announced test-run.
1908 – The first Gideon Bible put in hotel rooms at the Superior Hotel in Superior, Montana.
1919 – The American Legion’s first national convention (Minneapolis). The American Legion is an organization of U.S. war veterans that formed in Paris on March 15-17, 1919.
1951 – The first direct-dial, coast-to-coast telephone service in North America began as Mayor M. Leslie Denning of Englewood, NJ called Mayor Frank Osborn in Alameda, CA.
1974 – The discovery of the “charmed quark” subatomic particle was announced simultaneously by an MIT group at Brookhaven National Laboratory and a SLAC-Berkeley group on the west coast at Stanford Linear accelerator center.
1975 – The 729-foot-long freighter SS Edmund Fitzgerald sank during a storm on Lake Superior, killing all 29 crew on board.
1977 – The Incredible Hulk (made for TV movie) was shown on CBS. Bill Bixby starred as David Banner, but the comics (and current films) refer to the character as Bruce Banner.
1983 – Bill Gates introduced Windows 1.0.
1984 – The first Breeders’ Cup took place at Hollywood Park Racetrack.
1989 – German citizens began to bring the Berlin Wall down.
1997 – WorldCom and MCI Communications announce a $37 billion merger (the largest merger in US history at the time). It is now part of Verizon.
1999 – Sesame Street celebrated its 30th anniversary. The series created by Joan Ganz Cooney and Lloyd Morrisett.
2001 – Fox Family Channel became ABC Family on Cable television.
2008 – NASA declared the Phoenix Mission concluded after communications with the lander were lost.
2010 – Disney composer Alan Menken received the 2,442nd star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame
1750 – The F.H.C. Society, also known as the Flat Hat Club, was formed at Raleigh Tavern, Williamsburg, Virginia. It is the first American college fraternity.
1790 – Chrysanthemums were introduced to England from China by M. Cels (France).
1839 – The Virginia Military Institute was founded in Lexington, Virginia.
1851 – The first U.S. patent (Patent #8,509) for a telescope design was issued to Alvan Clark of Cambridge, Mass.
1864 – Sherman’s March to the Sea – General William Tecumseh Sherman began burning Atlanta, Georgia to the ground in preparation for his march south.
1918 – Armistice signed by the Allies and Germany comes into ending WW I.
1921 – President Harding dedicated the Tomb of Unknown Soldier at Arlington Cemetery. It is also known as The Tomb of the Unknowns.
1926 – U.S. Route 66 was established. It has also been called The Will Rogers Highway.
1930 – Albert Einstein and Leó Szilárd got the patent (#1,781,541) for their invention, the Einstein refrigerator.
1935 -A record 72,395 feet was reached by Lt. Col. Albert William Stevens and Captain Orvil Anderson, by helium balloon in a sealed gondola, Explorer II.
1938 – Mary Mallon (Typhoid Mary) died. Fifty-one original cases of typhoid and three deaths were directly attributed to her, although she was immune to the typhoid bacillus (Salmonella typhi).
1939 – Kate Smith first sang Irving Berlin’s God Bless America on her radio show. Irving Berlin had originally written it in 1918.
1966 – Methodist Church & Evangelical United Brethren Church joined together as the United Methodist Church (USA)
1972 – Dow Jones Index moved above 1,000 for the first time. It closed under 1,000 though.
1994 – Bill Gates bought Leonardo da Vinci’s Codex Leicester for $30,800,000. It was an insightful overview of Leonardo’s thoughts on a variety of topics. It was also the most expensive book or manuscript of all time.
1980 – Too Close for Comfort premiered on ABC. It was modeled after the British series Keep It in the Family’.
1982 – Star 80 was released in US theaters.
1987 – Van Gogh’s Irises sold for a record 53.9 million dollars at auction via Sotheby’s, New York.
2004 – The Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) confirmed the death of Yasser Arafat and Mahmoud Abbas is elected chairman of the PLO minutes later.
1847 – Sir James Young Simpson, the father of modern anesthetics, used chloroform (“perchloride of formyl”) for the first time as an anesthetic in an operation.
1892 – William “Pudge” Walter Heffelfinger was the first professional (paid) US Football player. He got $25 and a $500 bonus for a single game.
1922 (Volcano Eruption & Tsunami) Chile/Argentina – over 1,000 people were killed.
1927 – The Holland Tunnel connecting NY and NY – the world’s first underwater vehicular tunnel – officially opened.
1929 – Commander Richard E. Byrd made the first flight over the South Pole.
1933 – First known photo of the so-called Loch Ness Monster was taken by Hugh Gray.
1936 – The San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge opened to traffic.
1940 – The Armistice Day Blizzard killed nearly 150 people and stretched from Kansas to Michigan.
1946 – The Exchange National Bank of Chicago, Illinois, instituted the first drive-in banking service in America.
1952 (Earthquake & Tsunami) Kamchatka.
1954 – Ellis Island in New York closed after providing entrance to the US for 12 million immigrants between 1892 and 1924.
1956 – The largest iceberg on record was sighted by the USS Glacier, a U. S. Navy icebreaker, about 150 miles west of Scott Island in the Southern Hemisphere. It had broken from the Ross Ice Shelf in the Antarctic. It was about 208 miles long and 60 miles wide
1966 – The first photograph was taken from Earth’s atmosphere by the satellite Gemini XII.
1970 – The Oregon Highway Division attempts to destroy a beached eight-ton sperm whale near Florence, Oregon with half a ton of dynamite. It mainly made a bigger mess.
1981 – Mission STS-2, utilizing the Space Shuttle Columbia, marked the first time a manned spacecraft is launched into space twice.
1981 – First balloon crossing of the Pacific was completed. The Double Eagle V launched from Nagashima, Japan on November 10, 1981.
