What Happened in November?

The Boxer Rebellion begins in Shandong, China on November 2, 1899 with attacks on missionaries and Chinese converts. The uprising aimed to stop the spread of Western and Japanese influence including western religion begun by peasants but was eventually supported by the government. Expand +

Panama declares independence from Colombia with U.S, Support while simultaneously negotiating a treaty granting the U.S. the right to construct the canal. The United States recognized Panama three days later The treaty that allowed the United States to build and operate a canal that traversed Panama. 

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Mary Anderson is granted a patent for a windshield wiper. The United States Patent Office awarded Anderson patent number 743,801 for her Window Cleaning device which consisted of a lever inside the vehicle that controlled a rubber blade on the outside of the windshield. More

Oklahoma is admitted to the United States of America becoming the 46th State of the Union.

Dr. Crippen is convicted in London for the murder of his wife, making it one of the first cases solved with the help of wireless communication.

The Mexican Revolution begins as Francisco Madero, speaking at San Luis Potosi, in San Antonio, Texas, calls for an uprising against the elitist government and oligarchical policies of Porfirio Díaz who had already being in power for 33 years and had just just declared himself the winner after a mock election against Madero and was starting his 7th term as president.  Expand +

The Bulgarian siege of the fortress city of Adrianople (modern-day Edirne) begins. The siege ended on March 26, 1913, when Bulgarian and Serbian forces captured the city. The decisive victory was a significant blow to the Ottoman army leading to the end of the First Balkan War.

Woodrow Wilson is elected the 28th President of the U.S. by defeating the incumbent William H. Taft and former president Theodore Roosevelt in the 1912 presidential election with a landslide victory in the electoral college and just 41.8% of the popular vote, the lowest vote share for a victorious presidential candidate since 1860. More

Russia declares war on Turkey, following the shelling of Russian ports and the sinking of Russian ships in the Black Sea by Turkey. Three days later, on November 5, 1914, Great Britain and France, declared war on the Ottoman Empire, respecting their agreement with Russia, widening the conflict of World War I.

Great Britain and France declared war on Turkey respecting their agreement with Russia, widening the conflict of World War I.

Jeannette Rankin becomes the first woman in the history of the nation to win a seat in the U.S. Congress. when she is elected to the U.S. House of Representatives for the State of Montana. More

The Hospital ship HM Britannic, Sister ship to the Titanic, sinks on her sixth voyage when she struck a mine and sank off the Greek coast in the Agean Sea. More than 1,000 crew, doctors and nurses were on board, and 30 people lost their lives. The Britannic sank in 55 minutes and was the largest ship lost in the First World War. More

The Balfour Declaration was a public statement issued by the British government in 1917 during the First World War announcing its support for the establishment of a "national home for the Jewish people" in Palestine, then an Ottoman region with a small minority Jewish population. The statement came in the form of a letter from Britain’s then-foreign secretary, Arthur Balfour, addressed to Baron Lionel Walter Rothschild, More

The "October" Revolution in Russia begins on November 7, 1917, (October 25 - Julian calendar) as the Bolshevik Party, led by Vladimir Lenin, seizes power in Petrograd (now St. Petersburg) where the Bolsheviks launched a nearly bloodless coup against the Provisional Government and eventually formed a new government with Lenin at its head.

The WWI Armistice between Germany and the Allies on the Western Front also known as the Armistice of Compiègne is officially signed, after more than four years of fighting and the loss of millions of lives. The armistice was basically a cease fire agreement which is widely considered the end of World War I. Expand +

The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier is dedicated in Arlington Cemetery in Washington DC. On November 11, 1921, The prior month, in the French town of Chalons-sur-Marne, U.S. Army Sgt. Edward F. Younger, a decorated World War I veteran, had selected the "Unknown Soldier" to be interred in the planned Tomb at Arlington National Cemetery, by laying a spray of white roses upon one of four caskets. Expand +

The first successful transfer of fuel in mid-air. On November 12, 1921, while circling over Long Beach, California as wing walker Wesley May climbed from the wingtip of a Standard J-1 biplane to a Curtiss JN-4 “Jenny” biplane with a five-gallon can of gasoline strapped to his back and successfully poured the gas into the Jenny’s fuel tank. Expand +

The entrance to the tomb of Tutankhamun (King Tut) is discovered in Egypt's Valley of the Kings by British archaeologist Howard Carter and his sponsor Lord Carnarvon. on November 4, 1922. After years of searching they found a step cut into the bedrock that led to a staircase and a sealed doorway. Expand +

Twenty two days after British archaeologist Howard Carter discovered the entrance to the tomb of Tutankhamun (King Tut) the excavators reached another sealed doorway on November 26, 1922 and opened the antechamber, the first of four chambers which was filled with treasures. Expand +

Adolf Hitler's first attempted coup, the Beer Hall Putsch, is foiled in Munich, Germany.