Today in Your History — November
A look at the people, events and popular culture that shaped our lives
AARP Members Only Access, November 2021
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PHOTO BY: United Archives GmbH/Alamy
Nov. 30: Brian’s Song is released — and makes men everywhere cry (1971)
Men, how many of you can say you had a really good cry before the release of this ABC Movie of the Week, which premiered fifty years ago today on Nov. 30, 1971? The easy-to-love film traced the interracial friendship between Chicago Bears players Gale Sayers (Billy Dee Williams) and Brian Piccolo (James Caan), who died of cancer in 1970 when he was only 26. The prototypical male tearjerker was something of a manly answer to Love Story, and it went on to become a bona fide hit, with its theme music entering the Top 100 record charts and books about Piccolo becoming bestsellers. The film later picked up five Emmys and even counted President Nixon among its many fans. “Some might call it corny,” he said. “Believe me, it was one of the great motion pictures I have seen. I think it was a beautiful production that every American ought to see.” Screenwriter William Blinn, who also wrote the script for Roots and died last year at 83, perfectly summed up the movie’s impact in a 2008 interview: “It’s easy. I can’t tell you how many times guys have said to me, ‘That’s the first time I cried around other guys.’ That sounds stupid. And it is to some degree … But there’s something to be said for that. Kurt Russell said ‘I’d never cried at a movie before that picture.’ Manipulative? Yeah, sure it is. Sentimental? Yes, sure it is. So what?” —Nicholas DeRenzo
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PHOTO BY: Silver Screen Collection/Getty Images
Nov. 29: Natalie Wood dies under mysterious circumstances (1981)
On the night of Nov. 29, 1981, Rebel Without a Cause and West Side Story star Natalie Wood was sailing off Catalina Island on the yacht Splendour with her husband, actor Robert Wagner, and her Brainstorm costar Christopher Walken, when the unthinkable happened. At 1:30 a.m., she was reported missing, and six hours later, she was found dead, floating in the water wearing a nightgown, a down jacket and wool socks. She was 43. Nearby was the yacht’s inflatable dinghy, Prince Valiant, washed up on the rocks. The official story was that Wood had run off after an argument and slipped boarding the dinghy. The death was ruled an accidental drowning, but her autopsy raised questions when it was revealed that she had bruises on her body. Time magazine summed the situation up a few weeks later: “In a matter of hours, shock turned to pity and then to conjecture. Exactly why did Natalie Wood die? When a gorgeous movie star full of wine stumbles off a quarter-million-dollar yacht in her nightgown and drowns, while her actor-husband sits oblivious with her film costar a few yards away, people will talk. And wonder.” A Hollywood tragedy had become a Hollywood mystery. Over the years, new witness accounts muddied the narrative, and the case was reopened in 2011, with one investigator calling Wagner “a person of interest.” If you want to learn more about Wood’s life rather than the tawdry details surrounding her death, check out last year’s HBO documentary Natalie Wood: What Remains Behind, which includes interviews with Robert Redford, Mia Farrow, Elliott Gould and Wagner himself. —Nicholas DeRenzo
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PHOTO BY: Janette Beckman/Redferns/Getty Images
Nov. 28: Queen Latifah releases her debut album (1989)
Queen Latifah reigns supreme over so many parts of the entertainment industry that it can be difficult to remember her scrappy upstart days, when she was just a socially conscious teenage rapper from Newark, New Jersey. In high school, she was a member of the all-female rap group Ladies Fresh, and she graduated in 1987 having been named Best All Around, Most Popular, Most Comical and Best Dancer by her senior class. A little more than two years later, she was releasing her debut album, All Hail the Queen, which felt completely new thanks to its nods to Afrocentrism and feminism and its weighty lyrics about everything from domestic violence to gender inequality. “Since even female hip-hop indulges in the genre’s confrontational macho, it’s a pleasure to hear a woman rapper come on like a budding matriarch instead of a bad sister,” critic Robert Christgau wrote in the November 1989 issue of Playboy. “Shifting beats from reggae to house to De La Nonsense, this is a proud, generous, hopeful record. Revelers will like it fine.” In the music video for the album’s anthemic single “Ladies First,” Latifah surrounds herself with images of Black female “royalty” of the past and present, including Madam C.J. Walker, Sojourner Truth, Angela Davis, Harriet Tubman and Cicely Tyson. Even as a 19-year-old, she fits right in. —Nicholas DeRenzo
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PHOTO BY: Pictorial Press Ltd/Alamy Stock Photo
Nov. 27: Frozen, one of the highest-grossing animated movies of all time, hits theaters (2013)