1993 – The first Ultimate Fighting Championship event, UFC 1, was held in Denver, Colorado.
1997 – Ramzi Yousef is found guilty of masterminding the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.
2001 – In New York City, American Airlines Flight 587, an Airbus A300 on its way to the Dominican Republic, crashed minutes after takeoff from John F. Kennedy International Airport, killing all 260 onboard and five on the ground.
2004 – A jury in Redwood City, California, convicted Scott Peterson of murdering his pregnant wife, Laci, and dumping her body in San Francisco Bay.
1841 – James Braid first saw a demonstration of animal magnetism, which leads to his study of the subject he eventually called hypnotism.
1855 – A proposal for a tunnel under the English Channel was announced by French engineer M. Loèpold Favre, to connect Boulogne to Dover.
1927 – The Holland Tunnel opened to traffic as the first Hudson River vehicle tunnel linking New Jersey to New York City.
1940 – Walt Disney released Fantasia, an film experience mixing animation and classical music, at New York’s Broadway Theatre.
1942 – US President Franklin D. Roosevelt lowered the minimum draft age from 21 to 18.
1947 – The Soviet Union completed the development of the AK-47.
1956 – The US Supreme Court of the United States declared Alabama laws requiring segregated buses illegal, thus ending the Montgomery Bus Boycott.
1970 (Cyclone) East Pakistan (Bangladesh) killed approximately 500,000 people.
1971 – Mariner 9 was the first spacecraft to orbit another planet, reaching Mars.
1980 – US spacecraft Voyager 1 sent back first close-up pictures of Saturn.
1982 – The Vietnam Veterans Memorial, a monument consisting of two black granite walls engraved with the names of 58,272 US soldiers that did not return from Vietnam, was dedicated in Washington D.C.
1982 – Ray Mancini defeats Duk Koo Kim in a boxing match held in Las Vegas. Kim later died on November 17.
1985 (Volcano Eruption) Nevado del Ruiz, Columbia – over 23,000 people were killed.
1994 – Sweden agreed to join the European Union
1997 – The Lion King, based on the 1994 Disney animated film, opened at the New Amsterdam Theater on Broadway.
1889 – New York World reporter Nellie Bly (Elizabeth Cochrane) began her attempt to duplicate the literary journey of Jules Verne’s Phileas Fogg by traveling around the world in less than 80 days. She succeeded, finishing the trip in January in 72 days and 6 hours.
1922 – The BBC (The British Broadcasting Company ) officially began its daily domestic radio service broadcasting with the 6:00 pm news, read by announcer Arthur Burrows.
1956 – Love Me Tender, starring Elvis Presley was released in US theaters.
1960 – OPEC (Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries), was formed by Iraq, Kuwait, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Venezuela.
1967 – The patent for “Ruby Laser Systems” was issued to Theodore Maiman (Patent #3,353,115). His first ruby laser was tested in 1960.
1968 – National Turn in Your Draft Card Day featured the burning of draft cards on US college campuses.
1972 – The Dow Jones closed at over 1000 for the first time, at 1,003.16.
1979 – US President Jimmy Carter issued Executive order 12170, which froze all Iranian assets in the United States, in response to the hostage crisis.
1986 – FCC issued a Notice Of Apparent Liability to WYSP in Philadelphia for broadcasting The Howard Stern Show, with material that the FCC believed contained “indecent” material.
1991 – Michael Jackson’s Black Or White video was aired on FOX (and MTV, BET, VH1) right after an episode of The Simpsons.
1994 – First trains for the general public ran in Channel Tunnel (Chunnel) under the English Channel.
2008 – The first G-20 economic summit convened in Washington, D.C.
1660 – First kosher butcher (Asser Levy) was licensed in New York City (New Amsterdam).
1791 – The first Catholic college in the US, Georgetown University, opened
1806 – First US college magazine, Yale Literary Government, published its first issue
1894 – First newspaper Sunday color comics section was published (NY World)
1896 – The first long-distance transmission of hydroelectricity from the Niagara Falls Power Company flowed to Buffalo, N.Y., 26 miles away.
1904 – King Camp Gillette was issued a US patent (#775,134) for his invention of a safety razor using disposable blades.
1914 – Canton Bulldog Harry Turner became the first player to die from game-related injuries (spinal) in the “Ohio League”, the direct predecessor to the National Football League.
1920 – The first assembly of the League of Nations was held in Geneva, Switzerland.
1926 – The National Broadcasting Company (NBC) launched with a radio network of 24 stations across the USA.
1956 – Li’l Abner opened at St James Theater New York City.
1959 – The murders of the Clutter Family in Holcomb, Kansas occurred, which inspired Truman Capote’s non-fiction book In Cold Blood.
1969 – Wendy’s Hamburgers opened in Columbus, Ohio.
1971 – Intel advertised the 4004-processor, the first microprocessor.
1979 – The Unabomber struck for the first time when a bomb exploded in the cargo cabin of an American Airlines 727 on its way from Chicago to Washington.
1984 – Baby Fae died, an infant born a month earlier, but lived for 20 days with a transplanted baboon heart.
1990 – The world discovered that Milli Vanilli, the hot, new Grammy-winning pop duo, was lip-synching in their songs, and resulted in losing the Grammy award for Best New Artist.
1993- Britney Spears, Justin Timberlake, and Christina Aguilera joined the cast of The New Mickey Mouse Club.
1676 – First colonial prison was organized in Nantucket, Massachusetts. William Bunker was the first warden.
1801 – The first edition of the New York Evening Post was published. It is the US’ oldest continuously published daily newspaper.
1822 – Missouri trader William Becknell arrived in Santa Fe, New Mexico, over a route that became known as the Santa Fe Trail.
