November 10

1775

During the American Revolution, the Continental Congress passed a resolution stating that “two Battalions of Marines be raised” for service as landing forces for the recently formed Continental Navy. The resolution, drafted by future U.S. president John Adams and adopted in Philadelphia, created the Continental Marines and is now observed as the birth date of the United States Marine Corps. After American independence was achieved in 1783, the Continental Navy was demobilized and its Marines disbanded. Increasing conflict at sea with Revolutionary France led the U.S. Congress to establish formally the U.S. Navy in May 1798. Two months later, on July 11, President John Adams signed the bill establishing the U.S. Marine Corps as a permanent military force under the jurisdiction of the Department of Navy. In all, Marines have executed more than 300 landings on foreign shores.

1969

“Sesame Street,” a pioneering TV show that would teach generations of young children the alphabet and how to count, makes its broadcast debut. “Sesame Street,” with its memorable theme song (“Can you tell me how to get/How to get to Sesame Street”), went on to become the most widely viewed children’s program in the world. It has aired in more than 120 countries. The show was the brainchild of Joan Ganz Cooney, a former documentary producer for public television. Cooney’s goal was to create programming for preschoolers that was both entertaining and educational. She also wanted to use TV as a way to help underprivileged 3- to 5- year-olds prepare for kindergarten. “Sesame Street” was set in a fictional New York neighborhood and included ethnically diverse characters and positive social messages.

1984

The University of Maryland’s backup quarterback Frank Reich threw six touchdown passes against the University of Miami in the second half of the game, completing an improbable comeback. The Terrapins, who had been losing 31-0 at the half, ended up winning the game 42-40. “In the first half, everything that could possibly go wrong, went wrong,” one of Reich’s teammates said. “In the second half, everything that could possibly go right, went right.” To many fans and journalists, the 1984 game is college football’s greatest and most exciting comeback. Reich was selected in the third round of the 1985 NFL draft where he played second string quarterback for most of his career. He is now the head coach of the Indianapolis Colts.

November 11

1918

Armistice Day: World War I Ends

At the 11th hour on the 11th day of the 11th month of 1918, the Great War ends. At 5 a.m. that morning, Germany, bereft of manpower and supplies and faced with imminent invasion, signed an armistice agreement with the Allies in a railroad car outside Compiégne, France. The First World War left nine million soldiers dead and 21 million wounded, with Germany, Russia, Austria-Hungary, France and Great Britain each losing nearly a million or more lives. In addition, at least five million civilians died from disease, starvation, or exposure. WWI was known as the “war to end all wars” because of the great slaughter and destruction it caused. Unfortunately, the peace treaty that officially ended the conflict—the Treaty of Versailles of 1919—forced punitive terms on Germany that destabilized Europe and laid the groundwork for World War II.

1977

The Atari 2600, originally known as the Atari Video Computer System (Atari VCS), was released in North America, revolutionizing the video game industry. It sold for $199 and included a console, two joy sticks and a game cartridge. It was manufactured until 1982 which, by this time, the market was saturated with game consoles. This coupled with the rise of the home computer led to the 1983 video game crash.

1978

A stuntman on the Georgia set of “The Dukes of Hazzard” launched the show’s iconic automobile, a 1969 Dodge Charger named the General Lee, off a makeshift dirt ramp and over a police car. That jump, 16 feet high and 82 feet long (its landing totaled the car), made TV history. Although more than 300 different General Lees appeared in the series, which ran on CBS from 1979 until 1985, this first one was the only one to play a part in every episode. That jump over the squad car ran every week at the end of the show’s opening credits. While “The Dukes of Hazzard”was on the air, the General Lee got about 35,000 fan letters each month. Indianapolis DJ Travis Bell restored the original General Lee in 2006.