It’s been eight years since Disney’s Nordic-themed, computer-animated juggernaut Frozen officially hit theaters — and chances are many of your grandkids still haven’t let go of singing “Let It Go” at the drop of a hat. Loosely inspired by Hans Christian Andersen’s 1845 fairy tale “The Snow Queen,” the film stars Kristen Bell, Idina Menzel, Josh Gad and Jonathan Groff, and many critics hailed it as Disney’s best animated offering since the studio’s 1990s “renaissance” period. Audiences showed up in droves, pushing the global box office to $1.281 billion, which made it the highest-grossing animated film of all time, surpassed later only by its own 2019 sequel and the photorealistic “live-action” Lion King remake. But more important than ticket sales, Frozen changed the cultural landscape in ways that few Disney films had in a generation: “Let It Go” hit No. 5 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart and won an Oscar and a Grammy, the film spawned a Broadway musical and theme park rides and Norway even saw a marked tourism boost from people who wanted to immerse themselves in the places that inspired the kingdom of Arendelle. —Nicholas DeRenzo
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PHOTO BY: Tim Ockenden /PA Images via Getty Images
Nov. 26: The Concorde makes its final flight (2003)
Upon its arrival to the passenger market in 1976, the supersonic airliner promised to revolutionize travel, with a maximum cruising velocity of more than twice the speed of sound (or 1,354 miles per hour), which meant that, on the perfect day, you could make it between London and New York City in under three and a half hours. Unfortunately, the supersonic age lasted only 27 years, with Air France and British Airways both retiring their Concorde service in 2003, after a post-9/11 downturn in air travel and a deadly crash in 2000. On Oct. 24, British Airways flew its last run; among the 100 passengers were Joan Collins, Christie Brinkley and Sir David Frost, who dined on champagne and caviar-topped salmon. And then, on Nov. 26, the Concorde Alpha Foxtrot took off from Heathrow for the last time, soaring high above the Bay of Biscay and landing back “home” in Bristol at Filton Airfield, where the planes were originally developed and manufactured. “Today is one of the saddest in aviation history, but at the same time, it’s a day to reflect on the glory of what the U.K. can achieve,” said Prince Andrew, who was there to receive the plane. The Concorde Alpha Foxtrot is currently living out her retirement at a purpose-built museum called Aerospace Bristol. —Nicholas DeRenzo
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PHOTO BY: Michael Montfort/Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images
Nov. 25: The Band plays their farewell concert, which becomes The Last Waltz (1976)
Many musicians have embarked on an obligatory farewell tour, but few acts have gone out with as much flair as The Band. On Thanksgiving night in 1976, rockers Robbie Robertson, Rick Danko, Levon Helm, Richard Manuel and Garth Hudson played their final show together at San Francisco’s Winterland Ballroom to an audience of 5,000. To get in the holiday spirit, they upped the celebratory factor with a full Thanksgiving feast that included 220 turkeys, 90 gallons of gravy, a full ton of yams, 18 cases of cranberries, 400 gallons of apple juice and individual pumpkin and mincemeat pies for dessert. (Bob Dylan brought in 300 pounds of Nova Scotia salmon for any pescatarian fans in the crowd.) After the tables were cleared, the five-hour set started shortly after 9 p.m., and the roster of guest performers was even longer than the list of side dishes: Eric Clapton, Muddy Waters, Joni Mitchell, Neil Young, Neil Diamond, Van Morrison, Bob Dylan, Ringo Starr and on and on and on… If you weren’t one of the lucky attendees who shelled out a then-whopping $25 for the experience, there’s a pretty incredible consolation prize: Martin Scorsese’s The Last Waltz, which documented the events both onstage and backstage, has been called the greatest concert film ever made. —Nicholas DeRenzo
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PHOTO BY: AP Photo
Nov. 24: Hijacker D.B. Cooper vanishes into thin air (1971)
Nov. 24, 1971, marks one of the strangest moments in aviation history, and it’s a mystery that still remains unsolved. That afternoon, a forty-something man in a business suit calling himself Dan Cooper bought a one-way ticket from Portland, Oregon, to Seattle, boarded the plane and sat quietly with a bourbon and soda. Soon, he passed the flight attendant a note saying that he had a bomb in his briefcase, and he demanded four parachutes and $200,000. In Seattle, he released the 36 passengers and much of the crew, and ordered the pilot to fly him to Mexico City. And then, after about 8 p.m., things got weird: “Cooper,” who was later known in the media as “D.B.” after a reporter misheard his name, leapt out of the back of the plane with his parachute and ransom money — and he was never seen or heard from again. Did he die in the fall? Did he escape the country? The FBI spent decades on the case (known as NORJAK, or “Northwest Hijacking”), investigating some 800 suspects and speculating that Cooper was perhaps an ex-paratrooper. Over the years, the mystery inspired films, books, festivals and songs, and some TV fans even predicted that Mad Men’s Don Draper would turn out to be D.B. Cooper at the end of the series. (He didn’t.) In July 2016, the FBI finally ended the investigation after 45 fruitless years. —Nicholas DeRenzo
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PHOTO BY: GAB Archive/Redferns/Getty Images
Nov. 23: George Harrison releases “My Sweet Lord,” the first single from an ex-Beatle to hit No. 1 in the U.S. and U.K. (1970)