1841 – The first patent (#2,359) for a US life preserver of cork was issued to Napoleon E. Guerin of New York City for his “Improvement in Buoyant Dresses or Life-Preservers.”
1855 – David Livingstone became the first European to see the Victoria Falls in what is now present-day Zambia-Zimbabwe.
1910 – The first American driver to exceed the speed of ‘a mile a minute’ (60 mph) was of A.C. Bostwick on the Ocean Parkway Racetrack in Brooklyn, New York.
1907 – Oklahoma became the United States’ 46th state.
1914 – The Federal Reserve Bank of the United States officially opened.
1938 – LSD (lysergic acid diethylamide) was first synthesized by Swiss chemist Dr. Albert Hofmann at the Sandoz Laboratories in Basel, Switzerland.
1940 – New York City’s “Mad Bomber” George Metesky set his first bomb at a Manhattan office building used by Consolidated Edison. He planted at least 33 over his career. He had gotten injured while working for Con Ed.
1945 – Two new elements were announced in Chicago: americium (atomic number 95) and curium (atomic number 96).
1945 – United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) was founded.
1959 – Sound of Music opened at Lunt Fontanne Theater New York City, starring Mary Martin and Theodore Bikel.
1965 – Venera 3 launched, and was the first to land on another planet (it crashed into Venus).
1965 – Walt Disney launched Epcot Center: Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow.
1973 – President Richard Nixon signs the Trans-Alaska Pipeline Authorization Act into law, authorizing the construction of the Alaska Pipeline.
1981 – Luke and Laura’s wedding for ABC soap opera General Hospital was one of the most-watched weddings in American television history.
1992 – The Hoxne Hoard, the largest hoard of late Roman silver and gold discovered in Britain, was discovered by metal detectorist Eric Lawes in Hoxne, Suffolk.
2006 – Great Firewall of China began, giving the Chinese government much control over what could be seen online by its citizens.
2012 – Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 grossed $500 million in 24 hours to become the biggest entertainment launch of all time (so far).
1827 – The Delta Phi & Sigma Phi fraternities were founded at Union College in Schenectady, New York. Along with the Kappa Alpha Society and Sigma Phi Society, the trio was informally called the ‘Union Triad’.
1855 – David Livingstone became the first European to see Victoria Falls in what was now present-day Zambia-Zimbabwe.
1869 – Suez Canal (Egypt) opened, linking the Mediterranean & Red seas. It is 102 miles long.
1871 – National Rifle Association was organized (in New York City) by Army and Navy Journal editor William Conant Church and General George Wood Wingate.
1894 – Daily Racing Form was founded in Chicago, Illinois by Frank Brunell.
1894 – H. H. Holmes (Dr. Henry Howard Holmes), one of the first modern serial killers, is arrested in Boston, Massachusetts. He killed between 23 and 200 people.
1911 – Omega Psi Phi Fraternity Incorporated, it was/is the first black Greek-lettered organization founded at an American historically black college or university, on the campus of Howard University in Washington, DC.
1947 – The Screen Actors Guild implemented an anti-Communist loyalty oath.
1952 – Archeologists reported finding a 2,000-year-old mosaic floor at Circum, Cyprus, that depicted a scene from Homer’s Iliad.
1968 – Heidi Game Scandal – NBC cut the AFL championship to show the children’s film Heidi and millions missed the Raiders beat the Jets, 43-32. The movie started at 7:00 PM. The game ended at 7:07.
1969 – SALT (Strategic Arms Limitation Talks) discussions opened in Helsinki, Finland.
1970 – A patent (#3541541) was issued to Doug Engelbart for the computer mouse – an “X-Y Position Indicator for a Display System”.
1973 – In Orlando, Florida, President Richard Nixon told 400 Associated Press managing editors “I am not a crook.”
1978 – The Star Wars Holiday Special aired on CBS
1992 – Dateline NBC aired a demonstration show General Motors trucks blowing upon impact, later it was revealed that NBC rigged the test.
2001 – The Justice League premiered on The Cartoon Network. The initial team included Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman, Green Lantern (John Stewart), The Flash (Wally West), Martian Manhunter (J’onn J’ones), and Hawkgirl.
2004 – Kmart Corp. announced it was buying Sears, Roebuck, and Company for $11 billion USD and naming the newly merged company Sears Holdings Corporation.
1307 – William Tell shot an apple off his son’s head with an arrow.
1421 – St. Elizabeth’s Flood – A seawall at the Zuiderzee dike in the Netherlands breaks, flooding 72 villages and killing about 10,000 people.
1477 – First English dated printed book Dictes & Sayengis of the Phylosophers was published by William Caxton.
1626 – St. Peter’s Basilica was consecrated. Replaced the earlier Basilica, which was consecrated on this same date in 326 AD.
1727 (Earthquake) Tabriz, Iran – an estimated 77,000 people were killed.
1805 – Thirty women met at Mrs. Silas Lee’s home in Wiscasset, Maine, and organized the Female Charitable Society of Wiscasset, the first woman’s club in America. They actually published a 32-page book upon their centennial.
1865 – Mark Twain’s short story The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County was published in the New York Saturday Press.
1872 – The first US patent (#133,188) for an adding machine capable of printing totals and subtotals, called a “calculating machine,” was issued to E.D. Barbour of Boston, Massachusetts.
1872 – American suffragette Susan B Anthony was arrested after voting on the 5th of November in Rochester New York. She was found guilty and never paid the $100 fine.
1874 – National Woman’s Christian Temperance Union organized in Cleveland.
1878 – Soprano Marie Selika Williams became the first Black artist to perform at the White House, Washington DC.
1883 – ‘Standard Time’ in the United States went into effect at noon for the first time.
