Beyond the South End

 

The First Thanksgiving, 1621,

oil on canvas by Jean Leon Gerome Ferris, 1899.

From Google.

We Remember November

November just seems to whiz by us as we anticipate the big holiday for many of us, Christmas, which comes too soon after Thanksgiving in November. There are four dates I always remember in this month: Veteran’s Day on November 11; Thanksgiving on the third Thursday; Nov. 22, the assassination of President John F. Kennedy; and the first Tuesday in the month, when we vote.

Throughout history we have seen many events occur in November. The following I found on a site called www.historyplace.com. Please visit there if you want to peruse the complete list. I have divided this piece into “Politics,” “Historical Events,” “In the News,” and “Notable Birthdays.” Of course there will be crossovers, but I leave that to you, the reader.

Politics

November 8, 1860-Abraham Lincoln becomes the 16^th U.S. President, the first Republican

November 7, 1944-Franklin D. Roosevelt elected to his fourth term, defeating Thomas Dewey, who died on April 12, 1945.

November 13, 1956-The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that racial segregation on public buses was unconstitutional. Our thanks to Rosa Parks for being so brave in the first place.

November 15, 1777-The Articles of Confederation adopted by the Continental Congress.

November 17, 1800-Congress meets for the first time in the new capitol in Washington. John Adams becomes the first resident of the Executive Mansion, later named the White House.

November 19, 1998-The U.S. House of Representatives begin an impeachment inquiry of President Bill Clinton. It was only the third such proceeding—the others being President Andrew Johnson in 1868 and President Nixon in 1974.

November 20, 1789-New Jersey is the first state to ratify the “Bill of Rights”.

Historical Events

November 2, 1947-The one and only flight of Howard Hughes’ “Spruce Goose” which was called a flying boat. It flew about a mile at an altitude of 70 feet in Long Beach Harbor, California. It weighed 200 tons and was the largest airplane designed by Hughes. It became a tourist attraction along with the Queen Mary at Long Beach and has since been moved to Oregon.

November 7, 1885-The Canadian Pacific, Canada’s first transcontinental railway is completed in British Columbia.

November 8, 1895-X-rays are discovered by Wilhelm Roentgen at the University of Wuerzburg in Germany.

November 9, 1918-Kaiser Wilhelm II abdicates the throne in Germany and flees to Holland.

November 9-10, 1938-Kristallnacht (the night of broken glass) occurs in Germany. Nazi mobs burn synagogues and vandalize Jewish shops and homes.

November 9, 1989-The Berlin Wall is opened which stood for 28 years as a symbol of the Cold War.

November 10, 1928-Hirohito is crowned Emperor of Japan. After Japan’s defeat in WWII he was allowed to stay and was emperor until he died in 1989.

November 11-Veteran’s Day in the U.S., formerly called Armistice Day.

November 11, 1972-The U.S. turns over Long Binh military base to the South Vietnamese, ending our military participation in the Vietnam War.

November 17, 1869-The Suez Canal opens

November 19, 1863-Abraham Lincoln delivers the “Gettysburg Address” at ceremonies dedicating the “Gettysburg Battlefield” as a National Cemetery.

November 19, 1868- 172 suffragists, including four African American women, attempting to vote in New Jersey to test the 14^th Amendment are turned away. Instead they vote in a “women’s ballot box” overseen by Quaker Margaret Pryer.

November 20, 1945- The Nuremberg War Crime Trials begin. 24 former leaders of Nazi Germany were charged with war crimes.

November 22, 1963-The assassination of President John F. Kennedy in Dallas, Texas.

November 24, 1859-On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, a book by scientist Charles Darwin began the biggest scientific debate in history because he theorized that all living creatures descended from a common ancestor. Religious factions have fought this battle since it was first published in this year.

November 26, 1789-President George Washington declares the first American holiday to be called Thanksgiving Day, a day of prayer and thanksgiving for the successful founding of the country.

November 29, 1947-Palestine is split into Jewish and Arab land by the U.N. General Assembly which resulted in the establishment of the Jewish state of Israel the next year.

November 30, 1792-A provisional peace treaty between Great Britain and the United States brought forth the end of the “War of Independence” or what we call the “Revolutionary War.”

In The News

These events undoubtedly became the headlines of the day on which they occurred.

November 1, 1950-President Harry S Truman was targeted for assassination by two members of a Puerto Rican nationalist movement.

November 1, 1995-The first local government elections which included all races occurs in South Africa which ended the apartheid system. South Africa had been boycotted for years because of their racial policies.

November 2, 1962-The Cuban Missile Crisis. President Kennedy’s quote of the day: “The Soviet bases in Cuba are being dismantled, their missiles and related equipment being crated, and the fixed installations at these sites are being destroyed.”

November 3, 1948-The Chicago Tribune incorrectly reports that Thomas Dewey beat out Harry S Truman for the presidency.

November 3, 1957-Russia’s “Sputnik II,” is launched carrying a dog named Laika.

November 9, 1965-The great “black out” in the Northeast which affected over 30 million people. It also affected Ontario and Quebec. It all began with a tripped circuit breaker at a power plant on the Niagara River which caused a chain reaction.

