Today in History: November 2, 2026
1783 – George Washington bids farewell to the Continental Army near Princeton, New Jersey, after the American Revolutionary War.
1889 – North Dakota and South Dakota are admitted to the Union as the 39th and 40th U.S. states.
1917 – British Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour issues the Balfour Declaration (in a letter to Lord Rothschild), expressing British support for “the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people,” while noting that the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities should not be prejudiced.
1920 – Pittsburgh station KDKA broadcasts the U.S. presidential election results (Warren G. Harding’s victory), widely regarded as the first commercial radio broadcast.
1930 – Ras Tafari Makonnen is crowned Haile Selassie I, Emperor of Ethiopia.
1936 – The BBC launches the world’s first regular high-definition television service from Alexandra Palace in London.
1947 – Howard Hughes pilots the massive wooden Hughes H-4 Hercules (“Spruce Goose”) on its only flight over Long Beach Harbor, California (about one minute / roughly a mile).
1948 – Harry S. Truman defeats Thomas E. Dewey in one of the biggest upsets in U.S. presidential election history (later immortalized by the premature “Dewey Defeats Truman” newspaper headline).
1963 – South Vietnamese President Ngô Đình Diệm and his brother Ngô Đình Nhu are assassinated in Saigon following a military coup.
1976 – Jimmy Carter is elected the 39th U.S. president, defeating incumbent Gerald Ford and becoming the first Deep South president since the Civil War.
1983 – President Ronald Reagan signs the bill establishing Martin Luther King Jr. Day as a federal holiday.
1988 – The Morris worm, one of the first major computer worms to gain widespread attention, is released and infects systems including at MIT and the Pentagon.
2000 – The first permanent crew (Expedition 1: American William Shepherd and Russians Yuri Gidzenko and Sergei Krikalev) arrives at the International Space Station.
November 2 is observed as All Souls’ Day in the Christian calendar (and is associated with Día de los Muertos traditions in parts of Latin America).
One year ago today (November 2, 2025) - India’s women’s cricket team defeated South Africa by 52 runs to win the 2025 Women’s Cricket World Cup (their first title in the competition). The same day, ISRO successfully launched the CMS-03 communication satellite-the heaviest payload carried by an Indian launch vehicle into geosynchronous transfer orbit-from Sriharikota.
Born on November 2
1734 – Daniel Boone, American frontiersman and explorer.
1755 – Marie Antoinette, Queen of France.
1795 – James K. Polk, 11th President of the United States.
1865 – Warren G. Harding, 29th President of the United States.
1913 – Burt Lancaster, American actor.
1938 – Pat Buchanan, American political commentator and author.
1961 – k.d. lang, Canadian singer-songwriter.
1965 – Shah Rukh Khan, Indian actor and film producer (often called “King Khan”).
1966 – David Schwimmer, American actor (Friends).
1974 – Nelly (Cornell Haynes Jr.), American rapper and singer.
