Today In History
What happened this day in history?
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Today in History: November 12
Today in History: On November 12: 1954, Ellis Island officially closed as an immigration station and detention center. More than 12 million immigrants arrived in the United States via Ellis Island between 1892 and 1954. In 1927, Josef Stalin became the undisputed ruler of the Soviet Union as Leon Trotsky was expelled from the Communist Party. In 1936, the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge opened as President Franklin D. Roosevelt pressed a telegraph key in Washington, D.C., and gave the green light to traffic. In 1948, former Japanese premier Hideki Tojo and several other World War II Japanese leaders were sentenced to death by a war crimes tribunal. In 1970, the Bhola cyclone struck East Pakistan, now Bangladesh. The deadliest tropical cyclone on record claimed the lives of an estimated 300,000-500,000 people.
Today in History: November 11
Today in History: November 11: On Nov. 11, 1918, fighting in World War I ended as the Allies and Germany signed an armistice aboard a railroad car in the Forest of Compiègne in northern France. In 1620, 41 Pilgrims aboard the Mayflower, anchored off Massachusetts, signed the Mayflower Compact, calling for a “civil body politick, for our better ordering and preservation.” In 1921, the remains of an unidentified American service member were interred in a Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at Arlington National Cemetery in a ceremony presided over by President Warren G. Harding. In 1966, Gemini 12 blasted off on a four-day mission with astronauts James A. Lovell and Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin Jr. aboard; it was the tenth and final crewed flight of NASA’s Gemini program.
Today in History: November 10
Today in History: November 10: On Nov. 10, 1898, in Wilmington, North Carolina, a mob of as many as 2,000 white supremacists killed dozens of African Americans, burned Black-owned businesses and forced the mayor, police chief and aldermen to resign at gunpoint, before installing their own mayor and city council in what became known as the “Wilmington Coup.” Other events of November 10. In 1775, the United States Marine Corps was established when the Second Continental Congress passed a resolution to raise two battalions of Marines to support naval forces in the Revolutionary War. In 1954, the U.S. Marine Corps Memorial, depicting the raising of the American flag on Iwo Jima in 1945, was dedicated by President Dwight D. Eisenhower in Arlington, Virginia. In 1969, the children’s educational program “Sesame Street” made its debut on National Educational Television. In 1975, the Great Lakes freighter SS Edmund Fitzgerald sank after being caught in a severe storm on Lake Superior; all 29 crew members were lost. In 2019, Bolivian President Evo Morales resigned after weeks of public protests in response to alleged election fraud in Bolivia’s general election the previous month.
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.