1902 – Brooklyn toymaker Morris Michtom named the teddy bear he invented after US President Teddy Roosevelt. He founded the Ideal Novelty and Toy Company in 1907.
1913 – The first airplane in the U.S. to perform a loop-de-loop was piloted by Lincoln Beachey over North Island, San Diego, California
1928 – Walt Disney’s Mickey Mouse first appeared in NY in Steamboat Willie. It seems that every time this is brought up, someone points out that Walt Disney did the original voice, and he did! Happy Birthday, Mickey Mouse!
1932 – Flowers & Trees received the first Academy Award for a cartoon.
1949 – National League batting leader (.342) Jackie Robinson won the NL MVP.
1962 – ‘Ma’ Bell Telephone introduced the push-button telephone.
1963 – The Touch-Tone telephone with 10 push buttons, manufactured by the Western Electric Manufacturing of the Bell System, was released commercially.
1970 – Linus Pauling declared that large doses of Vitamin C could ward off the common cold.
1978 – In Jonestown, Guyana, 918 members of Peoples Temple were murdered and/or committed suicide under the leadership of cult leader Jim Jones. The bodies of over 400 of those who died are buried in a mass grave at Evergreen Cemetery in Oakland, California.
1982 – Yentl, Amityville 3-d and A Christmas Story were released in US theaters.
1985 – Sesame Street’s Elmo was introduced. He was usually puppeteered by Kevin Clash. Since Clash’s controversial resignation in late 2012, he has been puppeteered by Ryan Dillon.
1992- The Seinfeld episode titled The Contest was broadcast. It was a controversial episode that later won an Emmy and was named the number one episode of all time by TV Guide magazine.
1993 – WWF boss Vince McMahon was charged with steroid distribution.
1993 – The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) was approved by the House of Representatives.
1999 – 12 people were killed and 27 injured at Texas A&M University when a massive bonfire under construction collapsed.
1805 – Lewis & Clark reached the Pacific Ocean, they were the first European Americans to cross the American continent.
1850 – A patent (#7,784) for magic lantern slides made of glass plate was issued to Frederick Langenheim of Philadelphia, PA as an “improvement in photographic pictures on glass.”
1863 – US President Lincoln delivered his Gettysburg Address beginning “Four score & seven years ago…”
1911 – NY received the first Marconi wireless transmission from Italy.
1916 – Samuel Goldfish and Edgar Selwyn established Goldwyn Pictures.
1953 – US Supreme Court ruled (7-2) baseball was a sport, not a business
1954 – The first automatic toll collection machine was used at the Union Toll Plaza on New Jersey’s Garden State Parkway. It only accepted quarters (one was needed).
1955 – National Review published its first issue
1959 – Rocky & Friends premiered on NBC (moved to ABC and changed to The Rocky & Bullwinkle Show in 1964).
1978 – The Miracle at the Meadowlands – Philadelphia Eagles’ Herman Edwards returned a fumble for a touchdown with 31 seconds left to give Philadelphia a 19-17 victory over the New York Giants.
1980 – CBS banned a Calvin Klein’s jean ad featuring Brooke Shields.
1998 – The United States House of Representatives Judiciary Committee began impeachment hearings against U.S. President Bill Clinton.
2006 – Nintendo released the Wii in the US.
1866 – The US patent (#59,918) on a rotary crank bicycle was issued to Pierre Lallemont of Paris, France.
1888 – Willard LeGrand Bundy was issued the first U.S. patent (#393,205) for a time recording clock. His company went on to help start TCR in 1911, which evolved into IBM.
1906 – Charles Stewart Rolls and Frederick Henry Royce formed Rolls-Royce.
1929 – First broadcast of The Goldbergs on NBC radio. The original title was ‘The Rise of the Goldbergs’, until 1936 when it moved to CBS. It was also on television, in various forms from 1949 to 1956. ABC began it’s own The Goldbergs on September 24, 2013.
1945 – The Nuremberg Trials with an International Military Tribunal made up of four judges one from each country United States, Soviet Union, Britain, and France begin when charges against Germany’s Nazi leaders.
1959 – WABC fired Alan Freed over the payola scandal. The early rock and roll DJ died in 1965, and in 2002 his ashes were moved to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, Ohio.
1962 – USSR agreed to remove bombers from Cuba, & the US lifted the blockade.
1969 – Cleveland, Ohio’s The Plain Dealer published explicit photographs of dead villagers from the My Lai Massacre in Vietnam.
1973 – A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving aired on CBS for the first time.
1982 – Drew Barrymore, at age 7, hosted Saturday Night Live. She was starring in the hit film E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial at that time.
1983 – The made-for-television movie The Day After, depicting the start of a nuclear war. was shown on ABC. Over 100 million people saw the broadcast.
1985 – A successful heart transplant to a 4-day-old infant, Eddie Anguiano, known then as Baby Moses, was performed by Dr. Leonard Lee Bailey of the Loma Linda University Medical Center. Eddie is still living and living in Las Vegas as far as we know.
1985 – Microsoft Windows 1.0 was released to the public.
1995- Daytime soap opera One Life To Live aired its 7,000th episode on ABC.
1999- John Carpenter became the first world-wide winner of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire. The $1 million question was, “Which of these U.S. Presidents appeared on the television series ‘Laugh-In’?”, with the choices being A) Lyndon Johnson, B) Richard Nixon, C) Jimmy Carter, and D) Gerald Ford. He knew the answer and used his lifeline to call his father to tell him that he was winning a million dollars.
2003 – Michael Jackson was booked on suspicion of multiple counts of child molestation, later acquitted on all charges. He was on a $3 million bond.
2013 – Two campus police officers who pepper-sprayed peaceful student protesters at a close range at the University of California were suspended. The memes made the incident immortal.
