Historical Events on November 9

  • 1851: Marshalls from Kentucky abduct abolitionist minister Calvin Fairbank from Indiana, take him back to Kentucky and put him on trial for his part in helping a slave escape.
  • 1857: In Boston, Massachusetts, the magazine The Atlantic is founded.
  • 1862: Union General Ambrose Burnside takes over command of the Army of the Potomac during the American Civil War.
  • 1872: A fire in the basement of a commercial building at 7:20 pm on November 9th leads to the Great Boston Fire of 1872.
  • 1887: The rights to Pearl Harbor, Hawaii are granted to the U.S.
  • 1906:S President Theodore Roosevelt becomes the first sitting President of the U.S to take an official trip outside of the country when he leaves to inspect the progress being made on the Panama Canal.
  • 1937: The Chinese Army disengages from the Battle of Shanghai.
  • 1953: Cambodia recieves its independence from France.
  • 1965: Portions of Canada and the United States are hit by a series of rolling blackouts that lasts approximately 13-hours during the Northeast Blackout of 1965.
  • 1965: Outside of the U.N. Building, Roger Allen Laporte – a Catholic Worker Movement member – immolates himself in protest of the Vietnam War.
  • 1967: On top of the Saturn V rocket, NASA launches the unmanned Apollo 4 test spacecraft from Cape Kennedy, Florida.
  • 1967: Rolling Stone Magazine’s first issue is published on this day.
  • 1979: NORAD and the Alternate National Military Command Center in Fort Ritchie, Maryland detect a supposed Soviet nuclear missile strike. It’s determined to be a false alarm after the data from the early-warning radars and the first-alert satellites are analyzed.

Famous Birthdays on November 9

  • American mathematician, surveyor and author, Benjamin Banneker is born in 1731.
  • American general A.P. Hill is born in 1825.
  • German scientist and engineer Arthur Rudolph is born in 1906.
  • American actress Paulene Myers is born in 1913.
  • Austrian-American actress Hedy Lamarr is born in 1914.