A few months after the Beatles officially called it quits in April 1970, George Harrison, the oft-overshadowed “quiet one,” quietly had the last laugh when he released “My Sweet Lord,” a single that would go on to become the first No. 1 hit by an ex-Beatle. Inspired by the Edwin Hawkins Singers’ gospel tune “Oh Happy Day,” Harrison decided to pen his own spiritual song, but this one would be different, bringing together influences from Eastern and Western religions. Lyrics slipped seamlessly between Hebrew (“hallelujah”) and Sanskrit (“Hare Krishna”), with trademark lush production from Phil Spector and guest appearances by Billy Preston, Ringo Starr, Eric Clapton and Badfinger. “I thought a lot about whether to do ‘My Sweet Lord’ or not, because I would be committing myself publicly and I anticipated that a lot of people might get weird about it,” Harrison wrote in his 1980 memoir I, Me, Mine. “Many people fear the words ‘Lord’ and ‘God’ — makes them angry for some reason.” His goal? “I wanted to show that ‘Hallelujah’ and ‘Hare Krishna’ are quite the same thing.” The song ended up peaking at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 charts by December and — despite a plagiarism lawsuit that he lost — it went on to rank third on Rolling Stone’s readers’ poll of the greatest solo Beatle songs. —Nicholas DeRenzo
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PHOTO BY: CBS via Getty Images
Nov. 22: William Shatner and Nichelle Nichols share a groundbreaking interracial kiss on Star Trek (1968)
Since its first episode in 1966, Star Trek has been known as a forward-thinking show. In the third season, on Nov. 22, 1968 — just a year after the Supreme Court struck down laws banning interracial marriage — the sci-fi classic would air one of its most talked-about episodes in franchise history, “Plato’s Stepchildren.” In the episode, aliens who look like ancient Greeks use telekinesis to force Captain James T. Kirk (William Shatner) and Lieutenant Nyota Uhura (Nichelle Nichols) to kiss. Fearing blowback from Southern audiences, producers shot the kiss from an angle that made it hard to see their lips touching, but Nichols recalled in her 1994 biography Beyond Uhura: Star Trek and Other Memories that reaction to the kiss was popular, according to fan mail. She only recalled one complaint, a letter that said: “I am totally opposed to the mixing of the races. However, any time a red-blooded American boy like Captain Kirk gets a beautiful dame in his arms that looks like Uhura, he ain’t gonna fight it.” While the Kirk-Uhura smooch is often cited as the first interracial kiss on American television, this record has been disputed. Funnily enough, Shatner was also involved in an earlier example that may truly be first: He locked lips with French-Vietnamese actress France Nuyen in a scene from Broadway’s The World of Suzie Wong, which aired on the Ed Sullivan Show way back in 1958. —Nicholas DeRenzo
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PHOTO BY: CBS via Getty Images
Nov. 21: Maude has an abortion (1972)
Norman Lear has never shied away from controversy, and that desire to spark conversation reached its high point in 1972, when All in the Family spin-off Maude aired its special episode on Nov. 21 (the first part ran Nov. 16), called “Maude’s Dilemma.” Just two months before the Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision, in January 1973, 47-year-old Maude Findlay (Bea Arthur) finds herself unexpectedly pregnant, and she and her husband, Walter (Bill Macy), debate whether she should get an abortion. “Just tell me, Walter, that I’m doing the right thing not having the baby,” Maude says. He responds: “For you, Maude. For me. In the privacy of our own lives. You’re doing the right thing.” It was a watershed moment in the history of women’s reproductive rights, but it had an unexpected backstory: A group called Zero Population Growth had offered $10,000 to a comedy that incorporated a plotline about controlling the population. Although some writers had pitched vasectomy stories, Lear ultimately decided to explore abortion. Two CBS affiliates refused to air the episode, which brought in about 7,000 letters to the network. “I can’t call it hate mail, although there were a few that said, ‘Die, die,’ but most were intelligent people who were deeply offended and very emotional about it,” Arthur later said. “I think the problem was, I had become some sort of Joan of Arc for the middle-aged woman.” Controversy or not, the two-part episode was a smash hit, and CBS later estimated that up to 65 million Americans — or a third of the nation — had watched one or both parts during its original run or reruns. —Nicholas DeRenzo
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PHOTO BY: Photo by Mark Kauffman/Getty
Nov. 20: ‘Cabaret’ opens on Broadway (1966)
On the night of Nov. 20, 1966, composer John Kander and lyricist Fred Ebb blew the cobwebs off the Broadway musical with the premiere of Cabaret, as they willkommen-ed audiences into a dark and sexy world that was unlike anything that had been seen on the Great White Way before. Based on stories by Christopher Isherwood, Cabaret dramatizes the waning days of the Weimar Republic and the ascent of the Nazis, as seen through the eyes of the performers and regulars at Berlin’s seedy Kit Kat Klub during 1929 and 1930. “This marionette’s-eye view of a time and place in our lives that was brassy, wanton, carefree and doomed to crumble is brilliantly conceived,” wrote New York Times theater critic Walter Kerr the next day. “The place is Berlin, the time the late ’20s when Americans still went there and Hitler could be shrugged off as a passing noise that needn’t disturb dedicated dancers.”