November 12

1799

Andrew Ellicott, an early American astronomer, witnessed the Leonids meteor shower from a ship off the Florida Keys. Ellicott wrote in his journal that the “whole heaven appeared as if illuminated with sky rockets, flying in an infinity of directions, and I was in constant expectation of some of them falling on the vessel. They continued until put out by the light of the sun after day break.” Ellicott’s journal entry is the first known record of a meteor shower in North America.

1954

Ellis Island, the gateway to America, shut its doors after processing more than 12 million immigrants. Today, tens of millions of Americans can trace their roots through Ellis Island, located in New York Harbor off the New Jersey coast and named for merchant Samuel Ellis, who owned the land in the 1770s. On January 2, 1892, 15-year-old Annie Moore, from Ireland, became the first person to pass through the newly opened Ellis Island, which President Benjamin Harrison designated as America’s first federal immigration center in 1890. Before that time, the processing of immigrants had been handled by individual states.

1966

Buzz Aldrin, eventually the second man to walk on the moon, took the first 'space selfie', a photo of himself performing extravehicular activity in space during the Gemini program. The program proved that astronauts could undertake extravehicular activity in space - paving the way for the Apollo program and the eventual landing on the Moon.

 

November 13

1979

In the middle of a game in Kansas City, Philadelphia 76ers center Darryl Dawkins leapt over Kansas City Kings forward Bill Robinzine and slam-dunked the basketball, shattering the fiberglass backboard. The result, according to people who were at the game, was a sound like a bomb going off in the middle of the court. Shards of glass were everywhere, nicking Robinzine all over his legs and arms and had even gotten stuck in Dr. J’s Afro. “It wasn’t really a safe thing to do,” Dawkins said later, “but it was a Darryl Dawkins thing to do.” After doing it again a few weeks later, NBA Commissioner Larry O’Brien let Dawkins know he would be suspended and fined. However, Darryl Dawkins continued to the enjoyment of the crowds. Soon, the league installed shatter-proof backboards with breakaway rims in every arena.

1982

Near the end of a weeklong national salute to Americans who served in the Vietnam War, the Vietnam Veterans Memorial was dedicated in Washington, D.C. after a march to its site by thousands of veterans of the conflict. The long-awaited memorial is a simple V-shaped black-granite wall inscribed with the names of the 57,939 Americans who died in the conflict, arranged in order of death, not rank, as was common in other memorials. “The Wall” drew together both those who fought and those who marched against the war and served to promote national healing a decade after the divisive conflict’s end.

2020

Veteran front-office official Kim Ng broke several glass ceilings simultaneously when she was named General Manager of the Miami Marlins. Ng was the first woman and first person of East Asian descent to lead a Major League Baseball front office, as well as the first female GM in the history of North American professional men’s sports. She spent her entire career in the MLB, beginning with an internship for the Chicago White Sox and was an assistant GM for the Yankees. After applying for five GM positions between '05-'20, it was Derek Jeter, the chief executive and part-owner of the Marlins, who finally picked Ng to lead a team’s baseball operations.

 

November 14

1851

Herman Melville published “Moby-Dick." While the book about Captain Ahab and his quest to catch a giant white whale was initially a flop, "Moby-Dick" is now considered a great classic of American literature and contains one of the most famous opening lines in fiction: “Call me Ishmael.” Herman Melville was born in New York City in 1819. As a young man, he spent time in the merchant marines, the U.S. Navy and on a whaling ship in the South Seas. In 1846, he published his first novel, Typee, a romantic adventure based on his experiences in Polynesia. After multiple failed novels, changed course and released Moby-Dick, a tragic epic that was influenced in part by Melville’s friend and neighbor, Nathaniel Hawthorne, whose novels include The Scarlet Letter.