November 19, 1978-The biggest suicide in numbers occurs in Jonestown, Guyana. The followers of Reverend Jim Jones, including children, are made to drink cool-aid laced with cyanide. Some members had to be injected when they refused. Jones and his mistress killed themselves after they watched all the members die. California Congressman Leo Ryan and four associates and some reporters were shot to death also as they tried to leave the area at a nearby airstrip after an inspection of the compound on behalf of concerned citizens back home in the U.S.. Only a few members survived.

November 20, 1947-Britain’s Princess Elizabeth, later Queen Elizabeth II, marries Philip Mountbatten.

November 28, 1934-“Baby Face Nelson,” a notorious bank robber in the U.S., is killed by F.B.I. agents in Barrington, Illinois.

November 24, 1969-The U.S. Army charges Lt. William Calley with premeditated murder in the massacre of civilians in My Lai, in Vietnam, in 1968. He is eventually convicted and sentenced to life in prison. However, President Nixon commuted his sentence to three years of house arrest.

Notable Birthdays

Here is a partial list of notable birthdays that occurred in November.

November, 1879-American humorist Will Rogers in Oologah, Indian Territory, now Oklahoma.

November, 1916-Journalist and eventual anchor for CBS News, Walter Cronkite, in St. Joseph, Missouri.

November, 1854-Conductor known for his march music, John Philip Sousa, in Washington, D.C.

November 1861-The inventor of the game of basketball, James Naismith, in Almonte, Ontario, Canada.

November 1867-The chemist, Marie Curie, who discovered Radium with her husband, in Warsaw, Poland. They received the Nobel Prize for physics in 1903.

November 7, 1918-Evangelist Billy Graham, near Charlotte, North Carolina

November 1656-Astronomer and mathematician Edmund Halley for whom Halley’s Comet is named, in London.

November 1853-Architect Stanford White, designer of Madison Square Garden among other edifices, in New York City.

November 1918-Spiro Agnew, Vice President under Nixon, in Baltimore, Maryland. He resigned under charges of tax evasion on kickbacks he received while he was governor of Maryland and even when he became Vice President.

November 1847-Bram Stoker, author of Dracula, in Dublin, Ireland

November 1900-Margaret Mitchell, author of Gone With the Wind, in Atlanta, Georgia

November 1922-Surgeon Christiaan Barnard, who performed the first heart transplant, in Beaufort West, Cape of Good Hope Province, South Africa.

November 1885-General George S. Patton, a force to be reckoned with during his WWII, service, in San Gabriel, California. After being in harm’s way all through the war, he died of injuries in an automobile accident in Heidelberg, Germany in December of 1945.

November 1840-Sculptor, Auguste Rodin, in Paris.

November 1815-Suffragist Elizabeth Cady Stanton, in Johnstown, New York.

November 1929-Grace Kelly, actress and later Princess Grace of Monaco, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

November 1850-Author Robert Louis Stevenson, in Edinburgh, Scotland.

November 1765-Robert Fulton, steamboat inventor, in rural Pennsylvania.

November 1840-French painter, Claude Monet, in Paris.

November 1887-Artist Georgia O’Keefe, in Sun Prairie, Wisconsin.

November 1831-James Garfield, 20^th president of the United States, in Orange, Ohio.

November 1917-Indira Gandhi, who became Prime Minister of India, in Allahabad, India.

November 1921-One of the first African American major league players, Roy Campanella, in Philadelphia. He played for the Brooklyn Dodgers.

November 1889-Astronomer Edwin Hubble, in Marshfield, Missouri.

November 1925-Robert Kennedy, brother of President John Kennedy, in Brookline, Massachusetts. He was also assassinated in 1968 as he was campaigning for president himself.

November 1694-Author and philosopher, Voltaire, in Paris.

November 1835-Financier Andrew Carnegie, who donated our very own Rockland Public Library, in Dunfermline, Scotland.

November 1846-Temperance leader, Carry Nation, in Garrard County, Kentucky.

November 1607-Founder of Harvard College, John Harvard, in London.

November 1853-Wild West lawman and gambler, Bat Masterson, in Henryville, Quebec.

November 1820-German socialist Friedrich Engels, in Barmen, Wuppertal, Germany. An associate of Karl Marx, he edited the second and third volumes of Marx’s Das Kapital.

November 1832-Louisa May Alcott, author of Little Women, in Philadelphia.

November 1898-Author C.S. Lewis, in Belfast, Ireland as Clive Staples Lewis.

November 1890-Former president of France, Charles De Gaulle, in Lille, France.

November 1898-Barnstormer Wiley Post, in Grand Plain, Texas.

November 1804-14^th President of the United States, Franklin Pierce, in Hillsboro, New Hampshire.

November 1859-Outlaw Billie the Kid, in New York City. AKA Henry McCarty, and William H. Bonney.

November 1887-Horror film actor Boris Karloff, in London as William Henry Pratt.

November 1784-12^th President of the United States Zachary Taylor, in Orange County, Virginia.

November 1868-Composer Scott Joplin, in Texarkana, Texas

November 1874-Author Samuel Clemens, whose pen name was Mark Twain, in Florida, Missouri.

November 1874-The infamous Prime Minister Winston Churchill, in Blenheim Palace, Oxfordshire, England.

I hope you’ve enjoyed our little trip through historical November.

Thanks for listening.