The original cast included Joel Grey as the emcee, future game-show legend Bert Convy as Clifford Bradshaw, ingenue Jill Haworth as Sally Bowles and Lotte Lenya (the wife of The Threepenny Opera composer Kurt Weill) as Fräulein Schneider, and it would go on to run for 21 previews and 1,165 performances. One of the most important and critically acclaimed musicals ever written, Cabaret won eight Tonys, including best featured actor for Joel Grey, who reprised his role (and picked up an Oscar!) for the 1972 film adaptation, starring Liza Minnelli. — Nicholas DeRenzo
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PHOTO BY: LFI/Photoshot/Everett Collection
Nov 19: Milli Vanilli has its Grammy revoked (1990)
Hundreds of artists have taken home Grammys since the awards were first given out in 1959, but only one has had theirs taken away. On this day in 1990, the German-French pop duo behind hits like “Girl You Know It’s True” had its Grammy revoked, after admitting that they hadn’t sung on their albums or in concerts. In February of that year, the dreadlock-sporting lip-syncers had beaten out Neneh Cherry, Indigo Girls, Tone Loc and Soul II Soul for the best new artist award. “Musically, we are more talented than any Bob Dylan,” said one half of the duo, Rob Pilatus, at the time. “Musically, we are more talented than Paul McCartney. Mick Jagger, his lines are not clear… I’m the new modern rock ’n’ roll. I’m the new Elvis.” But fans had already started to suspect not all was as it seemed. At a 1989 Milwaukee stop of the Club MTV tour, their vocal track never started, so they ran offstage, punched their tour manager and locked themselves inside the tour bus. The lip-syncing snafu would go on to be remembered as one of the biggest scandals in pop music history, and while they recorded an attempted comeback album called Back and in Attack, it would go unreleased after Pilatus died of an accidental overdose in April 1998. — Nicholas DeRenzo
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Nov 18: The first push-button phone becomes commercially available (1963)
“I’m old enough to remember the rotary phone” is one of those go-tos people like to say when bragging to their grandkids about how old they are. But that outdated and finger-tiring mode of dialing started to go the way of the dodo on Nov. 18, 1963, when the Touch-Tone Telephone made its grand debut. A year before, the technology had been featured prominently in the Bell System pavilion at the Century 21 Exposition, also known as the Seattle World’s Fair. In a promotional video, a guide introduces the new technology to two teens: “With this indicator, you see how many seconds you save the new way.” “Let’s try it!” shouts the girl, as she steps up to a push-button phone. “OK, I’ll race ya!” the boy responds at a traditional rotary. No surprise: She wins. “I beat ya,” she says. In April 1963, President John F. Kennedy kicked off a countdown clock for the next year’s World’s Fair in New York by punching “1-9-6-4” into a Touch-Tone phone. And then, later that fall, Pittsburgh area customers became the first in the nation to enter what the New York Times dubbed “the era of the push-button phone,” which would reach the rest of the country within 10 years. As that Times announcement noted, the new technology made it possible to dial a seven-digit number in just two to five seconds instead of ten. — Nicholas DeRenzo
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PHOTO BY: CBS via Getty Images
Nov 17: The ‘Star Wars Holiday Special’ airs (1978)
Decades before George Lucas unleashed the maligned alien Jar Jar Binks on the world, the Star Wars franchise released perhaps its most controversial entry yet: the 1978 Star Wars Holiday Special, which aired on CBS only one time and then disappeared into pop culture oblivion. In a galaxy far, far away, the “holiday” in question is Life Day, which is celebrated on the Wookiee planet of Kashyyyk, where we meet Chewbacca’s wife Malla, his son Lumpy and his father Itchy.
The entire main cast of A New Hope returns for the special, but it’s the guest stars who really spin this messy production into the stuff of surreal legend: Bea Arthur as a (singing) bartender at the Mos Eisley cantina, Harvey Korman as a four-armed alien chef, Art Carney as a trader, Diahann Carroll as a holographic singer inside Itchy’s virtual-reality machine, and Jefferson Starship as a holographic band.
