You may wish to write about the following historical events. Dates are given 6 months in advance to allow you time for research and writing.
We have painstakingly cross-checked every entry, but you are advised to check all facts again as part of your research – just in case! Please let us know of any errors you find.
A greatly expanded list of anniversaries (over 100 per month) is available in The Date-A-Base Book 2009, which covers the whole year from January to December 2009, and The Date-A-Base Book 2010, which covers the whole of 2010. More details below.
200 years ago (27 Nov 1809)
Birth of Fanny Kemble, British actress and author
150 years ago (9 Nov 1859)
The British Army abolished flogging as a punishment
150 years ago (12 Nov 1859)
Jules Léotard, ‘the daring young man on the flying trapeze’, made his debut at the Cirque Napoléon, Paris, in the world’s first trapeze performance
150 years ago (23 Nov 1859) Or 1860?
Birth of Billy the Kid, American Wild West outlaw, also known as Henry McCarty, William Harrison Bonney and Henry Antrim
150 years ago (24 Nov 1859)
British naturalist Charles Darwin published ‘On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection’, which explained his theory of evolution
150 years ago (24 Nov 1859)
Birth of Cass Gilbert, American architect who designed the Woolworth Building in New York and the US Supreme Court in Washington DC
150 years ago (28 Nov 1859)
Death of Washington Irving, American writer of ‘the first American short stories’ (‘The Legend of Sleepy Hollow’, ‘Rip Van Winkle’, and others)
100 years ago (2 Nov 1909)
Death of William Powell Frith, British artist, famous for his precisely rendered crowded scenes of contemporary English life
100 years ago (3 Nov 1909)
Birth of James Reston, Pulitzer Prize-winning Scottish-American journalist
100 years ago (10 Nov 1909)
Death of Renée Vivien, British-born French poet
100 years ago (18 Nov 1909)
US Marines invaded Nicaragua after President José Santos Zelaya ordered the execution of 500 conservative revolutionaries. His regime threatened to destabilise the area and limit foreign access to resources
100 years ago (18 Nov 1909)
Birth of Johnny Mercer, American singer, songwriter and composer who contributed to many Broadway musicals and Hollywood films and co-founded Capitol Records
100 years ago (19 Nov 1909)
Birth of Peter Drucker, Austrian-born American writer and management consultant whose wrote extensively on business management topics
100 years ago (22 Nov 1909)
The Wright Brothers founded the Wright Company to manufacture their aircraft commercially
100 years ago (23 Nov 1909)
Birth of Nigel Tranter, Scottish historian and writer
100 years ago (26 Nov 1909)
Birth of Eugene Ionesco, Romanian-born French author and playwright, founded the ‘Theatre of the Absurd’
100 years ago (27 Nov 1909)
Birth of James Agee, Pulitzer Prize-winning American novelist, poet, screenwriter (‘The African Queen’), and film critic
80 years ago (7 Nov 1929)
New York’s Museum of Modern Art opened to the public
80 years ago (21 Nov 1929)
Spanish Surrealist artist Salvador Dali held his first solo exhibition, in Paris
75 years ago (9 Nov 1934)
Birth of Carl Sagan, American astronomer, science writer and broadcaster
75 years ago (20 Nov 1934)
Death of Willem de Sitter, Dutch mathematician, physicist and astronomer, developed the theory of ‘dark matter’ with Albert Einstein and created theoretical models of the universe based on Einstein’s work
75 years ago (21 Nov 1934)
American jazz singer Ella Fitzgerald made her singing debut in an amateur talent show at the Apollo Theater, Harlem, New York, aged 17
75 years ago (21 Nov 1934)
The musical ‘Anything Goes’ by Cole Porter had its first performance, at the Alvin Theatre, Broadway, New York
75 years ago (23 Nov 1934)
Death of Giovanni Brunero, one of the greatest Italian cyclists of all time
75 years ago (23 Nov 1934)
Death of Arthur Wing Pinero, British playwright
75 years ago (27 Nov 1934)
Death of Baby Face Nelson, American bank robber, shot by FBI agents
60 years ago (26 Nov 1949)
India adopted a new constitution and became a republic within the British Commonwealth
50 years ago (1 Nov 1959)
The first stretch of the M1 motorway was opened. Britain’s first motorway service station also opened that day, at Watford Gap
50 years ago (15 Nov 1959)
Death of C.T.R. Wilson, Scottish physicist who won the Nobel Prize for developing the Wilson cloud chamber used in the study of radioactivity
50 years ago (16 Nov 1959)
The musical ‘The Sound of Music’ by Rodgers and Hammerstein opened on Broadway, New York
