This Week in History: Nov. 2-8, 2026

This Week in History

by Dianne Hermann

“In the summer of 1776 our Founding Fathers sought to secure our independence and our liberties

that remain the foundation of our nation today.” Rep. Doc Hastings (R-WA)

Nov. 2-8, 2026

 

November 2

 

1783 – General George Washington bid farewell to his troops at Fraunces Tavern in New York City after winning the American Revolutionary War. He ordered the Continental Army disbanded the following day. Washington was elected president in 1789.

 

1947 – Howard Hughes flew his H-4 Hercules “Spruce Goose,” a large wooden flying boat aircraft of his own design, on its first and only flight. Only one was ever built by Hughes. FYI: It was made of birch, not spruce.

 

1948 – President Harry Truman was re-elected in an upset over Republican Thomas Dewey. Newspapers had already been printed with “Dewey defeats Truman” as the headline.

 

1954 – Strom Thurmond (D-SC) was the first Senator elected by write-in vote. State Democrat leaders blocked him from receiving the party’s nomination. Thurmond switched to the Republican Party in 1964. Thurmond died in 2003 at age 100 as the oldest person to serve in Congress.

 

1959 – Contestant Charles Van Doren confessed that the popular TV quiz show “21” was fixed. Van Doren died in 2019 at age 93. The scandal resulted in the passage of laws regulating game shows.

 

1984 – Velma Barfield became the first woman executed in the U.S. since 1962 after her conviction of murder. She was convicted for one murder but admitted to six. She was the first woman executed by lethal injection. Since the Supreme Court lifted the moratorium on capital punishment in 1976, eighteen women have been executed.

 

2000 – The first crew arrived at the International Space Station. One American and two Russians stayed on board the ISS for 136 days. Russian cosmonauts Oleg Kononenko and Nikolai Chub hold the record with 374 days on the ISS.

 

November 3

 

1883 – Charles Bowes, known as “Black Bart the poet” was wounded and left incriminating clues at his last stagecoach robbery that eventually led to his capture. Bowes robbed his first stagecoach in 1875. Wells Fargo only pressed charges on the last robbery. Bowes served four years of a six-year sentence. He was shadowed by Wells Fargo after his release and disappeared in February of 1888. Bowes was never seen again.

 

1936 – FDR (D-NY) was elected president for a second term in the most lopsided Electoral College vote. He won 523 of the 531 votes.

 

1952 – Clarence Birdseye marketed frozen peas using his invention for the flash freezing process of foods. Birdseye died in 1956 at age 69.

 

1994 – Susan Smith, who claimed her two sons were carjacked, was arrested for their murder after her car was found in John D. Long Lake with her children still strapped in their seats. Smith, now 55, is serving a sentence of life in prison after confessing to their murder. She was eligible for parole in 2024, but was denied.

 

2014 – New York’s 104-story One World Trade Center officially opens 13 years after the September 11 attacks.

 

2016 – Collins Dictionary selected “Brexit” the word of the year. Subsequent words of the year include “Fake News” in 2017 and “Lockdown” in 2020. Dictionary.com named “6-7” the 2025 word of the year which, interestingly enough, they were unable to define or identify its exact origin. “Maxxing” is the 2026 work of the year.

 

November 4

 

1646 – Massachusetts used the death penalty as punishment for people denying that the Holy Bible is God’s word.

 

1845 – The first nationally observed uniform Election Day was held in the United States. Election Day is now the Tuesday after the first Monday in November.

 

1879 – James Ritty patented the first cash register to combat stealing by bartenders in his Dayton, Ohio, saloon. It registered the time and amount of the sale, but it had no cash drawer.

 

1960 – “The Misfits” premiered as the final movie for both Clark Gable and Marilyn Monroe. Gable died less than two weeks later on November 16 at age 59, and Monroe died in August of 1962 at age 36. Monroe started filming “Something’s Got To Give” in 1962, but she was fired before its completion.

 

1981 – Dr. George Nichopoulos was acquitted of overprescribing addictive drugs to Elvis Presley and 13 other patients. In 1993, Nichopoulos had his license permanently revoked after it was revealed he had been overprescribing medications to patients for years.

 

1991 – Ronald Reagan opened his presidential library in Simi Valley, California. The dedication ceremony was attended by three other former presidents – Jimmy Carter, Gerald R. Ford, and Richard M. Nixon – and the then-current president George H.W. Bush. It was the first time five presidents (former and current) had ever met together. There are currently four living former presidents – Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and Joe Biden.

 

2008 – Barack Hussein Obama became the first bi-racial person to be elected President of the U.S. He was re-elected in 2012.

 

November 5

 

1639 – The first post office in the colonies was set up in Massachusetts. Ben Franklin was the first Postmaster General.

 

1895 – George B. Selden was granted the first U.S. patent for an internal-combustion gasoline fueled automobile.

 

1917 – The unanimous Supreme Court decision of Buchanan v Warley struck down a Louisville, Kentucky, ordinance requiring blacks and whites to live in separate areas.

 

1940 – President Franklin D. Roosevelt (D-NY) won an unprecedented third term by beating Wendell Willkie (R). He was elected to a fourth term on November 7th, 1944, but FDR died in April of 1945 at age 63. FDR is the only president to serve more than two terms.