While the special has never seen the light of day again, aside from bootleg copies, Disney Plus recently released one brief segment, the nine-minute “Story of the Faithful Wookiee” cartoon, which introduced the character of bounty hunter Boba Fett to the Star Wars universe. Carrie Fisher later found a surprising use for the special. “I did the voiceover for some of the Star Wars discs or whatever and I made it a condition that [George Lucas] would give me the Star Wars Christmas special,” she told David Carr, of The New York Times, “so that I could, you know, have something for parties… when I wanted everyone to leave.” — Nicholas DeRenzo
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PHOTO BY: Bob D'Amico/Disney General Entertainment Content via Getty Images
Nov. 16: ‘General Hospital’ begins 2-day wedding event of Luke and Laura (1981)
Even if you’ve never watched a single second of General Hospital — or any daytime soap opera for that matter — chances are you’ve heard of Luke Spencer (Anthony Geary) and Laura Webber (Genie Francis), whose two-day wedding event in 1981 pulled in an estimated 30 million viewers, still a record for a daytime drama. While casual fans may remember the romance of that day (especially Laura’s towering beaded veil), GH diehards knew that the coupling was not without its controversies: In 1979, Luke raped Laura at a disco, and many fans saw their subsequent relationship as a glorification of abuse. Producer Gloria Monty tried to play the rape off as a “seduction,” but Francis said in a 2020 interview that she can no longer justify that decision. Perhaps the most memorable part of the wedding was its crasher: Oscar winner Elizabeth Taylor showed up as the villainous Helena Cassadine to curse the supercouple, after they foiled her husband’s plans to freeze the world with a weather machine. Soaps! —Nicholas DeRenzo
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PHOTO BY: John Bazemore/AP Photo
Nov. 15: Dave Thomas opens the first Wendy’s, in Columbus, Ohio (1969)
On Nov. 15, 1969, U.S. Army veteran and avowed burger fanatic Dave Thomas founded his first Wendy’s Old-Fashioned Hamburgers restaurant, in Columbus, Ohio. The future fast-food heavyweight — which went on to become America’s third-largest burger chain after McDonald’s and Burger King — took its name from Dave’s daughter Melinda, who earned the nickname “Wenda,” and then “Wendy,” when her siblings couldn’t pronounce her name. She also provided inspiration for the famous logo, which features a red-pigtailed little girl in blue-and-white stripes. “He wanted a character, because he worked for the Colonel at Kentucky Fried Chicken and knew how much that persona mattered,” the literal face of the brand later reminisced about her father, who died in 2002, in a company blog post. “He said, ‘Wendy, pull your hair up in pigtails.’ So I did. He got his camera and took pictures of me and my sister and said, ‘Yep, it’s going to be Wendy’s Old-Fashioned Hamburgers.’ ” Today the restaurant still features square patties, which were supposedly inspired by one of his grandmother’s favorite sayings: “Don’t cut corners.”— Nicholas DeRenzo
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PHOTO BY: Paul Slade/Paris Match via Getty Images
Nov. 14: Ruby Bridges attends all-white elementary school in the South (1960)
Even if you don’t know Ruby Bridges, age 67, by name — and you should! — you might still recognize her as the central figure in Norman Rockwell’s 1963 painting The Problem We All Live With, which depicts a little Black girl stoically walking into school, in front of a wall scrawled with racial slurs and splattered with tomatoes. Although the Supreme Court ruled racial segregation in public schools unconstitutional in 1954, it wasn’t until six years later, on Nov. 14, 1960, that the 6-year-old Bridges became the first Black child to integrate an all-white elementary school in the South.
Charles Burks, one of the U.S. marshals who escorted her into the school, later said of Bridges: “She showed a lot of courage. She never cried. She didn’t whimper. She just marched along like a little soldier. And we’re all very proud of her.”
When the civil rights icon visited the White House some 50 years later, in 2011, President Barack Obama told her, “I think it’s fair to say that if it wasn’t for you guys, I wouldn’t be here today.” To honor Bridges, Obama had the Rockwell painting proudly displayed outside the Oval Office. —Nicholas DeRenzo
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PHOTO BY: Susan Meiselas/Magnum
Nov. 13: The Vietnam Veterans Memorial is dedicated (1982)
On Nov. 13, 1982, the nation’s capital welcomed a shockingly modern new landmark with the dedication of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, part of a five-day ceremony (Nov. 10–14) that included a procession of more than 10,000 vets. Set near the Lincoln Memorial, this architectural marvel was the work of then-21-year-old Maya Lin, whose design was chosen out of 1,421 submissions while she was still an undergraduate at Yale University. Unlike the neoclassical monuments dotting the National Mall, this memorial was decidedly more austere: a black granite wall, sunken into the ground and inscribed with the names of 57,939 fallen soldiers (with more added over the years). It was derided as “a nihilistic slab of stone,” “a black scar” and “a black gash of shame,” though part of that criticism probably had to do with who Lin is. As novelist Viet Thanh Nguyen wrote in his book Nothing Ever Dies: Vietnam and the Memory of War, “They could not understand how a woman, a youth, and a Chinese American could design a memorial for men, for soldiers, and for Americans.” Over the years, public opinion has shifted dramatically, and the memorial is now seen as a place to mourn and heal. In 2019, it was the 14th most-visited National Park Service site, attracting 4,580,587 visitors. —Nicholas DeRenzo
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PHOTO BY: Robyn Beck/AFP via Getty Images
Nov. 12: Jackie Chan wins an honorary Oscar (2016)
At the 8th annual Governors Awards on Nov. 12, 2016, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences celebrated Jackie Chan, now 67, with an honorary Oscar, presented by his Rush Hour costar Chris Tucker. While Chan’s films haven’t always been the kind of serious Oscar bait that have attracted these sorts of honors, there’s no denying that his brand of slapstick-infused martial arts has delighted audiences for decades. According to Forbes, Chan’s films have grossed more than $2.6 billion at the global box office.
