#TodayInHistory – November 6
3 min read
November 6 – Some important events on this day.
1528 👉🏼 Shipwrecked Spanish conquistador Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca becomes first known European to set foot in Texas
1572 👉🏼 Supernova is observed in constellation known as Cassiopeia
1813 👉🏼 Chilpancingo congress declares Mexico independent of Spain
1860 👉🏼 Abraham Lincoln (Rep-R-Ill) elected 16th American President
1865 👉🏼 American Civil War: CSS Shenandoah is the last Confederate combat unit to surrender after circumnavigating the globe, on its cruise that sank or captured 37 vessels
1879 👉🏼 Canada celebrates 1st Thanksgiving Day
1903 👉🏼 USA recognizes independence of Panama
1913 👉🏼 Mahatma Gandhi arrested for leading Indian miners’ march in South Africa
1917 👉🏼 Bolshevik revolution begins with bombardment of the Winter Palace in Petrograd during the Russian October Revolution.
After the February Revolution in 1917 overthrew Russia’s centuries-old monarchy, the conflict between the Provisional Government led by Alexander Kerensky and the Bolsheviks led by Vladimir Lenin intensified around the country.
On this day (25 October in Old Style) Bolshevik forces under Lenin’s command seized government buildings in Petrograd (or St. Petersburg) and the following day the Winter Palace. This began the Soviet rise to power, and on 9 November the Bolsheviks proclaimed the creation of the Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic, the first socialist state so created.
The revolution did not end the struggles. Over the next 5 years the country descended into the chaos and anarchy of the Russian Civil War; the Soviets would triumph, leading to the creation of the Soviet Union in 1922.
1942 👉🏼 Nazis kill 12,000 Jews in the Minsk ghetto
1975 👉🏼 First performance of the Sex Pistols at St Martins College, London
1978 👉🏼 Shah of Iran Mohammad Reza Pahlavi places the country under military rule; General Gholām Reza Azhāri forms government
1982 👉🏼 A woman ices her husband with anti-freeze.
Shirley Allen is arrested for poisoning her husband, Lloyd Allen, with ethylene glycol, commonly known as anti-freeze. After witnessing her mother spike Lloyd’s drinks with the deadly substance, Shirley’s own daughter turned her in to the authorities.
Lloyd Allen was Shirley’s sixth husband and the second to die from mysterious causes, while the other four had divorced her. John Gregg, who died a year after he married Shirley in 1977, had changed the beneficiary on his life insurance policy shortly before his death. Shirley was outraged to find that she was left with nothing.
1991 👉🏼 The last oil fire in Kuwait set by retreating Iraqi troops is extinguished.
When Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein decided in 1990 to attack and occupy the small, neighboring country of Kuwait, he could not have foreseen the enormous international coalition that would come up against him.
Led by the United States, the coalition forces established the largest military alliance since World War II. Saddam himself called the forthcoming confrontation “the mother of all battles.” Almost a million coalition forces waited across the border in Saudi Arabia.
Operation Desert Storm, which began on January 17, 1991, was a quick, if massive operation lasting a little more than a month. Iraq was routed, but not before their soldiers enacted a “scorched earth” policy, setting fire to 600-700 Kuwaiti oil wells. They burned for months and the last was extinguished in November 1991.
2005 👉🏼 “Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire”, the 4th film based on the books by J. K. Rowling, premieres in London. Goes on to become most successful film of the year, earning almost US$ 900 million.