1783 – Jean Francois Pilatre de Rozier and the Marquis Francois Laurant d’Arlandes became the first men to make a free flight. Their hot-air balloon lifted off from La Muettte, a royal palace in the Bois de Boulogne, Paris. Ben Franklin was among the witnesses.
1846 – The word ‘anesthesia’ was used by Oliver Wendell Holmes in a letter to William Thomas Green Morton, the surgeon who gave the first public demonstration of the pain-killing effects of ether.
1871 – The patent (#121,049) for a cigar lighter was issued to Moses F. Gale of New York City as an “Improvement in Cigar-Lighters.”
1877 – Thomas Edison announced his “talking machine” invention. His phonograph originally recorded sound onto a tinfoil sheet phonograph cylinder.
1905 – Albert Einstein’s paper, Does the Inertia of a Body Depend Upon Its Energy Content?, is published in the journal Annalen der Physik.
1920 – In Dublin, Ireland, 31 people are killed in what became known as Bloody Sunday. This included fourteen British informants, fourteen Irish civilians and three Irish Republican Army prisoners. U2’s Sunday Bloody Sunday references the event
1942 – Tweety Bird, aka Tweety Pie, debuted in Tale of Two Kitties. Bob Clampett created the character. Tweety is a boy.
1952 – First US postage stamp (The Red Cross 3 cent) in 2 colors (with the rotary printing process) was introduced.
1953 – Authorities at the British Natural History Museum announced the “Piltdown Man” skull, one of the most famous fossil skulls in the world, was a hoax.
1959 – Jack Benny (violin) & Richard Nixon (piano) play their famed duet.
1959 – DJ Alan Freed, who had popularized the term rock and roll and music of that style, was fired from New York’s WABC-AM radio for refusing to deny allegations that he had participated in the payola scandal.
1964 – World’s longest suspension bridge Verrazano Narrows opened (New York City – 4,260 feet). It is still the longest in the western hemisphere.
1969 – The first permanent ARPANET (multi-computer connection) link was established between UCLA and SRI.
1980 – Everyone asked “Who Shot J.R.?” in last year’s Dallas season finale. This week’s episode of Dallas answered the question people were asking all summer, and well into the fall. Sue Ellen’s sister Kristin (played by Mary Crosby).
1980 – A deadly fire broke out at the MGM Grand Hotel in Paradise, Nevada (now Bally’s Las Vegas). Eighty-seven people were killed and more than 650 were injured.
1989 – The law banning smoking on most US domestic flights was signed by President George H. W. Bush.
1995 – Dow Jones closed above 5,000 for the first time.
1858 – Denver, Colorado was founded.
1910 – The patent (#976,267) for a steel-shafted golf club was issued to Arthur F. Knight of Schenectady, NY.
1927 – The patent (#1,650,334) for a snowmobile (motor toboggan) was issued to Carl J.E. Eliason of Saynor, Wisconsin.
1928 – Bolero by Maurice Ravel, was first performed publicly (Paris). The original title for the music was ‘Fandango.’
1932 – The patent (#1,888,533) for a computer pump was issued to the inventors, Robert J. Jauch, Ivan R. Farnham, and Ross H. Arnold for their “Liquid Dispensing Apparatus”. Technology has led us to the modern gas pump.
1935 – First commercial crossing of Pacific Ocean by plane (China Clipper). On November 29, the airplane reached its destination, Manila, after traveling via Honolulu, Midway Island, Wake Island, and Guam, and delivered over 110,000 pieces of mail.
1941 – The US Food and Drug Administration specified the first minimum daily requirements for dietary supplements for vitamin A, vitamin C, vitamin D, thiamine, riboflavin, calcium, iron, iodine, and phosphorus.
1954 – Humane Society of the United States formed.
1963 – President John F. Kennedy was assassinated by Lee Harvey Oswald in Dallas, Texas.
1965 – Muhammad Ali TKO’ed Floyd Patterson in 12 rounds for the heavyweight boxing title.
1968 – William Shatner and Nichelle Nichols shared the first interracial kiss on US television on CBS’ Star Trek (in an episode titled Plato’s Stepchildren).
1974 – The United Nations General Assembly granted the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) observer status.
1977 – British Airways inaugurated a regular London to New York City supersonic Concorde service.
1986 – Mike Tyson became the youngest Heavyweight Champion in history today with a second-round knockout win over Trevor Berbick.
1987 – WGN-TV Channel 9 and PBS affiliate WTTW-TV Channel 11 broadcast signals were hijacked by an unknown person wearing a Max Headroom mask. The hijacker was never caught.
1995 – Pixar’s Toy Story was released. It was the first feature-length film created completely using computer-generated animation.
2005 – Angela Merkel became the first female Chancellor of Germany.
2012 – 2 people were killed and 120 injured after a 100-vehicle pile-up in dense fog near Beaumont, Texas, on interstate 10.
1874 – A paper by Ferdinand Braun was published in the Annalen der Physik und Chemie describing his discovery of the electrical rectifier effect, the first semiconductor.
1889 – Debut of the first jukebox, the ‘nickel-in-the-slot phonograph’, at the Palais Royale Saloon, San Francisco. It could only be loaded with one cylinder (song) at a time.
1897 – The patent (#594,114) for a hand-cranked pencil sharpener was granted to John Lee Love of Fall River, Massachusetts.
1924 – Edwin Hubble’s discovery that the Andromeda Nebula was actually another island universe (galaxy) far outside of our own was first published in The New York Times.
1936 – Originally started in 1883, Life magazine was shifted into a picture magazine by Time magazine’s Henry R Luce. Prior to that is was humor and general interest magazine.
1963 – The first episode of the BBC’s Doctor Who premiered. ‘Doctor Who’ is not his name – we don’t know it. He is simply ‘The Doctor.’