 

1956 – Nat King Cole launched a weekly TV show, making him the first black person to host his own show on a major national TV network. Cole died in 1965 at age 45.

 

2009 – U.S. Army Major Nidal Malik Hasan killed 13 and wounded 43 at Fort Hood, Texas, in the largest mass shooting ever at a U.S. military installation. He was convicted and sentenced to death by a military jury in August 2013. His final appeal challenge was rejected in April 2025. His execution date is set for December 3, 2026.

 

November 6

 

1789 – Pope Pius VI appointed Father John Carroll as the first Catholic bishop in the U.S.

 

1861 – Jefferson Davis was elected to a 6-year term as Confederate president. Davis graduated from West Point in 1828. Col. Davis was a hero of the Mexican-American War in 1847. He served as a U.S. Senator from Mississippi (1847-1851 and 1857-1861) and the U.S. Secretary of War (1853-1857). He died in 1889 at the age of 81.

 

1938 – The three DiMaggio brothers (Vince, Joe, and Dominic) played baseball together in a west coast charity game. They are the only trio of brothers to have been All-Stars. Over 350 sets of brothers (including sets of twins) have played major league baseball.

 

1947 – NBC’s “Meet the Press” debuted and is still the longest running TV show in the U.S.

 

1952 – The first hydrogen bomb exploded at Eniwetok Atoll in the Pacific Ocean. A total of 43 nuclear tests were conducted between 1948 and 1958.

 

1986 – President Reagan signed a landmark immigration reform bill. It made it illegal to knowingly hire illegal immigrants and legalized illegal immigrants who entered the U.S. before January 1, 1982 under strict conditions. The INS estimated that about 4 million illegal immigrants would apply and about half of them would be eligible.

 

1990 – A fire destroyed some of Universal Studio stages and caused $25 million in damage. A security guard, who had been on the job less than two months, was sentenced to four years in prison after pleading guilty to arson.

 

2012 – The U.S. territory of Puerto Rico voteed in favor of becoming a U.S. state. It was the fourth statehood referendum, but the first in which a majority voted for statehood.

 

November 7

 

1805 – Lewis and Clark first viewed the Pacific Ocean. The Corps of Discovery left Missouri in May of 1804.

 

1874 – Thomas Nast created the first cartoon depicting an elephant as the symbol for the Republican Party. He also created the modern version of Santa Claus.

 

1910 – The first air freight shipment was undertaken by the Wright Brothers and department store owner Max Morehouse. A Wright brother’s pilot flew 200 pounds of silk worth $800 from Dayton to Columbus, Ohio. Philip Parmelee flew the 65-mile route in 66 minutes at an altitude of 2,000 to 3,000 feet in freezing temperatures by following railroad tracks. Parmelee was killed at an airshow two years later. He was 25.

 

1932 – “Buck Rogers in the 25th Century” was broadcast as the first science fiction program on the radio. It aired until 1936, but it was revived several times. It debuted as a comic strip in 1929. An 8-minute Buck Rogers’ film was made for the 1934 Chicago World’s Fair. Buck Rogers was a 12-part movie serial starring Buster Crabbe starting in 1939 and a short-lived TV series in 1950-51. Most recently it aired as a TV show starring Gil Gerard from 1979 to 1981.

 

1973 – Congress overturned President Nixon’s veto of the War Powers Act, which limited a chief executive’s power to wage war without congressional approval.

 

1991 – Magic Johnson announced he had the HIV virus and retired from the LA Lakers basketball team when he was 32 years old. Johnson is now 67 years old.

 

2000 – The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration discovered an LSD lab inside a converted military missile silo in Wamego, Kansas. William Leonard Pickard, now 81, was paroled after serving 20 years of his two life sentences following his conviction in the largest LSD manufacturing case in U.S. history. He continued to conduct research, write, and advocate for psychedelics. His partner, Clyde Apperson, now 71, was sentenced to serve 30 years in prison without the possibility of parole. He was also released in 2020 after serving 20 years in prison.

 

November 8

 

1731 – Benjamin Franklin opened the first U.S. library in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

 

1933 – The Civil Works Administration was created by executive order by President Franklin D. Roosevelt. The organization was designed to create jobs for more than four million unemployed people in the U.S. during the Great Depression.

 

1956 – After turning down 18,000 names, the Ford Motor Company decided to name its new car the “Edsel,” after Henry Ford’s only son. The Ford Edsel was in production for only three years.

 

1966 – Movie actor Ronald Reagan was elected governor of California. He first appeared in a movie in 1937 and finished his acting career in 1965 in the TV series Death Valley Days. He was elected president in 1980 and 1984. He died in 2004 at age 93.

 

1988 – George H. W. Bush was the first vice president since Martin Van Buren (1837) to be elected president of the U.S.

 

2000 – Waco special counsel John C. Danforth released his final report that absolved the government of wrongdoing in the 1993 siege of the Branch Davidian compound in Texas that ended in the death of 76 people, including 25 children.

 

2000 – A statewide recount began in Florida to decide the winner of the U.S. presidential election. George Bush beat Al Gore by a hanging chad.

 

 

 

 

 

Image from: en.wikipedia.org