What Happened on November 2nd in History
30 historical events on this date
The BBC Television Service, the world's first regular, "high-definition" (then defined as at least 200 lines) service begins. Renamed BBC1 in 1964, the channel still runs to this day.
BBC Television is the television service of the BBC. The corporation has operated a public broadcast television service in the United Kingdom, under the terms of a royal charter, since 1 January...
World War II: First day of Battle of Elaia–Kalamas between the Greeks and the Italians.
World War II, or the Second World War, was a global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies and the Axis powers. Nearly all of the world's countries participated. Tanks and aircraft played major...
In California, designer Howard Hughes performs the maiden (and only) flight of the Hughes H-4 Hercules (also known as the "Spruce Goose"), the largest fixed-wing aircraft ever built until Scaled Composites rolled out their Stratolaunch in May 2017.
Howard Robard Hughes Jr. was an American aviator, aerospace engineer, business magnate, film producer, and investor. He was one of the richest and most influential people in the world during his...
The Dutch–Indonesian Round Table Conference ends with the Netherlands agreeing to transfer sovereignty of the Dutch East Indies to the United States of Indonesia.
The Dutch–Indonesian Round Table Conference was held in The Hague from 23 August to 2 November 1949, between representatives of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, the Republic of Indonesia and the...
Canada in the Korean War: A platoon of The Royal Canadian Regiment defends a vital area against a full battalion of Chinese troops in the Battle of the Song-gok Spur. The engagement lasts into the early hours the next day.
The Canadian Forces were involved in the 1950–1953 Korean War and its aftermath. 26,791 Canadians participated on the side of the United Nations, and Canada sent eight destroyers. Canadian aircraft...
Hungarian Revolution: Nikita Khrushchev meets with leaders of other Communist countries to seek their advice on the situation in Hungary, selecting János Kádár as the country's next leader on the advice of Josip Broz Tito.
The Hungarian Revolution of 1956, also known as the Hungarian Uprising, was an attempted countrywide revolution against the government of the Hungarian People's Republic (1949–1989) and the policies...
Suez Crisis: Israel occupies the Gaza Strip.
The Suez Crisis, also known as the second Arab–Israeli war, the Tripartite Aggression in the Arab world and the Sinai War in Israel, was a British–French–Israeli invasion of Egypt in 1956. Israel...
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.
From 1956 to 1958, numerous quiz shows airing on CBS and NBC, two of the three American TV networks at the time, were revealed to have prearranged outcomes, such as certain contestants winning after...
The first section of the M1 motorway, the first inter-urban motorway in the United Kingdom, is opened between the present junctions 5 and 18, along with the M10 motorway and M45 motorway.
The M1 motorway connects London to Leeds, where it joins the A1(M) near Aberford, to connect to Newcastle. It was the first inter-urban motorway to be completed in the UK; the first motorway in the...
Penguin Books is found not guilty of obscenity in the trial R v Penguin Books Ltd, the Lady Chatterley's Lover case.
Penguin Books Limited is a British publishing house that was co-founded in 1935 by Allen Lane with his brothers Richard and John. Originally an imprint of publishers The Bodley Head, Penguin became...
South Vietnamese President Ngô Đình Diệm is assassinated following a military coup.
South Vietnam, officially the Republic of Vietnam, was a country in Southeast Asia that existed from 1955 to 1975. It first garnered recognition in 1949 as the associated State of Vietnam within the...
King Saud of Saudi Arabia is deposed by a family coup, and replaced by his half-brother Faisal.
Saud bin Abdulaziz Al Saud was King of Saudi Arabia from 9 November 1953 until his abdication on 2 November 1964. During his reign, he served as Prime Minister of Saudi Arabia from 1953 to 1954 and...
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.
Norman R. Morrison was an American anti-war activist. On November 2, 1965, Morrison doused himself in kerosene and set himself on fire below the office of Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara at the...
The Cuban Adjustment Act comes into force, allowing 123,000 Cubans the opportunity to apply for permanent residence in the United States.
The Cuban Adjustment Act (CAA), Public Law 89-732, is a United States federal law enacted on November 2, 1966. Passed by the 89th United States Congress and signed by President Lyndon Johnson, the...
Vietnam War: US President Lyndon B. Johnson and "The Wise Men" conclude that the American people should be given more optimistic reports on the progress of the war.
The Vietnam War was an armed conflict in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia fought between North Vietnam and South Vietnam and their allies. North Vietnam was supported by the Soviet Union and China, while...
