Key Historical Events on November 14th
- 1960: Ruby Bridges desegregates her school. Six-year-old Ruby Bridges was escorted by four federal marshals to her first day of classes at William Frantz Elementary School in New Orleans, Louisiana, becoming the first Black child to attend an all-white elementary school in the South, a pivotal moment in the American civil rights movement.
- 1969: Apollo 12 launched. NASA launched Apollo 12, the second manned mission to land on the Moon. The crew included astronauts Charles Conrad Jr., Richard F. Gordon Jr., and Alan L. Bean, with the mission successfully touching down on the lunar surface five days later.
- 1940: The Coventry Blitz. Hundreds of German bombers attacked the English city of Coventry in one of the most devastating bombing raids of World War II, a series of attacks known as the Coventry Blitz.
- 1889: Nellie Bly begins her world trip. American journalist Nellie Bly began her celebrated attempt to travel around the world in under 80 days, inspired by Jules Verne’s fictional Around the World in Eighty Days. She successfully completed the journey in just over 72 days.
- 1970: Marshall University plane crash. A chartered jet carrying most of the Marshall University football team, returning from a game against East Carolina University, crashed into a hillside near Kenova, West Virginia, killing all 75 people on board.
Other Notable Events
- 1851: Herman Melville’s masterpiece novel, Moby Dick, was published in New York by Harper & Brothers.
- 1910: Aviator Eugene Ely performed the first successful airplane takeoff from the deck of a ship, the USS Birmingham, off the coast of Hampton Roads, Virginia.
- 1972: The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed above 1,000 for the first time, reaching 1003.16 points.
- 1979: U.S. President Jimmy Carter issued an executive order freezing all Iranian assets in the United States in response to the Iran hostage crisis.
- 1985: The Nevado del Ruiz volcano in Colombia erupted, resulting in the catastrophic mudslide that killed an estimated 25,000 people.
Birthdays
- 1948: King Charles III, the current monarch of the United Kingdom, was born in Buckingham Palace.
- 1889: Jawaharlal Nehru, India’s first Prime Minister, was born (his birthday is celebrated as Children’s Day in India).
- 1954: Condoleezza Rice, the first Black woman to serve as U.S. National Security Advisor and Secretary of State, was born.
