A Brief History This article presents a chronological list of notable events that happened on November 14th. For each date below, please click on the date to be taken to an article covering that date’s event. Digging Deeper On November 14, 1851, author Herman Melville published his greatest book, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale. On November 14, 1889, American female journalist, Nellie Bly, began her trip around the world in a successful attempt to match the fictional story of Phileas Fogg who went Around the World in Eighty Days in the 1873 Jules Verne novel by the same title. On November…
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A Brief History On November 14, 1910, self-taught aviator Eugene Ely took off from the deck of the USS Birmingham, near Norfolk, Virginia. Piloting a Curtiss Pusher airplane, Ely made history by becoming the first person to take off from a ship in an airplane. Digging Deeper The temporary runway constructed over the front portion of the cruiser was only 83 feet long, barely long enough to allow the plane to take off. In fact, on the historic flight, the wheels of the primitive plane dragged in the water and Ely’s goggles were covered with spray! After the brush with…
A Brief History This article presents a chronological list of notable events that happened on November 13th. For each date below, please click on the date to be taken to an article covering that date’s event. Digging Deeper On November 13, 1002, English king Æthelred II the Unready ordered the killing of all Danes in England, known today as the St. Brice’s Day massacre. On November 13, 1901, a British lifeboat crew answered the distress flares of a small ship in peril off the coast of Norfolk, England, only to suffer terrible hardships in attempting to launch their lifeboat from…
A Brief History On November 13, 1922, the United States Supreme Court decision called Zucht v. King, upheld the discretion that allowed a Texas school board to require mandatory vaccination of school children against smallpox. Digging Deeper The court cited a previous decision, Jacobson v. Massachusetts (1905), that allowed states to force vaccination and claimed that the “police power” of the state to maintain “health and safety” of the public justified such measures. Today, smallpox is virtually eradicated, but other old diseases keep cropping up as do new germs and viruses. As we found out in 2020, mankind is always…
A Brief History This article presents a chronological list of notable events that happened on November 12th. For each date below, please click on the date to be taken to an article covering that date’s event. Digging Deeper On November 12, 1933, Hugh Gray took the first known photos of the Loch Ness Monster. On November 12, 1944, the Royal Air Force (RAF) used its heavy bomber, the Avro Lancaster, to drop Tall Boy bombs on the last German battleship, the Tirpitz. On November 12, 1970, the people along the Pacific Coast of Oregon found out the answer to the…