Jerry Waxman
Today in History: November 9
Today in History: November 9: In 1989, Communist East Germany threw open its borders, allowing citizens to travel freely to the West for the first time in decades. In 1906, Theodore Roosevelt made the first trip abroad of any sitting president in order to observe construction of the Panama Canal. In 1938, Nazis looted and burned synagogues as well as thousands of Jewish-owned stores and houses in Germany and Austria in a pogrom or deliberate persecution, that became known as “Kristallnacht.” In 1976, the U.N. General Assembly approved resolutions condemning apartheid in South Africa, including one characterizing the white-ruled government as “illegitimate.” In 2007, President General Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan placed opposition leader Benazir Bhutto under house arrest for a day and rounded up thousands of her supporters to block a mass rally against his emergency rule.
Today in History: November 8
Today in History: November 08: The new millenium got off to a rocky start in the United States, where there was no clear winner of the presidential election due to irregularities found in Florida ballots. On this date in the year 2000, a statewide recount began in Florida. Also on this date: In 1864, President Abraham Lincoln won reelection, as he defeated Democratic challenger, George B. McClellan. In 1889, Montana was admitted to the Union as the 41st state. In 1923, Adolf Hitler launched his first attempt at seizing power in Germany with a failed coup in Munich that came to be known as the “Beer-Hall Putsch.” In 1942, the Allies launched Operation Torch in World War II as U.S. and British forces landed in French North Africa. In 1960, John F. Kennedy won the U.S. presidential election over Vice President Richard M. Nixon. And, In 2013, Typhoon Haiyan, one of the most powerful storms ever recorded, slammed into the central Philippines, leaving more than 7,300 people dead or missing, flattening villages and displacing more than 5 million.
Today in History: November 07
Today in History: November 07: In 1916, Jeannette Rankin of Montana became the first woman elected to Congress. In 1917, Russia’s Bolshevik Revolution took place as forces led by Vladimir Ilyich Lenin overthrew the provisional government of Alexander Kerensky. In 1944, President Franklin D. Roosevelt won an unprecedented fourth term in office, defeating Republican Thomas E. Dewey. In 1989, L. Douglas Wilder won the governor’s race in Virginia, becoming the first elected Black governor in U.S. history. In 2020, Democrat Joe Biden clinched victory over the twice-impeached and over-incompetent president Donald Trump.
Today in History: November 06
Today in History: November 06. On Nov. 6, 1860, former Illinois congressman Abraham Lincoln of the Republican Party was elected President of the United States as he defeated John Breckinridge, John Bell and Stephen Douglas. In 1888, Republican presidential candidate Benjamin Harrison won the electoral vote over incumbent Democrat Grover Cleveland, despite Cleveland gaining 90,000 more total votes. In 1947, “Meet the Press,” the longest-running television show in America, made its debut on NBC; the host was the show’s co-creator, Martha Rountree. In 1977, 39 people were killed when the Kelly Barnes Dam in Georgia burst, sending a wall of water through Toccoa Falls College.
Today in History: November 05
Today in History: November 05. On Nov. 5, 1872, suffragist Susan B. Anthony defied the law by casting a vote in the presidential election. In 1605, the ‘Gunpowder Plot’ failed as Guy Fawkes was seized before he could blow up the English Parliament. In 1930, novelist Sinclair Lewis became the first American to win the Nobel Prize in Literature. In 1940, President Franklin D. Roosevelt won an unprecedented third term in office as he defeated Republican challenger Wendell L. Willkie. In 2006, Saddam Hussein was convicted and sentenced by the Iraqi High Tribunal to hang for crimes against humanity.
Today in History: November 04
Today in History: November 04: In 2008, Democrat Barack Obama was elected the first Black president of the United States. In 1922, the entrance to King Tutankhamen’s tomb was discovered in Egypt. In 2007, King Tutankhamen’s face was unveiled for the first time to the public more than 3,000 years after the pharaoh was buried in his Egyptian tomb. In 1991, Ronald Reagan opened his presidential library in Simi Valley, California. In 1995, Yitzhak Rabin, prime minister of Israel, was assassinated by a right-wing Israeli minutes after attending a peace rally.
Today in History: November 03
Today in History: November 03: 1979, five Communist Workers Party members were killed in a clash with heavily armed Ku Klux Klansmen and neo-Nazis during an anti-Klan protest in Greensboro, North Carolina. In 1908, Republican William Howard Taft was elected president, outpolling Democrat William Jennings Bryan. In 1957, the Soviet Union launched the spacecraft Sputnik 2, carrying the first animal into orbit, a dog named Laika. In 2020, Democrat Joe Biden won the presidency and became one of the greatest presidents in history, while Republican President Donald Trump would refuse to concede, falsely claiming that he was a victim of widespread voter fraud.
Today in History: November 02
Today in History: November 02: In 1948, in one of the most unexpected results in U.S. election history, Democratic incumbent Harry S. Truman won the presidential election against the heavily favored Republican governor of New York, Thomas E. Dewey. In 1783, General George Washington issued his Farewell Address to the Army. In 1947, Howard Hughes piloted his Hughes H-4 Hercules, nicknamed the ‘Spruce Goose,’ on its one and only flight. In 1959, Charles Van Doren testified to a Congressional committee that he had conspired with television producers to cheat on the television quiz show ‘Twenty-One.’ In 1976, former Georgia Gov. Jimmy Carter became the first candidate from the Deep South to be elected president since the Civil War as he defeated incumbent Gerald R. Ford. In 2000, American astronaut Bill Shepherd and two Russian cosmonauts, Yuri Gidzenko and Sergei Krikalev, became the first crew to reside onboard the International Space Station; they spent a total of 136 days in the International Space Station before returning to Earth on Space Shuttle Discovery.
Today in History: November 1
Today in History: November 01: In 1765, the Stamp Act, passed by the British Parliament, went into effect, prompting stiff resistance from American colonists. In 1894, Nicholas II became Emperor of Russia, succeeding his late father Alexander III. In 1938, in a two-horse match race, Seabiscuit defeated the favored Triple Crown winner War Admiral by four lengths in what was dubbed the “Race of the Century” at Pimlico Race Course in Baltimore. In 1950, two Puerto Rican nationalists tried to force their way into Blair House in Washington, D.C., in a failed attempt to assassinate President Harry S. Truman. In 1982, the first Japanese car produced in the U.S. rolled off the assembly line at the Honda manufacturing plant in Marysville, Ohio. In 1989, East Germany reopened its border with Czechoslovakia, prompting tens of thousands of refugees to flee to the West. And in 1995, Yugoslavia peace talks opened in Dayton, Ohio, with the leaders of Bosnia, Serbia and Croatia present. And that’s the way it was – on this day, November 1 – in history, dad gummit.