50 years ago (17 Nov 1959)
The De Beers diamond company in South Africa announced that they had produced the world’s first synthetic industrial diamonds
50 years ago (17 Nov 1959)
Death of Heitor Villa-Lobos, Brazilian composer
50 years ago (21 Nov 1959)
Death of Max Baer, American heavyweight boxing champion and actor
50 years ago (25 Nov 1959)
Death of Gérard Philipe, popular French actor, star of stage and screen
40 years ago (10 Nov 1969)
The children’s TV show ‘Sesame Street’ made its debut in the USA
40 years ago (13 Nov 1969)
Irene Hanson of Essex gave birth to the first set of quintuplets in the UK who all survived, at Queen Charlotte’s maternity hospital, London
40 years ago (14 Nov 1969)
NASA launched Apollo 12, the second manned mission to the Moon
40 years ago (15 Nov 1969)
American businessman Dave Thomas opened the first Wendy’s fast food restaurant in Columbus, Ohio
30 years ago (4 Nov 1979)
Militant Iranian students stormed the US Embassy in Teheran, taking 90 staff and US marines hostage. Their actions were condoned by Ayatollah Khomeini, who denounced the USA as ‘the great Satan’
30 years ago (15 Nov 1979)
Respected British art historian Sir Anthony Blunt, retired Surveyor of the Queen’s Pictures, was revealed to have been a Soviet spy – the mysterious ‘fourth man’ in the Cambridge spy ring (Burgess-Philby-Maclean)
30 years ago (23 Nov 1979)
IRA member Thomas McMahon was sentenced to life in prison for the assassination of Earl Mountbatten of Burma in August 1979
30 years ago (28 Nov 1979)
The Mount Erebus disaster: an Air New Zealand plane crashed into Mount Erebus during a sightseeing trip, killing all 257 people on board
30 years ago (30 Nov 1979)
The album ‘The Wall’ by Pink Floyd was released
25 years ago (2 Nov 1984)
American murderer Velma Barfield was the first woman to be executed in the USA since 1962, and the first ever to be executed by lethal injection
25 years ago (12 Nov 1984)
The British Government announced that English pound notes would no longer be printed from the end of 1984 and would cease to be legal tender from the end of 1985. (One pound coins had been in circulation since April)
25 years ago (15 Nov 1984)
Death of ‘Baby Fae’, the American baby who received a baboon’s heart to replace her own deformed one. She died 3 weeks after the transplant
25 years ago (20 Nov 1984)
The SETI (Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence) Institute was founded in Mountain View, California
25 years ago (25 Nov 1984)
36 musicians gathered in London to record Band Aid’s ‘Do They Know It’s Christmas’ in order to raise money for famine relief in Ethiopia
20 years ago (9 Nov 1989)
The day the Berlin Wall fell. East Germany reopened it border with West Germany, allowing its citizens to pass freely through the checkpoints
20 years ago (16 Nov 1989)
South African President F.W. de Klerk announced that the Separate Amenities Act was to be scrapped. The country’s beaches were immediately opened to all races, with other facilities to follow
20 years ago (21 Nov 1989)
The proceedings of Britain’s House of Commons were televised live for the first time
15 years ago (19 Nov 1994)
The first National Lottery draw was held in Britain
10 years ago (3 Nov 1999)
Death of Ian Bannen, Scottish stage, film and television actor (‘Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy’, ‘Dr Finlay’, ‘Waking Ned’)
10 years ago (21 Nov 1999)
Death of Quentin Crisp, British writer, model, actor, raconteur and gay icon
10 years ago (29 Nov 1999)
The Northern Ireland Assembly elected its power-sharing executive committee
For more historic anniversaries see The Date-A-Base Book 2009, which covers the whole of 2009 and contains over 1,200 forthcoming anniversaries – twice as many entries per month than our standard lists featured above. For example, there are 56 anniversaries listed above for November 2009, but 114 anniversaries for the same month in the Date-A-Base Book 2009. Over the course of the year you’ll get to hear about hundreds of significant forthcoming anniversaries that other writers just won’t know about – giving you a huge advantage!
The Date-A-Base Book 2009 is an excellent source of ideas for all writers, journalists, film-makers, editors, researchers, producers, teachers, students, speakers and event planners. Just one article sale will pay for your copy many (many!) times over.
And the 2010 edition is now available too. The 2010 edition covers whole of 2010 and is 30% bigger, featuring more than 1,600 anniversaries!
Dave Haslett, www.ideas4writers.co.uk
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