“Standing here is a dream,” said Chan, as he accepted the award. “After 56 years in the film industry, making more than 200 films, breaking so many bones, finally this is mine.” He admitted that he had first started thinking about an Oscar after holding one of the shiny gold men at Sylvester Stallone’s house 23 years earlier. “I touched it, I kissed it, I smelled it. I believe it still has my fingerprints on it. Then I talked to myself: I really want one.” —Nicholas DeRenzo
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PHOTO BY: Susan Wood/Getty Images
Nov. 11: John Lennon and Yoko Ono appear naked on the cover of their new album (1968)
On Nov. 11, 1968, John Lennon and Yoko Ono, 88, released their avant-garde album, Unfinished Music No. 1: Two Virgins. The pair recorded the album at Lennon’s home over the course of a single night, while his wife Cynthia was on vacation in Greece (the marriage soon ended for obvious reasons). Released by Apple Records, the resulting album peaked at No. 124 on the Billboard Top 200 albums chart, and chances are you won’t recognize any of the “songs,” which mostly amounted to snippets of conversation, humming, random noises, bird calls, laughter and a few keyboard notes. But you might know its still-quite-controversial album cover: Lennon and Ono appear completely naked, save for eyeglasses and a necklace. Lennon admitted that he was too embarrassed to let a professional take the shot, so he and Ono used a time-delay camera; think of it as an early version of a selfie. Upon release, authorities in some places dubbed the image obscene and seized shipments on the grounds that the album violated pornography laws. Other distributors decided to sell the vinyl in a brown paper wrapper. Beatles press officer Derek Taylor chose a quote from the Book of Genesis to be printed on the paper: “And they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed.” — Nicholas DeRenzo
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PHOTO BY: ©CTW/Sesame Workshop/AF Archive/Alamy
Nov. 10: Sesame Street premieres (1969)
“Sally, you’ve never seen a street like Sesame Street. Everything happens here. You’re gonna love it!” Those were the immortal words that opened the first episode of Sesame Street, 52 years ago today. In the premiere, Gordon (Matt Robinson) introduces a new neighbor girl to the residents of the street, including Susan (Loretta Long), Bob (Bob McGrath) and Mr. Hooper (Will Lee), plus a few Muppets that would go on to become international superstars — even if they looked a bit different at the time. First-season Big Bird had droopy eyelids and was a bit goofy, causing puppeteer Caroll Spinney to call him “the ugliest thing I ever saw.” And Oscar the Grouch? He started out orange! Kermit the Frog, Cookie Monster, Bert and Ernie all made appearances, as did the show’s first celebrity guest, Carol Burnett who shows up for a few seconds after a cartoon segment to say, “Wow, Wanda the Witch is weird.” If you want to relive the magic, you can watch the episode on HBO Max, which is home to the show’s archives and has aired first-run episodes since 2020. — Nicholas DeRenzo
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PHOTO BY: ERMA/Camera Press/Redux
Nov. 9: The Berlin Wall falls (1989)
Anyone who lived through the Cold War will forever have the image of the fall of the Berlin Wall seared into their memory. But in 20th-century German history, Nov. 9 has two very different connotations. In 1938, that autumn night marked the start of Kristallnacht, or the Night of Broken Glass, when Nazis began a coordinated attack on Jews and Jewish-owned properties — one of the earliest signs of the brutality that would follow during World War II. Exactly 51 years later, in 1989, in a poetic bookend, Nov. 9 was also the night that the Berlin Wall fell. But it wasn’t planned that way. A few days earlier, half a million protesters had amassed in East Berlin, and in an effort to quell the mounting tension, East German officials discussed loosening border restrictions. On live television on Nov. 9, spokesman Günter Schabowski announced (mistakenly) that East German citizens would be allowed to cross the border, and when asked by journalists when the new rules would take effect, he answered effective immediately. News of the bureaucratic snafu quickly spread, and East Berliners stormed the wall. The guards held them back for a few hours but without any specific orders, at 10:45 p.m. officials threw the checkpoints open, and East Berliners swarmed through, joining their neighbors to the West as they hugged, wept, danced in the streets, popped champagne, set off fireworks and began demolishing the wall. At least symbolically, the Cold War was over. —Nicholas DeRenzo
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PHOTO BY: Gerald Smith/NBCU Photo Bank/NBCUniversal via Getty Images
Nov. 8: ‘Days of Our Lives’ airs its first episode (1965)
On this day 56 years ago, NBC aired the first episode of Days of Our Lives, making it the second-longest-running American soap opera still on the air, after General Hospital, which premiered in the spring of 1963.
