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 ...read more

Abraham Lincoln is elected the 16th president of the United States over a deeply divided Democratic Party, becoming the first Republican to win the presidency. Lincoln received only 40 percent of the popular vote but handily defeated the three other candidates: Southern Democrat ...read more

On November 6, 1998, President Bill Clinton declares that part of Detroit will become an “Automobile National Heritage Area.” The designation restricted land use and drew attention to what Michigan Congressman John Dingell called “the automobile’s contribution to our history and ...read more

On this day in 1962, the United Nations General Assembly adopts a resolution condemning South Africa’s racist apartheid policies and calling on all its members to end economic and military relations with the country. In effect from 1948 to 1993, apartheid, which comes from the ...read more

On this day in 1941, the 24th anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution, Joseph Stalin, premier and dictator of the USSR, delivers a speech to a rally of Moscow Party workers. The rally was held underground, in the marbled halls of the Mayakovsky train station. There, Stalin ...read more

South Vietnamese forces launch a new offensive into Cambodia, advancing across a 100-mile-wide front in southeastern Cambodia. The new offensive was aimed at cleaning out border sanctuaries and blocking North Vietnamese forces from moving through Cambodia into South Vietnam. ...read more

In the aftermath of the November 1 coup that resulted in the murder of President Ngo Dinh Diem, Gen. Duong Van Minh, leading the Revolutionary Military Committee of the dissident generals who had conducted the coup, takes over leadership of South Vietnam. U.S. Ambassador Henry ...read more

On November 6, 1995, the owner of the Cleveland Browns football team announces that he is moving the team to Baltimore. The team owner, Art Modell, had purchased the Browns in October 1960 for $4 million. He loved his team and the fans, he said, but Cleveland Stadium was a mess ...read more

On this day in 1906, President Theodore “Teddy” Roosevelt embarks on a 17-day trip to Panama and Puerto Rico, becoming the first president to make an official diplomatic tour outside of the continental United States. Roosevelt entered office in 1901 with the firm intention of ...read more

On this day, the Spanish conquistador Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca is shipwrecked on a low sandy island off the coast of Texas. Starving, dehydrated, and desperate, he is the first European to set foot on the soil of the future Lone Star state. Cabeza de Vaca’s unintentional ...read more

John Philip Sousa did not invent the musical genre he came to personify, but even if no other composer had ever written a single piece in the same style, the standard repertoire of the American marching band would be little changed. The instantly recognizable sound of Sousa’s ...read more

On this day in 1558, Thomas Kyd is baptized in London. Kyd created the “revenge tragedy,” a popular dramatic form that gave rise to tragedies like William Shakespeare’s Hamlet. Little is known about Kyd’s childhood, but scholars believe he was educated at the Merchant Taylor’s ...read more

On this day in 1987, Less Than Zero, a movie about a group of wealthy young friends in Los Angeles in the 1980s starring Robert Downey Jr., Andrew McCarthy and Jami Gertz, opens in theaters. Based on a 1985 novel of the same name by Bret Easton Ellis, Less Than Zero told the ...read more

On this day in 1977, the Toccoa Falls Dam in Georgia gives way and 39 people die in the resulting flood. Ninety miles north of Atlanta, the Toccoa (Cherokee for “beautiful”) Falls Dam was constructed of earth across a canyon in 1887, creating a 55-acre lake 180 feet above the ...read more

Shirley Allen is arrested for poisoning her husband, Lloyd Allen, with ethylene glycol, commonly known as anti-freeze. After witnessing her mother spike Lloyd’s drinks with the deadly substance, Shirley’s own daughter turned her in to the authorities. Lloyd Allen was Shirley’s ...read more

Soviet scientist and well-known human rights activist Andrei Sakharov begins a two-week visit to the United States. During his visit, he pleaded with the American government and people to support Russian leader Mikhail Gorbachev’s policies of glasnost (political openness) and ...read more

On this day in 1861, Jefferson Davis is elected president of the Confederate States of America. He ran without opposition, and the election simply confirmed the decision that had been made by the Confederate Congress earlier in the year. Like his Union counterpart, President ...read more

On this day in 1789, Pope Pius VI appoints John Carroll bishop of Baltimore, making him the first Catholic bishop in the United States. Carroll was born in Upper Marlboro, Maryland, in 1735. His mother came from a wealthy family and had been educated in France. At age 13, Carroll ...read more