09 November History
- 1799 - Napoleon Bonaparte participates in a coup and declares himself dictator of France.
- 1848 - The first U.S. Post Office in California opens in San Francisco at Clay and Pike streets. At the time there are only about 15,000 European settlers living in the state.
- 1900 - Russia completes its occupation of Manchuria.
- 1906 - President Theodore Roosevelt leaves Washington, D.C., for a 17-day trip to Panama and Puerto Rico, becoming the first president to make an official visit outside of the United States.
- 1914 - The Australian light cruiser HMAS Sydney wrecks the German cruiser Emden, forcing her to beach on a reef on North Keeling Island in the Indian Ocean.
- 1918 - Germany is proclaimed a republic as the kaiser abdicates and flees to the Netherlands.
- 1935 - Japanese troops invade Shanghai, China.
- 1938 - Nazis kill 35 Jews, arrest thousands and destroy Jewish synagogues, homes and stores throughout Germany. The event becomes known as Kristallnacht, the night of the shattered glass.
- 1965 - Roger Allen LaPorte, a 22-year-old former seminarian and a member of the Catholic worker movement, immolates himself at the United Nations in New York City in protest of the Vietnam War.
- 1965 - Nine Northeastern states and parts of Canada go dark in the worst power failure in history, when a switch at a station near Niagara Falls fails.
- 1967 - NASA launches Apollo 4 into orbit with the first successful test of a Saturn V rocket.
- 1972 - Bones discovered by the Leakeys push human origins back 1 million years.
- 1983 - Alfred Heineken, beer brewer from Amsterdam, is kidnapped and held for a ransom of more than $10 million.
- 1989 - The Berlin Wall is opened after dividing the city for 28 years.
09 November Birthdays
- 1818 - Ivan Turgenev, Russian author (Fathers and Sons, A Month in the Country).
- 1841 - Edward VII, King of England, who succeeded his mother Victoria in 1901.
- 1853 - Stanford White, architect whose designs include Madison Square Garden and Washington Arch.
- 1886 - Ed Wynn, actor and comedian.
- 1918 - Spiro Agnew, vice president to Richard Nixon.
- 1923 - James Schuyler, poet, novelist and playwright.
- 1924 - Robert Frank, photographer.
- 1928 - Anne Sexton, Pulitzer Prize-winning poet.
- 1934 - Carl Sagan, American astronomer and writer.