November 3
1900: The first national automobile show was held in New York.
1911: Chevrolet officially entered the automobile market in competition with the Ford Model T.
1952: Born this day: actress Roseanne Barr (The Roseanne Show, Roseanne), and voice actor Jim Cummings (Aladdin, The Lion King, Antz, The Road to El Dorado, Shrek, The Princess and the Frog).
1954: The first Godzilla movie was released in Japan.
1964: Residents of Washington D.C. were able to vote in a presidential election for the first time.
November 4
1783: Symphony No. 36 by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791) was performed for the first time in Linz, Austria.
1833: Mary Todd (1818-1882) married Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865) in Springfield, Ill.
1847: Sir James Young Simpson (1811-1870), a British physician, discovered the anesthetic properties of chloroform.
1861: The University of Washington enrolled students for the first time in Seattle at the Territorial University.
1922: British archaeologist Howard Carter (1874-1939) and his men found the entrance to the tomb of Pharaoh Tutankhamun (1332 BC-1323 BC) in the Valley of the Kings in Egypt.
1960: Dr. Jane Goodall (born 1934) observed chimpanzees creating tools, the first-ever observation in non-human animals, at the Kasakela Chimpanzee Community in Tanzania.
1969: Born this day: actor Matthew McConaughey (Dazed and Confused, The Wedding Planner), and rapper Sean “P Diddy” Combs.
November 5
1499: The first French dictionary and the first Breton dictionary, the Catholicon, was published in Tréguier, Brittany, France. This Breton-French-Latin dictionary was written in 1464 by Jehan Lagadeuc (age unknown).
1895: George B. Selden (1846-1922) was granted the first U.S. patent for an automobile, 16 years after filing the original patent application. The patent was for an engine powered by gasoline vapor in a four-wheeled vehicle.
1940: President Franklin Roosevelt (1882-1945) was re-elected to a third term in office. (He remains the only president to serve more than two terms.)
1955: After being destroyed in World War II, the rebuilt Vienna State Opera reopened with a performance of Beethoven’s Fidelio.
1968: Richard Nixon (1913-1994) was elected president.
November 6
2948 B.C.: Noah of Noah’s Ark fame was born.
1528: Shipwrecked Spanish conquistador Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca (1488-1558) became the first known European to set foot in Texas.
1935: Parker Brothers acquired the forerunner patents for MONOPOLY from Elizabeth Magie (1866-1948).
1947: NBC’s Meet the Press had its TV debut.
1995: Art Modell (1925-2012) announced that he signed a deal that would relocate the Cleveland Browns to Baltimore to become the Baltimore Ravens, the first time since 1983 that the city had a football team (the Baltimore Colts).
November 7
1492: The oldest meteorite with a known date of impact, the Ensisheim meteorite, slammed into a wheat field around 12 noon near the village of Ensisheim, Alsace, France.
1665: The London Gazette, the oldest newspaper still in print, was first published.
1786: The Stoughton Musical Society, the oldest choral association in the United States, was founded in Boston.
1903: Born this day: actor Dean Jagger (White Christmas, Bad Day at Black Rock, died 1991), and actress Grace Stafford (voice of Woody Woodpecker, died 1992).
1910: The first air freight shipment occurred when the Wright Brothers flew a load of goods from Dayton, Ohio, to Columbus, Ohio, for department store owner Max Moorehouse (age unknown).
1916: Jeannette Rankin (1880-1973) of Missoula, Mont., became the first woman in the world elected to a major parliamentary body, the U.S. House of Representatives.
1929: The Museum of Modern Art opened to the public in New York City.
November 8
1630: An immense flock of passenger pigeons darkened the skies over Boston.
1864: Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865) was elected to a second term.
1889: Montana was admitted to the United States as the 41st state.
1895: German physicist Wilhelm Conrad Roentgen (1845-1923) became the first person to observe x-rays.
November 9
1620: Pilgrims aboard the Mayflower sighted land for the first time at Cape Cod, Massachusetts.
1857: The Atlantic monthly magazine was first published in Boston, Massachusetts. (It soon achieved a national reputation as a high-quality review with a moderate worldview. It continues to this day.)
1906: Theodore Roosevelt (1858-1919) became the first sitting president of the United States to make an official trip outside the country. He did so to inspect progress on the Panama Canal.
1951: Born this day: actor Lou Ferrigno (The Incredible Hulk), and comic book writer Bill Mantlo (The Incredible Hulk).
1954: Born this day: rock musician Dennis Stratton (Iron Maiden), and actress Sue Upton (The Benny Hill Show).
1960: Robert McNamara (1916-2009) was named president of Ford Motor Co., the first non-Ford to serve in that post.
1965: The Northeastern United States and Ontario, Canada, including New York City and Boston, were hit by a series of blackouts lasting up to 13 hours, affecting 30 million people in 80,000 square miles.
1967: The first issue of Rolling Stone Magazine was published, in New York City.