1969 – The Rolling Stones made their final appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show, singing featured the songs “Gimme Shelter,” “Love In Vain” and “Honky Tonk Woman.”
1975 – NBC joined Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory (in progress) at the conclusion of an overtime NFL game. Kids missed about 45 minutes of the film.
1980 (Earthquake) Conza, Italy – estimated 3,000 people were killed.
1982 – Terms of Endearment was released in US theaters.
1991 – Freddie Mercury (September 1946 – 24 November 1991) confirmed that he has AIDS the day before he died.
1992 – The first ‘smartphone’, the IBM Simon, was introduced at COMDEX in Las Vegas, Nevada.
1993 – The Food Network made its debut.
2002 – The Miss World contest was forced to relocate to London from Abuja after riots by Islamic extremists opposed to the contest left more than 100 people dead and hundreds injured in Nigeria.
2015 – Blue Origin’s New Shepard space vehicle became the first rocket to successfully fly to space and then return to Earth for a controlled, vertical landing.
1859 – Charles Darwin published On the Origin of Species. A first printing sells for around $100,000 today.
1874 – The patent (#157,124) for barbed wire was issued to Joseph F. Glidden of DeKalb, Illinois.
1877 – Anna Sewell’s Black Beauty is published.
1896 – The first US absentee voting law (voting via mail) was enacted by Vermont.
1903 – The patent (#745,157) for an automobile electric self-starter was issued to Clyde J. Coleman of New York City. Prior to that, they were hand-cranked.
1950 – Storm of the Century – Asnowstorm, takes shape on this date before paralyzing the northeastern United States and the Appalachians the next day, bringing winds up to 100 mph and sub-zero temperatures. 353 people died as a result of the storm.
1954 – Air Force One, the first US Presidential airplane, was christened. It was the third of three C-121 Constellation airplanes, the “Columbine III.” A
1953 incident where Eisenhower’s aircraft was “Air Force 8610” and an Eastern Airlines plane was “Eastern 8610” created the need to devise a unique call sign.
1962 – The influential British satirical television program That Was the Week That Was was first broadcast.
1963 – Jack Ruby shot and killed President Kennedy’s suspected assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald. It was the first live murder shown on American television.
1964 – For the first time since 1800, residents of Washington, DC were permitted to vote.
1971 – Dan “DB” Cooper parachuted from a Northwest AL 727 with $200,000 in ransom money, somewhere over the Cascade Mountains, possibly over Woodland, Washington, in the Pacific Northwest area. He was never heard from again.
1982 – Orioles’ Cal Ripken was named AL Rookie of Year. In his career, he compiled 3,184 hits, 431 home runs, and 1,695 runs batted in. From May 30, 1982, to September 19, 1998, he played 2632 consecutive games, another MLB record.
1988 – Mystery Science Theater 3000 premiered on KYMA, in Minneapolis, Minnesota
2012 – Gangnam Style became the most viewed youtube video surpassing 808 million views. As of late 2016, it was over 2.6 billion views.
2013 – Iran signed an interim agreement with the P5+1 countries, led by Barak Obama and the United States, limiting its nuclear program in exchange for reduced sanctions.
1884 – The patent (#308,422) for the process of evaporated milk was issued to John Meyenberg, of St Louis, Missouri.
1920 – The Philadelphia Thanksgiving Day Parade is the oldest in the US, starting on this date.
1937 – World’s Fair of Paris (Exposition Internationale des Arts et Techniques dans la Vie Moderne – International Exposition dedicated to Art and Technology in Modern Life) closed, with 31.2 million visitors.
1940 – Woody Woodpecker debuted with the release of Walter Lantz’s “Knock Knock.” He was actually the antagonist to Andy Panda (already established character) in the cartoon.
1947 – The Hollywood Ten consisting of Alvah Bessie, Herbert Biberman, Lester Cole, Edward Dmytryk, Ring Lardner Jr., John Howard Lawson, Albert Maltz, Samuel Ornitz, Adrian Scott, and Dalton Trumbo were cited for contempt of Congress for refusing to give testimony to the House Committee on Un-American Activities.
1952 – Agatha Christie’s murder-mystery play The Mousetrap opened at the Ambassadors Theatre in London, eventually becoming the longest continuously-running play in history.
1959 – Once Upon a Mattress opened at Alvin Theater New York City. The play was written as an adaptation of the Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale The Princess and the Pea.
1963 – John F. Kennedy was laid to rest at Arlington National Cemetery. The flags in Arlington National Cemetery are flown at half-staff from a half-hour before the first funeral until a half-hour after the last funeral each day.
1973 – Maximum speed limit was cut to 55 MPH as an energy conservation measure in the US.
1975 – The patent (#3,922,552) for a whole-body X-ray scanner was issued to Robert S. Ledley.
1979 – Pat Summerall and John Madden broadcasted an NFL game (Vikings vs Buccaneers) together for the first time.
1984 – Band-Aid which was founded by Bob Geldof to help raise money to assist famine-stricken Ethiopia, recorded the single Do They Know It’s Christmas in a London studio. The group included Adam Clayton (U2), Phil Collins (Genesis, solo), Bob Geldof (The Boomtown Rats), Steve Norman (Spandau Ballet), Chris Cross (Ultravox), John Taylor (Duran Duran), Paul Young, Tony Hadley (Spandau Ballet), Glenn Gregory (Heaven 17), Simon Le Bon (Duran Duran), Simon Crowe (The Boomtown Rats), Marilyn, Keren (Bananarama), Martin Kemp (Spandau Ballet), Jody Watley (Shalamar), Bono (U2), Paul Weller (The Style Council), James Taylor (Kool & The Gang), Peter Blake (credited as ‘sleeve artist’), George Michael (Wham!), Midge Ure (Ultravox), Martin Ware (Heaven 17), John Keeble (Spandau Ballet), Gary Kemp (Spandau Ballet), Roger Taylor (Duran Duran), Sara (Bananarama), Siobhan (Bananarama), Pete Briquette (The Boomtown Rats), Francis Rossi (Status Quo), Robert ‘Kool’ Bell (Kool & the Gang), Dennis Thomas (Kool & the Gang), Andy Taylor (Duran Duran), Jon Moss (Culture Club), Sting (The Police), Rick Parfitt (Status Quo), Nick Rhodes (Duran Duran), Johnny Fingers (The Boomtown Rats), Boy George (Culture Club), Holly (Frankie Goes to Hollywood), Paul McCartney (The Beatles, Wings) and David Bowie .