Aeroflot Flight 19 is hijacked and diverted to Vnukovo International Airport, where the aircraft is stormed by authorities.
Aeroflot Flight 19 was a scheduled passenger flight from Bykovo Airport, Moscow, to Bryansk Airport, Bryansk. On 2 November 1973, a Yak-40 aircraft operating the flight was hijacked by 4 people 10...
Channel 4, the British free-to-air public broadcast television channel funded by its commercial activities, starts broadcasting.
Channel 4 is a British free-to-air public broadcast television channel owned and operated by Channel Four Television Corporation. It is publicly owned but, unlike the BBC, it receives no public...
U.S. President Ronald Reagan signs a bill creating Martin Luther King Jr. Day.
Ronald Wilson Reagan was an American politician and actor who served as the 40th president of the United States from 1981 to 1989. A member of the Republican Party, he became an important figure in...
Capital punishment: Velma Barfield becomes the first woman executed in the United States since 1962.
Capital punishment, also known as the death penalty and formerly called judicial homicide, is the state-sanctioned killing of a person as punishment for actual or supposed misconduct. The sentence...
Lebanon hostage crisis: U.S. hostage David Jacobsen is released in Beirut after 17 months in captivity.
The Lebanon hostage crisis was the kidnapping in Lebanon of 104 foreign hostages between 1982 and 1992, when the Lebanese Civil War was at its height. The hostages were mostly Americans and Western...
The Morris worm, the first Internet-distributed computer worm to gain significant mainstream media attention, is launched from MIT.
The Morris worm or Internet worm of November 2, 1988, was a malicious self-replicating computer program that affected VAX computers and SUN-3 workstations running the 4.2 and 4.3 Berkeley UNIX code....
LOT Polish Airlines Flight 703 crashes in Białobrzegi, Podkarpackie Voivodeship, Poland, killing one person and injuring several more.
On 2 November 1988, LOT Polish Airlines Flight 703, an Antonov An-24 operating a scheduled domestic passenger flight from Warsaw Okęcie Airport to Rzeszów Airport in Poland, crashed short of the...
British Satellite Broadcasting and Sky Television plc merge to form BSkyB as a result of massive losses.
British Satellite Broadcasting plc (BSB) was a short-lived television company, based in London, that provided direct broadcast satellite television services to the United Kingdom. It started...
Tropical Storm Linda makes landfall in the Mekong Delta in Vietnam, causing more than 3,000 deaths.
Severe Tropical Storm Linda, also known as Typhoon Linda, Cyclonic Storm Linda , or in the Philippines as Tropical Depression Openg, and in Vietnam as Typhoon No. 5 of 1997 was the worst typhoon in...
Honolulu shootings: In the worst mass murder in the history of Hawaii, a gunman shoots at eight people in his workplace, killing seven.
The 1999 Honolulu shootings or the Xerox murders were an incident of mass murder that occurred on November 2, 1999, in a Xerox Corporation building in Honolulu, Hawaii, United States. Service...
Expedition 1 arrived at the International Space Station for the first long-duration stay onboard. From this day to present, a continuous human presence in space on the station remains uninterrupted.
Expedition 1 was the first long-duration expedition to the International Space Station (ISS). The three-person crew stayed aboard the station for 136 days, from 2 November 2000 to 19 March 2001. It...
Lewis Hamilton secured his maiden Formula One Drivers' Championship Title by one point ahead of Felipe Massa at the Brazilian Grand Prix, after a pass for fifth place against the Toyota of Timo Glock on the final lap of the race.
Sir Lewis Carl Davidson Hamilton is a British racing driver who competes in Formula One for Ferrari. Hamilton has won a joint-record seven Formula One World Drivers' Championship titles—tied with...
The Chicago Cubs defeat the Cleveland Indians in the World Series, ending the longest Major League Baseball championship drought at 108 years.
The Chicago Cubs are an American professional baseball team based in Chicago. The Cubs compete in Major League Baseball (MLB) as a member club of the National League (NL) Central Division. The club...
In Vienna's Innere Stadt district, an ISIL sympathizer shoots and kills four people and injures 23 more, before being shot and killed by the police.
Vienna is the capital, most populous city, and one of the nine states of Austria. It is Austria's primate city, with just over two million inhabitants. Its larger metropolitan area has a population...
A peace agreement is signed between the Ethiopian government and the Tigray People's Liberation Front, ending the Tigray War.
The Ethiopia–Tigray peace agreement, also called the Pretoria Agreement or the Cessation of Hostilities Agreement (CoHA), is a peace treaty between the government of Ethiopia and the Tigray People's...