October 21, 1983: At the seventeenth General Conference on Weights and Measures, the metre is defined as the distance light travels in a vacuum in 1/299,792,458 of a second.
October 21, 1959: The Guggenheim Museum, designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, opens in Manhattan.
October 22, 1844: The Great Anticipation: Millerites, followers of William Miller, anticipate the end of the world in conjunction with the Second Advent of Christ. The following day became known as The Great Disappointment.
October 22, 1879: Using a filament of carbonized thread, Thomas Edison tests the first practical electric incandescent light bulb (it lasted 13½ hours before burning out).
October 22, 1957: Vietnam War: First United States casualties in Vietnam.
October 22, 1962: Cuban Missile Crisis: US President John F. Kennedy, after internal counsel from Dwight D. Eisenhower, announces that American reconnaissance planes have discovered Soviet nuclear weapons in Cuba, and that he has ordered a naval “quarantine” of the Communist nation.
October 22, 1964: Jean-Paul Sartre is awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, but turns down the honor.
October 24, 1901: Schoolteacher Annie Edson Taylor becomes the first person to go over Niagara Falls in a barrel.
October 26, 1977: The last natural case of smallpox in Somalia. The World Health Organization and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention consider this date the anniversary of the eradication of smallpox, the most spectacular success of vaccination.
October 27, 1904: The first New York City Subway line opens; the system becomes the biggest in United States, and one of the biggest in the world.
October 29, 1675: Gottfried Wilhelm (von) Leibniz makes the first use of the long s (∫) as a symbol of the integral in calculus.
November 4, 1966: The Arno River floods Florence, Italy, to a maximum depth of 6.7 m (22 ft), leaving thousands homeless and destroying millions of masterpieces of art and rare books.
November 8, 1973: The right ear of John Paul Getty III is delivered to a newspaper together with a ransom note, convincing his father to pay US$2.9 million.
Nov 12, 1929 - Grace Kelly is born
Nov 12, 2018 - Stan Lee dies
November 13, 1002: English king Æthelred II orders the killing of all Danes in England, known today as the St. Brice’s Day massacre.
November 13, 1841: James Braid first sees a demonstration of animal magnetism, which leads to his study of the subject he eventually calls hypnotism.
November 13, 1956: The Supreme Court of the United States declares Alabama laws requiring segregated buses illegal, thus ending the Montgomery Bus Boycott.
November 17, 1968: Viewers of the Raiders–Jets football game in the eastern United States are denied the opportunity to watch its exciting finish when NBC broadcasts Heidi instead, prompting changes to sports broadcasting in the U.S.
November 18, 2003: The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court rules 4–3 in Goodridge v. Department of Public Health that the state’s ban on same-sex marriage is unconstitutional, and gives the state legislature 180 days to change the law, making Massachusetts the first state in the United States to grant marriage rights to same-sex couples.
Novemner 22, 1963 Kennedy assassination
Too bad he didn’t know about his impending assassination on the 21st.
November 21, 164 BC: Judas Maccabeus, son of Mattathias of the Hasmonean family, restores the Temple in Jerusalem. This event is commemorated each year by the festival of Hanukkah.
November 23, 1968: “Harvard Beats Yale, 29–29”
November 27, 1944: The RAF Fauld Explosion Accident kills over 70 and creates the Hanbury Crater. This is the largest explosion ever in England and one of the biggest non-nuclear weapon explosions in world history. There are still unexploded bombs in this crater because it is too dangerous even today to try and remove them.
November 27, 1835: James Pratt and John Smith are hanged in London; they are the last two to be executed for sodomy in England.