2009 – Wikileaks – Information about the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon were distributed online, with more than 500,000 intercepted pager messages, mainly from US officials posted by WikiLeaks founder, Julian Assange.
1716 – First African lion was exhibited in America (in Boston). It was just a single lion, which supposedly later joined a “menagerie” which was basically a traveling circus of exotic animals.
1789 – First (unofficial) national Thanksgiving in the USA recognized by the new government. The 1621 good harvest celebration at Plymouth in present-day Massachusetts was first celebrated in North America.
1825 – Kappa Alpha fraternity was founded at Union College, NY.
1832 – The first New York City streetcar ran along Bowery Street in New York, with a 12 cent fare.
1842 – The University of Notre Dame was founded.
1867 – The patent (#71,423) for a refrigerated railroad car was issued to J.B. Sutherland of Detroit, Michigan.
1917 – The NHL (National Hockey League) formed, consisting of four teams – Montreal Canadiens, Montreal Wanderers, Ottawa Senators, and the Quebec Bulldogs. The Bulldogs were replaced by the Arenas shortly thereafter.
1922 – English archaeologist Howard Carter opened King Tutankhamun’s virtually intact tomb in Egypt. Over the centuries almost every mummy tomb had been found and plundered – this was possibly the greatest archaeological find of that period.
1922 – The Toll of the Sea debuted as the first general release film to use two-tone Technicolor. (The Gulf Between was the first film to do so, but it was not widely distributed.)
1941 – President Franklin D Roosevelt established that the fourth Thursday in November would be Thanksgiving Day.
1942 – Casablanca premiered at Hollywood Theater, in New York City. It came out in wide release on January 23, 1943.
1945 – Charlie “Bird” Parker lead a record date for the Savoy label, marketed as the “greatest Jazz session ever.” Recording as Charlie Parker’s Reboppers, the group included Dizzie Gillespie and Miles Davis on trumpet, Curly Russell on bass, and Max Roach on drums. The tracks included during this session include Ko-Ko, Billie’s Bounce, and Now’s the Time.
1970 – In Basse-Terre, Guadeloupe, 1.5 inches (38.1mm) of rain fell in a minute, the heaviest rainfall ever on record
1976 – The Sex Pistols released their debut single Anarchy In The UK. It came from their only album – ‘Never Mind the Bollocks, Here’s the Sex Pistols.’
1977 – The Hobbit, produced by Rankin/Bass, was shown on NBC.
1983 – Six gunmen broke into the Brinks Mat warehouse at the Heathrow Airport making off with three tons of gold bars valued at almost 48 million dollars (at that time). From a modern perspective, it is worth over $125,000,000. Most of the gold was never recovered.
1826 – Chemist John Walker invented the friction match in England.
1834 – The direct current (DC) electric motor was invented by Thomas Davenport.
1896 – Also Sprach Zarathustra by Richard Strauss was first performed.
1910 – Pennsylvania Station opened, called so because the Pennsylvania Railroad trains began using it November 27, 1910.
1924 – Macy’s department store held its first Thanksgiving Day parade down a two-mile stretch of Broadway in New York City.
1952 – CBS began broadcasting the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade.
1973 – The US Senate approved Gerald R. Ford as the US’ 40th vice president, after the resignation of Spiro T. Agnew, who plead guilty to income tax evasion.
1975 – Guinness Book of Records co-founder and editor Ross McWhirter was shot dead outside his North London home. Police believe it was an IRA hit.
1978 – The White Shadow premiered on CBS.
1980 – Bosom Buddies premiered on ABC.
2004 – Pope John Paul II returned the relics of Saint John Chrysostom to the Eastern Orthodox Church.
2005 – 13-year-old bat mitzvah Elizabeth Brooks had 50 Cent & Aerosmith perform at her celebration at New York’s Rainbow Room.
2011 – Mexico City briefly held the world record of having the largest “zombie walk” in the world after almost 10,000 people dressed as zombies paraded through the city. Several walks have beaten that record.
2013 – Frozen, the highest-grossing animated film of all time, starring Idina Menzel and Kristen Bell, was released.
1582 – William Shakespeare married Anne Hathaway (not the ‘our’ Anne Hathaway)
1717 – Blackbeard attacked a French merchant vessel called La Concorde, which he captured and renamed as the Queen Anne’s Revenge.”
1811 – Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 5 in E-flat major, Op. 73, premiered at the Gewandhaus in Leipzig.
1895 – America’s first auto race started: 6 cars, 55 miles, the winner averaged 7 MPH, from Chicago’s Jackson Park to Evanston, Illinois.
1925 – The Grand Ole Opry made its (weekly) radio debut on station WSM, in Nashville, Tennessee.
1907 – In Haverhill, Massachusetts, scrap-metal dealer Louis B. Mayer opened his first movie theater, The Orpheum. It was a renovated 600 seat burlesque house.
