November 17
The Suez Canal, connecting the Mediterranean and the Red Seas, is inaugurated in an elaborate ceremony attended by French Empress Eugénie, wife of Napoleon III. – 1869.
November 18
At exactly noon on this day, American and Canadian railroads begin using four continental time zones to end the confusion of dealing with thousands of local times. The bold move was emblematic of the power shared by the railroad companies. – 1883.
Peoples Temple founder leads hundreds of his followers in a mass murder-suicide at their agricultural commune in a remote part of the South American nation of Guyana. Many of the Peoples Temple followers willingly ingest a poison-laced punch while others were forced to do so. The final death toll at Jonestown that day was 909; one-third of those who perished were children. – 1978.
November 19
At the dedication of a military cemetery at Gettysburg, Pa., during the American Civil War, president Abraham Lincoln delivers one of the most memorable speeches in American history. In just 272 words, Lincoln brilliantly and movingly reminded a war-weary public why the Union had to fight to win the Civil War. – 1863.
November 20
Seventy-eight miners are killed in an explosion at the Consolidated Coal Company’s No. 9 mine in Farmington, W. Va.. – 1968.
November 21
The American inventor Thomas A. Edison announces his invention of the phonograph, a way to record and play back sound. – 1877.
National Security Council staff member Oliver North and his secretary, Fawn Hall, begin shredding documents that would have exposed their participation in a range of illegal activities regarding the sale of arms to Iran and the diversion of the proceeds to a rebel Nicaraguan group. North was fired November 25, but Hall continued to sneak documents to him by stuffing them in her skirt and boots. The Iran-Contra scandal, as it came to be known, became an embarrassment and a sticky legal problem for the Ronald Reagan administration. – 1986.
November 22
The district president of the American Federation of Labor and two other white men are shot and killed in Bogalusa, Ala. when they attempt to assist an African-American organizer working to unionize African-American workers at the Great Southern Lumber Co.. – 1919.
John Fitzgerald Kennedy, the 35th president of the United States, is assassinated while traveling through Dallas, Texas, in an open-top convertible. The unusual trajectory of the ricochet of the bullet has been the subject of many conspiracy theories. – 1963.
November 23
Ronald Reagan, president of the United States, signs off on a top secret document, National Security Decision Directive 17 (NSDD-17), which gives the Central Intelligence Agency the power to recruit and support a 500-man force of Nicaraguan rebels to conduct covert actions against the leftist Sandinista regime in Nicaragua. A budget of $19 million was established for that purpose. NSDD-17 marked the beginning of official U.S. support for the so-called Contras in their struggle against the Sandinistas. – 1981.