November 4th is

King Tut Day *

National Candy Day

Fountain Pen Day

Punkin Chunkin Opening Day *

Sausage and Kraut Day

Use Your Common Sense Day *

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MORE! Mozart, Nellie Tayloe Ross and Will Rogers, click

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WORLD FESTIVALS AND NATIONAL HOLIDAYS

Andorra – Saint Charles Day

Dominica – Community Service Day

Italy – National Unity Day

Micronesia – National Day

Northern Mariana Islands –
Citizenship Day

Panama – Flag Day

Russia – Unity Day

Tonga – Constitution Day

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On This Day in HISTORY

1501 – Catherine of Aragon, age 16, and Arthur Tudor, Prince of Wales, age 15, meet for the first time, 10 days before they are married – Arthur will die of an unknown ailment, five months after the wedding, Catherine will swear their marriage was never consummated, then she will marry Arthur’s younger brother Henry in 1509, two months after he became King of England at age 18, when she is 24

1640 – Carlo Mannelli, Italian violinist and composer, is born in Rome

1737 – Real Teatro di San Carlo, now the oldest continuously active venue for public opera in the world, opens its doors in Naples, Italy

1783 – Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s Symphony No. 36 is performed for the first time in Linz, Austria

1791 – The Western Confederacy of American Indians wins the largest victory ever known by Native Americans over the United States in the Battle of the Wabash – the loss was so great that the U.S. House of Representatives instigated the first Congressional Special Committee Investigation, and President Washington initiated what has become known as ‘executive privilege’ for the first time

1839 – Chartist leader Henry Vincent and a few of his supporters (Chartists support the People’s Charter, which includes the right to vote for every man aged 21 or older ‘of sound mind, and not undergoing punishment for a crime’) are being held gaol in Newport, Monmouthshire Wales, so Chartist sympathizers, led by John Frost, march on the town to free them, a confrontation that became the brief but bloody battle called the Newport Rising, the last large-scale armed rebellion in Great Britain

1846 – Benjamin Palmer patents an artificial leg

1847 – Sir James Young Simpson, Scottish physician, discovers the anaesthetic  properties of chloroform

1852 – Camillo Benso, Count of Cavour, becomes the prime minister of Piedmont-Sardinia, which becomes a key component in the unification of Italy

1868 – Camagüey, Cuba, revolts against Spain during the Ten Years’ War

1879 – Will Rogers, American humorist and social commentator, is born: “Common sense ain’t all that common”

1880 – James and John Ritty patent the first cash register

1890 – London’s first deep-level tube railway, the City and South London Railway, opens between King William Street and Stockwell

1922 – British archaeologist Howard Carter and his workmen uncover a step leading to the tomb of King Tutankhamen in the Valley of the Kings in Egypt – King Tut Day *

1924 – Nellie Tayloe Ross wins a special election to succeed her husband William after his death as Governor of Wyoming, the first woman governor of a U.S. state, serving from 1925 to 1927 – then she was director of the U.S. Mint in the administrations of three presidents from 1933 to 1953

1939 – The 40th National Automobile Show: first air-conditioned car is put on display

1952 – The U.S. federal government establishes the National Security Agency (NSA)

1956 – The Hungarian Revolution is ended when additional Soviet troops arrive, combine forces with Soviet units already there, and kill an estimated 3000 civilians, and wounding 13,000 more

1960 – At Kasakela Chimpanzee Community in Tanzania, Dr Jane Goodall  observes  chimpanzees creating tools, the first-ever observation in non-humans

1962 – United States concludes Operation Fishbowl, its final above-ground nuclear weapons testing series, in anticipation of the 1963 Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty

1965 – Lee Ann Roberts Brredlove is the first woman to exceed 300 mph, 308.5 mph

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 – Venice is submerged on the same day to an all-time record acqua alta of 194 cm.

1970 – Salvador Allende takes office as President of Chile, the first Marxist to become president of a Latin American country through open elections

1973 – The Netherlands experiences the first Car-Free Sunday caused by the 1973 oil crisis. Highways are used only by buses, cyclists and roller skaters

1979 – Iran hostage crisis: An Iranian mob, mostly students, overrun the US embassy in Tehran and take 90 hostages (63 are Americans), demanding the shah return to Iran to stand trial

1984 – Nicaragua holds its first free eletions in 56 years

1986 – The first Punkin Chunkin * is held on the Saturday after Halloween (November 1 that year) – five guys chunked in front of about 40 other people. The second year, there were 8 entries and 200 attendees, and the machines got names. By Chunk4, it was the ‘World Championship’ and legends were starting

1988 – U2’s concert movie Rattle and Hum opens in the U.S. and the U.K.

1991 – Ronald Reagan’s presidential library opens in Simi Valley, CA

1995 – Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin is assassinated by an Israeli Ultraorthodox Jewish extremist after leaving a peace rally

1999 – U.N. imposes economic sanctions against the Taliban that controlled most of Afghanistan because they refuse to turn over Osama bin Laden, who is charged with masterminding the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania

2001 – The Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone movie world premiere in London

2002 – Chinese authorities arrest cyber-dissident He Depu for signing a pro-democracy letter to the 16th Communist Party Congress

2007 – Bud Bilanich starts Use Your Common Sense Day * on Will Rogers birthday

2008 – Barack Obama becomes the first African American to be elected U.S. President

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Visuals

• King Tutankhamen
• International flags
• Catherine of Aragon with pet monkey
• Real Teatro di San Carlo interior (Naples opera house)
• Drawings of Palmer’s artificial leg
• Antechamber of Tutankhamen’s tomb, tinted photo by Harry Burton, Stapleton collection
• Jane Goodall with chimpanzee
• Netherlands Car-Free Sunday 1973
• NY Times headline morning after 2008 election

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