Those early years focused on dramatic, if still plausible, occurrences in the fictional Midwestern town of Salem. Take, for instance, the pilot, in which teenager Julie Olson (Charla Doherty) steals a fur coat from a department store to get the attention of her parents. Amazingly, Julie is still a character on the soap, played by Susan Seaforth Hayes (78), who took over the role in 1968.
Over the decades, Days of Our Lives has been at the forefront of important topical conversations, such as interracial relationships and gay marriage, but plotlines have also veered into the silly and the supernatural — including exorcisms, suspected alien twins and a stalker who kept fan-favorite characters on a tropical island that looked exactly like Salem.
Throughout it all, episodes have always begun with the iconic hourglass opening and the memorable voiceover line: “Like sands through the hourglass, so are the days of our lives.” And you’d need quite a lot of sand: The show aired its 14,000th episode last December. —Nicholas DeRenzo
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PHOTO BY: Bob Riha, Jr./Getty Images
Nov. 7: Magic Johnson announces he’s HIV-positive (1991)
In one of the most stunning moments in NBA history, Lakers point guard and three-time NBA MVP Magic Johnson (now 62) called a press conference in 1991 to announce that he had tested positive for HIV and would be immediately retiring from the game.
“Life is going to go on for me, and I’m going to be a happy man,” he said. “When your back is against the wall, you have to come out swinging.”
While Johnson was one of the most famous players in the league, the moment was so much bigger than his celebrity. The announcement proved that, although HIV/AIDS was primarily thought of at the time as a gay man’s disease, the virus did not discriminate; Johnson later revealed that he had contracted the virus through unprotected heterosexual sex. He vowed to battle the disease and created the Magic Johnson Foundation to develop educational programs and community-based outreach. After his diagnosis, he returned for the 1992 NBA All-Star Game, for which he was voted All-Star MVP, and then played on the “Dream Team” at the Summer Olympics in Barcelona, winning a gold medal. He briefly came out of retirement during the 1995–96 season, joining the Lakers. Thirty years after his press conference, Johnson is healthy, and he credits medical advancements and the friendship of his medical experts — including Anthony Fauci, 80 — with saving his life. — Nicholas DeRenzo
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PHOTO BY: Douglas Kirkland/Corbis via Getty Images
Nov. 6: Cher scores her first solo No. 1 hit (1971)
A chart-topping success as part of Sonny & Cher, the Goddess of Pop, 75, earned her first solo number 1 hit on Nov. 6, 1971, when “Gypsys, Tramps & Thieves” dethroned “Maggie May/Reason to Believe” by Rod Stewart, 76. While the chorus is instantly memorable, the narratively rich lyrics aren’t exactly the sort of material you’d expect to find in a radio single. Cher sings from the point of view of a girl who was “born in the wagon of a traveling show,” as her family moves around the South, performing, preaching and selling tonics. Despite the upbeat tempo, the lyrics deal with much darker themes of racism, classism, teen pregnancy and prostitution. Nevertheless, the song earned Cher a Grammy nomination for best female pop vocal performance, and Billboard writer Rob Tannenbaum called it one of the greatest songs of the 20th century.
“But ‘Gypsys’ isn’t just a highlight of Cher’s catalog,” Tannenbaum writes. “It’s one of the most majestic pop hits ever made. A tale, recounted at breakneck speed, of sexual hypocrisy and consequences, with a bonus undertow of female and class consciousness. It’s voyeuristic like a pulp novel, exploitative like a Lifetime movie and redeemed by the brash confidence Cher gives the narrator.” — Nicholas DeRenzo
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PHOTO BY: Holly Stein /Allsport/Getty Images
Nov. 5: George Foreman becomes world’s oldest heavyweight champ at 45 (1994)
On the night of Nov. 5, 1994, the 250-pound heavyweight George Foreman, now 72, entered the ring at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas wearing the same red velour trunks he had donned during the “Rumble in the Jungle” fight against Muhammad Ali two decades earlier. On this evening, his opponent was the undefeated Michael Moorer, who was 19 years his junior and had recently won the title fight against Evander Holyfield. While the Rumble hadn’t gone in Big George’s favor, this new fight, dubbed “One for the Ages,” had quite a different ending: After 10 rounds, the comeback kid knocked out Moorer, making him the world’s oldest heavyweight at 45, or, as Dave Anderson called him in The New York Times, “boxing’s Father Time.” While noting that “old pappy heavyweights sometimes hang on longer than they should,” Anderson placed Foreman in a class of his own, writing that “big, bald George Foreman, now the oldest gladiator to win a title in any weight class, belongs up there with all the aging athletes of the ages.” — Nicholas DeRenzo
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PHOTO BY: Emmanuel Dunand/AFP via Getty Images
Nov. 4: Barack Obama is elected the first Black president (2008)
Oprah Winfrey and the Rev. Jesse Jackson could be seen crying in Chicago’s Grant Park as Barack Obama, the first Black president-elect of the United States, gave a victory speech for the ages, including references to addresses by John F. Kennedy, Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King Jr.
