Today in History - November 7
Today in History - November 7
1811 – Battle of Tippecanoe: Forces under Indiana Territory Governor William Henry Harrison defeat a Native American confederacy associated with Tecumseh near Prophetstown in present-day Indiana. The engagement weakens the confederation and becomes a rallying point in the lead-up to the War of 1812.
1837 – Abolitionist editor Elijah Parish Lovejoy is shot and killed by a pro-slavery mob in Alton, Illinois, while defending his printing press. The attack becomes a national flashpoint over press freedom and slavery.
1861 – Battle of Belmont: Union troops commanded by Ulysses S. Grant overrun a Confederate camp in Missouri in Grant’s first significant combat command of the Civil War, though they withdraw when reinforcements arrive.
1893 – Colorado becomes the first U.S. state to grant women the right to vote by popular referendum.
1916 – Montana voters elect Jeannette Rankin to the U.S. House of Representatives, making her the first woman elected to Congress.
1917 – Bolshevik forces led by Vladimir Lenin seize key points in Petrograd, including the Winter Palace, overthrow the Provisional Government, and establish Soviet power. The event, known as the October Revolution under the old Russian calendar, reshapes the twentieth century.
1938 – Herschel Grynszpan, a Jewish teenager, shoots German diplomat Ernst vom Rath in Paris. The assassination is used by Nazi authorities as the pretext for the Kristallnacht pogrom that follows two days later.
1940 – The Tacoma Narrows Bridge in Washington, nicknamed “Galloping Gertie,” collapses in high winds due to aeroelastic flutter only four months after opening.
1944 – Franklin D. Roosevelt is elected to an unprecedented fourth term as President of the United States.
1962 – After losing the California gubernatorial race, Richard Nixon tells reporters, “You won’t have Nixon to kick around anymore,” in what he calls his last press conference. Six years later he is elected president.
1991 – Magic Johnson announces that he has tested positive for HIV and retires from the NBA, bringing national attention to the epidemic.
2000 – The presidential election between George W. Bush and Al Gore ends in a statistical tie, with Florida’s contested results leading to recounts and the Supreme Court decision in Bush v. Gore. On the same day, Hillary Clinton is elected to the U.S. Senate from New York, becoming the first First Lady to win elective office.
Arkansas & Oklahoma Connections
No major statewide events uniquely tied to Arkansas or Oklahoma fall on November 7.
Born on November 7
1867 – Marie Curie, Polish-French physicist and chemist, the first woman to win a Nobel Prize and the only person to win Nobels in two different sciences (Physics 1903, Chemistry 1911) for her work on radioactivity.
1913 – Albert Camus, French philosopher, novelist, and journalist known for The Stranger and The Plague; he received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1957.
1918 – Billy Graham, American evangelist whose crusades reached millions worldwide.
1943 – Joni Mitchell, Canadian singer-songwriter whose albums, including Blue, established her as one of the most influential artists of the late twentieth century.
Other notable births include explorer James Cook (1728), Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky (1879), and, in later decades, musicians such as Johnny Rivers (1942) and Lorde (1996).
