1620 – Pilgrims aboard the Mayflower sighted land at Cape Cod, Massachusetts.

1780 – American Revolutionary War: In the Battle of Fishdam Ford a force of British and Loyalist troops failed in a surprise attack against the South Carolina Patriot militia under Brigadier General Thomas Sumter.

1851 – Kentucky marshals abducted abolitionist minister Calvin Fairbank from Jeffersonville, Indiana, and took him to Kentucky to stand trial for helping a slave escape.

1862 – American Civil War: Union General Ambrose Burnside assumed command of the Army of the Potomac after George B. McClellan was removed.

1872 – The Great Boston Fire of 1872, Boston’s largest fire, which still ranks as one of the most costly fire-related property losses in American history, began. The conflagration began at 7:20 p.m. on Saturday, November 9, 1872, in the basement of a commercial warehouse at 83–87 Summer Street.

1887 – The United States received rights to Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.

1906 – Theodore Roosevelt was the first sitting President of the United States to make an official trip outside the country. He did so to inspect progress on the Panama Canal.

1907 – The Cullinan Diamond, the largest gem-quality rough diamond ever found, was presented to King Edward VII on his birthday.

1913 – The Great Lakes Storm of 1913, the most destructive natural disaster ever to hit the lakes, reached its greatest intensity after beginning two days earlier. The storm destroyed 19 ships and killed more than 250 people.

1935 – The Committee for Industrial Organization, the precursor to the Congress of Industrial Organizations, was founded in Atlantic City, New Jersey, by eight trade unions belonging to the American Federation of Labor.

1960 – Robert McNamara was named president of Ford Motor Company, the first non-Ford to serve in that post. A month later, he resigned to join the administration of newly elected John F. Kennedy.

1961 – Brian Epstein saw the Beatles play at the Cavern Club in Liverpool.

1962 – Motown Records released “You’ve Really Got a Hold on Me,” by the Miracles.

1963 – “Louie, Louie” was released by the Kingsmen.

1965 – Several U.S. states and parts of Canada were hit by a series of blackouts lasting up to 13 hours in the Northeast blackout of 1965.

1965 – A Catholic Worker Movement member, Roger Allen LaPorte, protesting against the Vietnam War, set himself on fire in front of the United Nations building.

1967 – Apollo program: NASA launched the unmanned Apollo 4 test spacecraft, atop the first Saturn V rocket, from Florida’s Cape Kennedy.

1967 – The first issue of Rolling Stone was published in San Francisco. John Lennon was on the cover.

1970 – Vietnam War: The Supreme Court of the United States voted 6–3 against hearing a case to allow Massachusetts to enforce its law granting residents the right to refuse military service in an undeclared war.

1974 – Columbia Records released Billy Joel’s “Piano Man.”

1979 – Cold War: Nuclear false alarm: The NORAD computers and the Alternate National Military Command Center in Fort Ritchie, Maryland detected purported massive Soviet nuclear strike. After reviewing the raw data from satellites and checking the early-warning radars, the alert was cancelled.

1985 – Garry Kasparov, 22, of the Soviet Union became the youngest World Chess Champion by beating fellow Soviet Anatoly Karpov.

1989 – Cold War: Fall of the Berlin Wall: East Germany opened checkpoints in the Berlin Wall and allowed its citizens to travel to West Berlin.

1998 – A U.S. federal judge, in the largest civil settlement in American history, ordered 37 U.S. brokerage houses to pay US$1.03 billion to cheated NASDAQ investors to compensate for price fixing.

1998 – Singer Billy Preston, his manager Merle Otis Greene and Greene’s wife Sandra were indicted on 22 charges of fraud in collecting $1 million in insurance claims.

1998 – Capital punishment in the United Kingdom, already abolished for murder, was completely abolished for all remaining capital offences.

1998 – Rick James was hospitalized after he suffered a stroke when a blood vessel ruptured in his neck during a show the week before in Denver, CO.

1998 – Michael Jackson settled a lawsuit over stories and pictures in the London Daily Mirror that said his face had been disfigured by cosmetic surgery. A lawyer for the publisher said, “The photographs were taken honestly and were not tampered with, but the Mirror has since met with the plaintiff in person and acknowledges that the photographs do not accurately represent the plaintiff’s true appearance.”

2004 – Firefox 1.0 was released.

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