“It’s been a long time coming,” Obama said, “but tonight, because of what we did on this date in this election at this defining moment, change has come to America.”
Even Sen. John McCain, Obama’s Republican opponent, made note of the moment in his gracious concession speech. “This is an historic election,” he said, “and I recognize the special significance it has for African Americans and for the special pride that must be theirs tonight.”
On a lighter note, Obama addressed the future first daughters with a public promise: “Sasha and Malia, I love you both more than you can imagine, and you have earned the puppy that’s coming with us to the White House.” It wouldn’t be long before the family was joined by Bo, a male Portuguese water dog. —Nicholas DeRenzo
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PHOTO BY: Sovfoto/Universal Images Group via Getty Images
Nov. 3: Laika the space dog launched into Earth's orbit (1957)
In 1957, the Soviets shot Sputnik 2 into space and, with it, launched a Moscow street dog into international fame.
Laika (Russian for “barker”) — cheekily called “Muttnik” in the press — trained just like any other future cosmonaut, learning to eat specialized jellied food and spinning in a centrifuge to mimic the G-forces at launch.
On Nov. 3, Laika officially became the first living creature to enter Earth’s orbit, and news of her feat spread around the globe. “Headlines yelped such barbaric new words as pupnik and pooch-nik, sputpup and woofnik,” said a Time magazine article at the time. Sadly, she wasn’t able to bask in her celebrity status: The flight was always planned as a one-way mission, with official Soviet reports stating that she lived about a week before her oxygen ran out. In 2002, a Russian scientist revealed that Laika had died from overheating and panic after only a few hours in space.
Laika paved the way for future Soviet space dogs, who were able to return to Earth safely, which eventually led to Yuri Gagarin becoming the first human to enter space in 1961. Over the years, she has been honored in Russian space monuments, on postage stamps, in comic books and songs, and in 2008, a memorial was erected to her in Moscow. — Nicholas DeRenzo
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PHOTO BY: CBS via Getty Images
Nov. 2: Edith Bunker dies on ‘Archie Bunker’s Place’ (1980)
Let’s have a moment of silence today to remember the wily, clever Edith Bunker and the memorable woman who played her, Jean Stapleton. After the groundbreaking 1970s comedy All in the Family aired its final episode in 1979, Stapleton could have moved on to the sequel, a spin-off that Carroll O’Connor led for four more seasons, called Archie Bunker’s Place. But Stapleton, who had won three Emmys as Archie’s devoted wife, asked to be written out. She appeared in five episodes as a transition and then, in the second-season premiere, “Archie Alone,” the unthinkable happened: Audiences learned that Edith, one of the most beloved characters in sitcom history, had died in her sleep of a stroke. In a heartbreaking scene, Archie breaks down after finding one of her pink slippers under the bed and says, “You had no right to leave me that way, Edith, without giving me just one more chance to say I love you.”
Stapleton, who died in 2013, later said that when CBS executives asked show creator Norman Lear to kill off Edith to allow Archie to date as a widower, he called the actress to discuss. “Norman said on the phone, ‘I just haven’t been able to say yes to this,’ ” Stapleton recalled. “I said to Norman, ‘Norman, you realize, don’t you, she is only fiction?’ There was a long pause, and I thought, I’ve hurt this dear man that I love so much. And then the voice came back: ‘To me, she isn’t.’ ” — Nicholas DeRenzo
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PHOTO BY: Warner Brothers/Getty Images
Nov. 1: Cool Hand Luke is released (1967)
“What we’ve got here is failure to communicate.”
That’s the memorable and famous line uttered by the warden in Cool Hand Luke, a generation-redefining prison drama about a World War II veteran (Paul Newman) who is arrested for cutting the heads off parking meters, then sentenced to two years on a chain gang. When he refuses to comply with the orders of the cruel warden and repeatedly tries to escape, Luke attracts the ire of the prison officers, who dole out increasingly sadistic punishments.
If you don’t remember anything else from the film — other than the famous car washing scene — chances are you still know that iconic quote. In fact, the American Film Institute ranked it number 11 on its “100 Years … 100 Movie Quotes” list. In a decade that idolized rebels (think Easy Rider), Newman’s Luke emerged as a folk hero of sorts, with an appeal that’s best summed up by the movie poster’s concise tagline: “The man … and the motion picture that simply do not conform.” The film went on to be nominated for four Academy Awards, winning one for George Kennedy as the prisoners’ leader, Dragline. — Nicholas DeRenzo
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