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.
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.
November 8
Physicist Wilhelm Conrad Rontgen becomes the first person to observe X-rays, a significant scientific advancement that ultimately would benefit a variety of fields, most of all medicine, by making the invisible visible. – 1895.
U.S. president Franklin D. Roosevelt announces plans for the Civil Works Administration to create four million additional jobs for the Great Depression-era unemployed. The workers ultimately laid 12 Million feet of sewer pipe and built or made substantial improvements to 255,000 miles of roads, 40,000 schools, 3,700 playgrounds, nearly 1,000 airports, and 250,000 outhouses still badly needed in rural America. – 1933.
November 9
In an event that would foreshadow the Holocaust, German Nazis launch a campaign of terror against Jewish people and their homes and businesses in Germany and Austria. The violence, which continued through November 10 and later, was dubbed Kristallnacht, or Night of Broken Glass, after the countless smashed windows of Jewish-owned establishments, left approximately 100 Jews dead, 7,500 Jewish businesses damaged, and hundreds of synagogues, homes, schools, and graveyards vandalized. An estimated 30,000 Jewish men were arrested, many of whom were sent to concentration camps for several months; they were released when they promised to leave Germany. – 1938.
At dusk, the biggest power failure in U.S. history occurs when all of New York state, portions of seven neighboring states, and parts of eastern Canada are plunged into darkness. The Great Northeast Blackout begins at the height of rush hour and delays millions of commuters, trapped 800,000 persons in New York’s subways, and stranded thousands more in office buildings, elevators, and trains. All together, 30 Million residents in eight U.S. states and the Canadian provinces of Ontario and Quebec were affected by the blackout. – 1965.
East German officials open the Berlin Wall which allowed travel from East Berlin to West Berlin. The following day, celebrating Germans began to tear the wall down. One of the ugliest and most infamous symbols of the Cold War soon was reduced to rubble that was quickly snatched up by souvenir-hunters. – 1989.
November 10
During the American Revolution, the Continental Congress passes a resolution stating that “two Battalions of Marines be raised” for service as landing forces for the recently-formed Continental Navy. The resolution, drafted by future U.S. president John Adams and adopted in Philadelphia, created the Continental Marines and is now observed as the birth date of the United States Marine Corps. – 1775.
November 11
At the 11th hour on the 11th day of the 11th month of 1918, the Great War ends. At 5 a.m., Germany, bereft of manpower and supplies and faced with imminent invasion, signed an armistice agreement with the Allies in a railroad car outside Compiégne, France. The First World War left nine Million soldiers dead and 21 Million wounded. In addition, at least five Million civilians died from disease, starvation, or exposure. – 1918.
The U.S. Congress approves lowering the draft age to 18 and raising the upper limit to age 37. By the end of World War II, approximately 34 Million men had registered; 10 Million had been inducted into the military. – 1942.