1960

A court order mandating the desegregation of schools came into effect in New Orleans, Louisiana. Six-year-old Ruby Bridges walked into William Frantz Elementary School, accompanied by federal marshals and taunted by angry crowds. She instantly became a symbol of the civil rights movement, an icon for the cause of racial equality and a target for racial animosity. The Supreme Court ordered the end of segregated public schools in Brown vs. Board of Education just a few months before Bridges was born, but it was not until after her kindergarten year that New Orleans finally assented to desegregation. African American children were given a test, and only those who passed were allowed to enroll in all-white public schools. Bridges passed the test and became the only one of the six eligible students to go ahead with desegregation.

1970

A plane carrying most of the Marshall University football team crashed into a hillside in Kenova, West Virginia, killing everyone onboard. The team was returning from that day’s game, a 17-14 loss to East Carolina University. 37 Marshall football players were aboard the plane, along with the team’s coach, its doctors, the university athletic director and 25 team boosters–some of Huntington, West Virginia’s most prominent citizens–who had traveled to North Carolina to cheer on the Thundering Herd. “The whole fabric,” a citizen of Huntington wrote later, “the whole heart of the town was aboard.”

November 15

1867

The first stock ticker was unveiled in New York City. The advent of the ticker ultimately revolutionized the stock market by making up-to-the-minute prices available to investors around the country. Prior to this development, information from the New York Stock Exchange, which has been around since 1792, traveled by mail or messenger. The ticker was the brainchild of Edward Calahan, who configured a telegraph machine to print stock quotes on streams of paper tape (the same paper tape later used in ticker-tape parades). The ticker, which caught on quickly with investors, got its name from the sound its type wheel made.

1956

Elvis made his movie debut in “Love Me Tender." Set in Texas following the American Civil War, the film features Elvis as Clint Reno, the younger brother of a Confederate soldier. Originally titled The Reno Brothers, the movie was renamed Love Me Tender before its release, after a song of the same name that Reno sings during the film. Presley, who became one of the biggest icons in entertainment history, sang in the box-office hit as well as the majority of the 33 movies he made in his career.

2001

Microsoft released the Xbox gaming console, dramatically influencing the history of consumer entertainment technology. Microsoft CEO Bill Gates first decided to venture into the video game market because he feared that gaming consoles would soon compete with personal computers. At the time, Japanese companies Sony and Nintendo dominated the field. Microsoft is said to have lost $4 billion on the initial Xbox, but its successors have sold over a hundred million units and continue to set the standard for entertainment systems.

November 16

1907

Indian Territory and Oklahoma Territory collectively entered the United States as Oklahoma, the 46th state. Oklahoma, with a name derived from the Choctaw Indian words okla, meaning “people,” and humma, meaning “red,” has a history of human occupation dating back 15,000 years. The first Europeans to visit the region were Spanish explorers in the 16th century, and in the 18th century the Spanish and French struggled for control of the territory. The United States acquired Oklahoma from France in 1803 as part of the Louisiana Purchase.

1959

Inspired by Maria von Trapp's book, The Story of the Trapp Family Singers, "The Sound of Music" premiered on Broadway. To the consternation of Maria von Trapp and her family, many particulars of her memoir were neglected while great liberties were taken by the show’s writers and by its composer and lyricist, Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II. With a creative team made up of Broadway legends and a star as enormously popular and bankable as Mary Martin, it was no surprise that The Sound of Music drew enormous advance sales. Numerous songs from its score— including “Do Re Mi,” “My Favorite Things” and “Climb Every Mountain”—quickly entered the popular canon. Recorded just a week after the show’s premiere, the album shot to the top of the Billboard album charts.

1961

President John F. Kennedy decided to increase military aid to South Vietnam without committing U.S. combat troops. Kennedy was concerned at the advances being made by the communist Viet Cong, but did not want to become involved in a land war in Vietnam. He hoped that the military aid would be sufficient to strengthen the Saigon government and its armed forces against the Viet Cong. Ultimately it was not, and Kennedy ended up sending additional support in the form of U.S. military advisors and American helicopter units. By the time of his assassination in 1963, there were 16,000 U.S. soldiers in South Vietnam.