Sistine Chapel ceiling opens to public

In the face of widespread opposition in the American colonies, the Stamp Act goes into effect. The taxation measure is designed to raise revenue for British military operations in America. Defense of the American colonies in the French and Indian War (1754-63) and Pontiac’s Rebellion (1763-64) were costly affairs for Great Britain, and Prime Minister […]

On November 1, 1800, President John Adams, in the last year of his only term as president, moved into the newly constructed President’s House, the original name for what is known today as the White House. Adams had been living in temporary digs at Tunnicliffe’s City Hotel near the half-finished Capitol building since June 1800, […]

On November 1, 1911, Italian army lieutenant Giulio Gavotti, while flying over Libya, tosses three grenades out of his plane over a Turkish camp, effectively dropping the world’s first aerial bomb. Just eight years after the Wright brothers in America had accomplished the world’s first flight, the Kingdom of Italy sent several aircraft into Libya, […]

On November 1, 1935, Edward Said, the eminent Palestinian-American public intellectual and the father of postcolonial studies, is born. Said was born in Jerusalem, then part of the British Mandate of Palestine. He was born into a wealthy Christian Arab family, and grew up in Jerusalem and Cairo before moving to the United States to […]

On November 1, 1946, the New York Knickerbockers beat the Toronto Huskies in the first NBA game, 68-66. The Knickerbockers are led by guard Leo Gottlieb, who scored 14 points in the game played before 7,090 fans at Maple Leaf Gardens in Toronto.  Although they lost to the Knickerbockers (now known as the Knicks), the Huskies had the […]

The United States detonates the world’s first thermonuclear weapon, the hydrogen bomb, on Eniwetok atoll in the Pacific. The test gave the United States a short-lived advantage in the nuclear arms race with the Soviet Union.  Following the successful Soviet detonation of an atomic device in September 1949, the United States accelerated its program to […]

The Maastricht Treaty comes into effect on November 1, 1993, formally establishing the European Union (EU). The treaty was drafted in 1991 by delegates from the European Community meeting at Maastricht in the Netherlands and signed in 1992. The agreement called for a strengthened European parliament, the creation of a central European bank, and common […]