1922 – The first skywriting in the US was demonstrated over Times Square, New York City, by Capt. Cyril Turner of the Royal Air Force. Flying at 10,000 feet, he wrote letters in white smoke a half-mile high: Hello, U.S.A. Call Vanderbilt 7200. It was an advertisement for the American Tobacco Company.
1934 – Infamous bank robber George “Baby Face” Nelson was killed by FBI agents near Barrington, Illinois.
1942 – Cocoanut Grove Nightclub Fire, Boston Massachusettes. Nearly 500 people were killed in the blaze. This fire was probably the single biggest reason ‘EXIT’ signs are now in (US) public places.
1948 – The Polaroid Land Camera went on sale, at a Boston department store. The 40 series, model 95 roll film camera sold for $89.75.
1964 – Mariner 4 was launched from Cape Kennedy, Florida.
1967 – The first pulsar known as PSR B1919+21, in the constellation of Vulpecula, was discovered by Jocelyn Bell Burnell and Antony Hewish.
1975 – As the World Turns and The Edge of Night aired their last ‘live’ episodes, switching to pre-recorded programs.
1984 – William Penn and his wife Hannah Callowhill Penn were made Honorary Citizens of the United States.
1994 – Serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer died of injuries received after he was attacked by other prisoners while cleaning a prison toilet. Or maybe one other prisoner. ‘Nobody saw nothin’, it was reported.
1995 – President Bill Clinton ended the federal 55 mph speed limit that began in 1974, as an energy-saving measure.
1997 – The last episode of Beavis and Butt-Head aired on MTV. The series was later resumed again briefly in 2011.
2001 – Enron Corporation, once the world’s largest energy trader, covering major electricity, natural gas, communications, pulp, and paper, and with over 20,000 employees, essentially went out of business.
1681 – The Royal College of Physicians, in Edinburgh, Scotland, was granted its charter by King Charles II.
1825 – First Italian opera in the US, Barber of Seville premiered (in New York City, at the Park Theatre)
1910 – The US patent (#976,939) for inventing the traffic lights system was issued to Ernest Sirrine. Similar patents were granted to others later.
1932 – The patent (#1,889,729) was issued for the first card game table with an automatic dealing device, to Laurens Hammond of Chicago, Ill. He later invented the Hammond organ.
1933 – First state liquor stores authorized (Pennsylvania). It may be true that the state of Pennsylvania is the largest buyer of wine and spirits in the world.
1935 – Physicist Erwin Schrödinger published his famous thought experiment ‘Schrödinger’s cat’, a paradox that illustrates the problem of the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics.
1947 – The United Nations voted in favor of separating Palestine and allowed for the creation of an Independent Jewish State – Israel.
1951 – The first U.S. underground atom bomb test, designated “Uncle”, was detonated. The low-yield 1.2 kiloton bomb was buried 17-ft sub-surface at Frenchman Flat, a 123-square-mile (320-sq.km.) dry lake bed at the Nevada Test Site (NTS).
1959 – The Grammy Awards were first televised on NBC.
1961 – Mercury-Atlas 5 was launched with Enos (a chimpanzee) on board. The craft orbited the Earth twice and splashed down about 200 miles south of Bermuda. The flight lasted 3 hours and 20 minutes. Enos survived and later died on November 4, 1962.
1972 – Atari presented Pong, as an arcade game. By 1974 there was a home version.
2004 – Godzilla got his star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
2011 – Dr. Conrad Murray received a four-year sentence for involuntary manslaughter, in Michael Jackson’s death.
1609 – Galileo Galilei realized that the moon was a landscape, not a flat surface on a circle in the sky.
1858 – The Mason Jar was invented and patented (#22,186) by Philadelphia tinsmith John Landis Mason.
1872 – First international soccer game was played. Final score: Scotland-England 0-0 (in Glasgow)
1875 – A patent (#170,460) was issued for a “Biscuit Cutter” to Alexander P. Ashbourne.
1886 – The first commercially successful U.S. alternating current power plant was opened at Buffalo, NY by George Westinghouse.
1897 – A patent (#594,501) for a “Device for Rolling Cigarettes” was issued to American inventor J.A. Sweeting.
1936 – London’s Crystal Palace was destroyed by fire.
1940 – Lucille Ball married Desi Arnaz in Greenwich, Connecticut.
1954 – First proven meteorite was known to strike a woman/person (Liz Hodges, in Sylacauga, Alabama). It took a year of pleading with the air force, but she was allowed to keep the 9-pound meteorite.
1956 – CBS became the first network to broadcast from videotape. It was a rebroadcast to the West Coast of the 15-minute Douglas Edwards and the News program. It was recorded on 2-inch tape with an Ampex Mark IV machine.
1971 – TV movie Brian’s Song, aired for the first time on ABC
1979 – Pink Floyd released The Wall double album. “If you don’t eat your meat, you can’t have any pudding, how can you have any pudding if you don’t eat your meat!”
1982 – Michael Jackson’s second solo album, Thriller, the biggest selling album in history, was released worldwide.
1993 – The Brady Bill, requiring a five-day waiting period for handgun purchases and background checks of prospective buyers, was signed into law.
1994 – Italian cruise ship MS Achille Lauro caught fire off Somalia, with 3 people dead, and most of the nearly 1,000 passengers and crew escaping in lifeboats. It sank on December 2nd.
2004 – Longtime Jeopardy! champion Ken Jennings of Salt Lake City finally loses, leaving him with $2,520,700 – television’s biggest game show winnings.
2009 – CERN (European Organization for Nuclear Research) started. “CERN’s Large Hadron Collider has today become the world’s highest-energy particle accelerator, having accelerated its twin beams of protons to an energy of 1.18 TeV in the early hours of the morning.” CERN is experimenting with things like “The Big Bang” but hopefully on a smaller scale.
More Pop Culture History Resources