November 1
Nation’s first general strike for a 10-hour day; Philadelphia. – 1835.
New York City, N.Y., subway operators go on strike and an inexperienced replacement motorman crashes a five-car train and kills approximately 93 and injures 255. – 1918.
The United States detonates the world’s first thermonuclear weapon, the hydrogen bomb, on Eniwetok atoll in the Pacific. This new weapon was approximately 1,000 times more powerful than conventional nuclear devices. – 1952.
November 2
In the greatest upset in presidential election history, Democratic incumbent Harry S Truman defeats his Republican challenger, governor Thomas E. Dewey of New York, by two million popular votes. Long before all the votes were counted, The Chicago Tribune published an early edition with the banner headline “DEWEY DEFEATS TRUMAN.” – 1948.
A Russian Army fuel truck explodes in the Salang Tunnel in Afghanistan and kills an estimated 3,000 persons, mostly Soviet soldiers traveling to Kabul. – 1982
U.S. president Ronald Reagan signs a bill designating a federal holiday honoring the slain civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr., to be observed on the third Monday of January. – 1983.
November 3
The Soviet Union launches the first animal into space, a dog name Laika, aboard the Sputnik 2 spacecraft. – 1957.
The Lebanese magazine Ash Shiraa reports that the United States has been secretly selling arms to Iran in an effort to secure the release of seven American hostages held by pro-Iranian groups in Lebanon. The revelation, confirmed by U.S. intelligence sources November 6, came as a shock to officials outside president Ronald Reagan’s inner circle and violated the U.S. arms embargo against Iran and president Reagan’s vow never to negotiate with terrorists. -1986.
November 4
British archaeologist Howard Carter and his workmen discover a step leading to the tomb of King Tutankhamen in the Valley of the Kings in Egypt. – 1922.
A spontaneous national uprising that began 12 days earlier in Hungary is viciously crushed by Soviet tanks and troops on this day. Thousands were killed and wounded and nearly a quarter-million Hungarians fled the country. – 1956.
U.S. senator Barack Obama of Illinois defeats U.S. senator John McCain of Arizona to become the 44th U.S. president, and the first half-African American elected to the White House. – 2008.
November 5
More than 300 Santee Sioux are found guilty of raping and murdering Anglo settlers and are sentenced to hang. All but 38 were granted a reprieve, and the 38 were hanged simultaneously December 26 in a bizarre mass execution witnessed by a large crowd of approving Minnesotans. – 1862.
November 6
Led by Bolshevik Party leader Vladimir Lenin, leftist revolutionaries launch a nearly bloodless coup d’État against Russia’s ineffectual Provisional Government. The Bolsheviks and their allies occupied government buildings and other strategic locations in the Russian capital of Petrograd, now St. Petersburg. Within two days the Bolsheviks formed a new government with Lenin as its head. Bolshevik Russia, later renamed the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), was the world’s first Marxist state. – 1917.
The United Nations General Assembly adopts a resolution condemning South Africa’s racist apartheid policies and calls on all of its members to end economic and military relations with the country. – 1962.
November 7
U.S. president Franklin Delano Roosevelt is elected to an unprecedented fourth term in office. FDR remains the only president to have served more than two terms. – 1944.
Sources: History.com, Toil and Trouble, by Thomas R. Brooks; American Labor Struggles, by Samuel Yellen; IWW calendar, Solidarity Forever; Historical Encyclopedia of American Labor, edited by Robert E. Weir and James P. Hanlan; Southwest Labor History Archives/George Meany Center; Geov Parrish’s Radical History; workday Minnesota; Andy Richards and Adam Wright, AFL-CIO Washington DC Metro Council.