1675 – Plymouth Colony governor Josiah Winslow leads a colonial militia against the Narragansett during King Philip’s War.
1889 – North Dakota and South Dakota are admitted as the 39th and 40th U.S. states.
1898 – Cheerleading is started at the University of Minnesota with Johnny Campbell leading the crowd in cheering on the football team.
1917 – The Balfour Declaration proclaims British support for the “establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people” with the clear understanding “that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities”.
1920 – In the United States, KDKA of Pittsburgh starts broadcasting as the first commercial radio station. The first broadcast is the result of the United States presidential election, 1920.
1930 – Haile Selassie is crowned emperor of Ethiopia.
1947 – In California, designer Howard Hughes performs the maiden (and only) flight of the Spruce Goose or H-4 The Hercules; the largest fixed-wing aircraft ever built. It was intended as a transatlantic flight transport for use during World War II. The winged giant made only one flight on November 2, 1947, an unannounced decision made by Hughes during a taxi test. With Hughes at the controls, David Grant as co-pilot, and several engineers, crewmen and journalists on board, the Spruce Goose flew just over one mile at an altitude of 70 feet for one minute.
1959 – Quiz show scandals: Twenty One game show contestant Charles Van Doren admits to a Congressional committee that he had been given questions and answers in advance.
1960 – Penguin Books is found not guilty of obscenity in the trial R v Penguin Books Ltd, the Lady Chatterley’s Lover case.
1963 – South Vietnamese President Ngô Đình Diệm is assassinated following a military coup.
1965 – Norman Morrison, a 31-year-old Quaker, sets himself on fire in front of the river entrance to the Pentagon to protest the use of napalm in the Vietnam war.
1984 – Capital punishment: Velma Barfield becomes the first woman executed in the United States since 1962. She was a American serial killer, convicted of one murder, but she eventually confessed to six murders
During her stay on death row, Barfield became a devout born-again Christian. While she had been a devout churchgoer all of her life and had often attended revivals held by Rex Humbard and other evangelists, she later said she’d only been playing at being a Christian. An effort was made to obtain a commutation to life imprisonment but after a Federal court appeal was denied, Barfield instructed her attorneys to abandon plans to appeal to the Supreme Court.
She was executed on November 2, 1984 at the Central Prison in Raleigh, North Carolina. She released a statement before the execution, stating “I know that everybody has gone through a lot of pain, all the families connected, and I am sorry, and I want to thank everybody who have been supporting me all these six years.” Barfield declined a last meal, having instead a bag of Cheez Doodles and a cup of coffee.
Births
1734 – Daniel Boone, American hunter and explorer (d. 1820)
1755 – Marie Antoinette, Austrian-French queen consort of Louis XVI of France (d. 1793)
1795 – James K. Polk, American lawyer and politician, 11th President of the United States (d. 1849)
1865 – Warren G. Harding, American journalist and politician, 29th President of the United States (d. 1923)
1961 – k.d. lang, Canadian singer-songwriter, producer, and actress
Deaths
1887 – Jenny Lind, Swedish operatic soprano (b. 1820)
1950 – George Bernard Shaw, Irish author, playwright, and critic, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1856)
1963 – Ngô Đình Diệm, Vietnamese politician, 1st President of the Republic of Vietnam (b. 1901)
1963 – Ngô Đình Nhu, Vietnamese activist, archivist, politician, and tactical strategist (b. 1910)
1990 – Eliot Porter, American photographer, chemist, and academic
2004 – Theo van Gogh, Dutch actor, director, and producer (b. 1957)
2007 – The Fabulous Moolah, American wrestler (b. 1923)