02 November History
- 1570 - A tidal wave in the North Sea destroys the sea walls from Holland to Jutland. More than 1,000 people are killed.
- 1772 - The first Committees of Correspondence are formed in Massachusetts under Samuel Adams.
- 1789 - The property of the church in France is taken away by the state.
- 1841 - The second Afghan War begins.
- 1869 - Sheriff Wild Bill Hickok loses his re-election bid in Ellis County, Kan.
- 1880 - James A. Garfield is elected the 20th president of the United States.
- 1882 - Newly elected John Poe replaces Pat Garrett as sheriff of Lincoln County, New Mexico Territory.
- 1889 - North Dakota is made the 39th state.
- 1889 - South Dakota is made the 40th state.
- 1892 - Lawmen surround outlaws Ned Christie and Arch Wolf near Tahlequah, Indian Territory (present-day Oklahoma). It will take dynamite and a cannon to dislodge the two from their cabin.
- 1903 - London's Daily Mirror newspaper is first published.
- 1914 - Russia declares war with Turkey.
- 1920 - The first radio broadcast in the United States is made from Pittsburgh.
- 1920 - Charlotte Woodward, who signed the 1848 Seneca Falls Declaration calling for female voting rights, casts her ballot in a presidential election.
- 1921 - Margaret Sanger and Mary Ware Dennett form the American Birth Control League.
- 1923 - U.S. Navy aviator H.J. Brown sets new world speed record of 259 mph in a Curtiss racer.
- 1926 - Air Commerce Act is passed, providing federal aid for airlines and airports.
- 1936 - The first high-definition public television transmissions begin from Alexandra Palace in north London by the BBC.
- 1942 - Lieutenant General Dwight D. Eisenhower arrives in Gibraltar to set up an American command post for the invasion of North Africa.
- 1943 - The Battle of Empress Augusta Bay in Bougainville ends in U.S. Navy victory over Japan.
- 1947 - Howard Hughes' Spruce Goose flies for the first and last time.
- 1948 - Harry S Truman is elected the 33rd president of the United States.
- 1959 - Charles Van Doren confesses that the TV quiz show "21" is fixed and that he had been given the answers to the questions asked him.
- 1960 - A British jury determines that Lady Chatterly's Lover by D.H. Lawrence is not obscene.
- 1963 - South Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem is assassinated.
- 1976 - Jimmy (James Earl) Carter elected the 39th president of the United States.
- 1983 - President Ronald Reagan signs a bill establishing Martin Luther King, Jr., Day.
02 November Birthdays
- 1734 - Daniel Boone, American frontiersman and explorer.
- 1755 - Marie Antoinette, Queen of France, executed during the French Revolution.
- 1795 - James Polk, 11th president of the United States (1845-49).
- 1865 - Warren G. Harding, 29th president of the United States (1921-23).
- 1885 - Harlow Shapley, astronomer who discovered the Sun is not at the center of the galaxy.
- 1906 - Luchino Visconti, film director (Obsession, Death in Venice).
- 1913 - Burt Lancaster, American film actor.
- 1929 - Richard Taylor, Nobel Prize-winning physicist who proved the existence of quarks.
- 1932 - Melvin Schwartz, physicist who won the Nobel Prize for work on neutrinos.