In this This Day in History video, the important events that took place on November 9th throughout history are examined. On November 9, 1961, Brian Epstein met John Lennon and became known as the fifth Beatle and their manager. On November 9, 1965, the Great Northeast Blackout left much of the northeastern states and parts of Canada in blackness and without power. East Germany denounced the Berlin wall on November 9, 1989. The next day German citizens began tearing down the wall. On November 9, 1938, German Jews were terrorized by Nazis during the Kristallnacht. The Nazis were avenging the murder of a German official by a Jewish refuge. This led to much of the hostility and terrible violence of World War II.
On July 26, 1948, President Harry S. Truman signed Executive Order 9981, mandating the desegregation of the U.S. Armed Forces and ending 170 years of officially sanctioned racial discrimination in the military. Although African Americans had served since the Revolutionary War, they were typically segregated from white troops and often assigned to menial roles. A landmark achievement of both the postwar civil rights movement and Truman’s presidency, the order marked one of the first times a U.S. president used executive authority to advance civil rights. It also helped pave the way for broader desegregation efforts across American society.
On October 29, 1969, Stanford programmer Bill Duvall sent a single-word message—"login"—to UCLA student programmer Charley Kline, 350 miles away. Transmitted between two computers that each filled an entire room, this message marked the first communication between networked computers and is widely regarded as the birth of the internet.