November 2

1675 – Plymouth Colony governor Josiah Winslow leads a colonial Militia against the Narragansett tribe during King Philip’s War.

1734 – Daniel Boone is born in a log cabin in Oley Valley, Pennsylvania.

1889 – North Dakota and South Dakota are admitted as the 39th and 40th U.S. states.

1912 – Engaging in the bloodiest battle of the 1st Balkan War, with both sides suffering over 20% casualties, the heavier armed Bulgarian Army defeats Ottoman Empire Army at modern day Lüleburgaz, Turkey, east of the Bosphorus, opening the way to Constantinople.

1914 –The Russian Empire declares war on the Ottoman Empire, closing the Dardanelles passage from the Mediterranean Ocean to the Black Sea.

1917 – The Balfour Declaration proclaims British support for the “establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people” with the clear understanding “that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities”.

1920 – Station KDKA in Pittsburgh starts broadcasting as the first commercial U.S. radio station.

1930 – Le’ul Ras Täfäri Mäkonnän is crowned Haile Selassie I  – Negusa Nagast – Emperor of Ethiopia

1947 – Howard Hughes performs the maiden, and only, flight of the Hughes H-4 Hercules “Spruce Goose” seaplane off Cabrillo Beach, Los Angeles.

1963 – South Vietnamese President Ngô Đình Diệm and his brother Ngô Đình Nhu are assassinated following a military coup.

1965 – Norman Morrison, a 31 year old Quaker, sets himself on fire in front of the river entrance to the Pentagon to protest the use of napalm in the Vietnam war.

1967 –  A group of retired former presidential advisors termed,”The Wise Men” who had been formed and advised Democrat administrations since the days of President Roosevelt in World War II, advise President Johnson that the American people should be given more ‘optimistic’ reports on the progress of the war.

1983 – President Reagan signs the bill into law creating Martin Luther King Jr. Day.

1984 – Serial murderer Velma Barfield becomes the first woman executed in the United States, in this case, North Carolina, since 1962.

1999 – A disgruntled employee of the Xerox corporation in Honolulu, Hawaii, shoots and kills 7 co-workers and wounds another before fleeing and later surrendering to police.

2000 – Expedition 1 arrives at the International Space Station for the first long duration stay onboard. From this day to present, a continuous human presence in space on the station remains uninterrupted.

2016 – The Chicago Cubs defeat the Cleveland Indians to win their first World Series in 108 years.