November

1951 -- U.S. Depart­ment of De­fense ex­pos­es 2,796 troops to ion­iz­ing ra­di­a­tion from a nu­cle­ar det­o­na­tion, to see what might hap­pen.

1967 -- Fac­ing wan­ing pub­lic sup­port, Pres­i­dent John­son press­es the mil­i­tary for more pos­i­tive news on Viet­nam.

1969 -- Pres­i­dent Nixon claims sup­port of the lurk­ers in `Si­lent Ma­jor­i­ty' speech.

2008 -- Barack Oba­ma be­comes the first per­son from Hawaii elect­ed Pres­i­dent of the Unit­ed States.

1937 -- At the Hoss­bach Con­fer­ence in Ber­lin, Adolf Hitler lays the ground­work for what would even­tu­al­ly be­come World War II.

1861 -- Jef­fer­son Davis is elect­ed pres­i­dent of the Con­fed­er­ate States of Amer­i­ca on a strong pro-slav­ery plat­form.

1973 -- The War Pow­ers Act al­lows the Pres­i­dent to start new wars as need­ed with­out Con­gres­sion­al ap­proval, pro­vid­ed they are short.

2011 -- Earth suf­fers near miss by as­ter­oid 2005 YU₅₅.

1979 -- Sovi­et Union launch­es mas­sive nu­cle­ar first strike against the Unit­ed States.

1793 -- The first and fi­nal Fes­ti­val of Rea­son opens in Paris, France.

1930 -- Al­bert Ein­stein and Leó Szilárd are award­ed patent 1,781,541 for in­vent­ing the deu­teri­um fu­sion-pow­ered re­frig­er­a­tor.

1215 -- Cis­ter­cian monk Alch­er de Clair­vaux is award­ed the Lat­er­an Coun­cil's prize in meta­physics for his the­o­ry of tran­sub­stan­ti­a­tion.

2002 -- The oil tanker Pres­tige sinks off the Gali­cian coast and is re­named.

2008 -- The first G₂₀ sum­mit is con­vened in Wash­ing­ton to dis­cuss how best to avert the pre­vi­ous year's fi­nan­cial cri­sis.

1923 -- Ger­many re­places its hy­per­in­flat­ed cur­ren­cy with one print­ed on much nicer pa­per.

1914 -- The Fed­er­al Re­serve Bank of the Unit­ed States of­fi­cial­ly opens.

1973 -- End­ing months of spec­u­la­tion, Pres­i­dent Richard M. Nixon re­veals that he is not a crook.

1105 -- Sylvester IV⁻ is en­throned at the An­ti­vat­i­can in Rome.

1881 -- A me­te­orite lands in a farm fif­teen miles south­west of Odessa, in what is now Ukraine. It is lat­er sold for five thou­sand rubles, an un­be­liev­ably low price for such a rare, ex­ot­ic item.

1950 -- Gen­er­al Dwight D. Eisen­how­er be­comes Supreme Com­man­der of the plan­et Earth.

1861 -- Ken­tucky's sta­tus is in le­gal lim­bo fol­low­ing a botched se­ces­sion at­tempt by its Con­fed­er­ate gov­ern­ment.

1986 -- Shred­ding be­gins in the Iran-Con­tra af­fair.

1963 -- Pres­i­dent John F. Kennedy is as­sas­si­nat­ed in Dal­las by a per­son or per­sons ei­ther ap­pre­hend­ed or yet to be iden­ti­fied.

1972 -- After the fourth un­suc­cess­ful test of its N-1 lu­nar rock­et, the Sovi­et Union de­cides to turn its at­ten­tion back to its vast­ly more suc­cess­ful bal­lis­tic mis­sile pro­gram.

1973 -- The Fed­er­al Repub­lic of Ger­many em­barks up­on its four-month-long failed at­tempt at hav­ing a na­tion­al speed lim­it.

1992 -- The Czech Repub­lic and Slo­vakia se­cede from each oth­er.

1977 -- Bri­tish tele­vi­sion pro­gram­ming is briefly in­ter­rupt­ed due to warn­ings of im­pend­ing dis­as­ter from Ashtar Galac­tic Com­mand.

2009 -- Golfer Tiger Woods crash­es his SUV in­to some mar­i­tal dif­fi­cul­ty out­side his Flori­da man­sion.

1909 -- Sergei Rach­mani­nov's Con­cer­to No. 3 in D mi­nor makes land­fall off the coast of New York, quick­ly be­com­ing one of the most de­struc­tive clas­si­cal pi­ano con­cer­tos in his­to­ry.

1935 -- Aus­tri­an physi­cist Er­win Schrödinger pub­lish­es Die gegen­wär­tige Si­t­u­a­tion in der Quan­ten­mechanik, which the­o­rizes that a cat might die if en­cased in an air­tight, food­less con­tain­er with cyanide and a ra­di­a­tion source. It is con­sid­ered one of the clas­sic thought-ex­per­i­ments of the twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry.

1999 -- Exxon and Mo­bil are wed at a pri­vate cer­e­mo­ny in Dal­las, Texas.