The Week in History November 1-November 7

November 1, 1512 – After 4 years of work, Michelangelo Buonarroti unveiled his 5,800-square-foot painting on the ceiling of the Vatican’s Sistine Chapel.

November 1, 1841 – Father Lucien Galtier dedicated his log church to “St. Paul, the apostle of nations.” The name was deemed superior to “Pig’s Eye,” the community’s previous name, and St. Paul was incorporated as a town in Minnesota on this date in 1849. The log structure later served as the first school of the Sisters of St. Joseph. In 1856 its logs were dismantled, numbered, and hauled up the hill to the St. Joseph’s Academy site. But organizers didn’t communicate plans to rebuild the chapel to the workmen, who used the logs to warm themselves and their coffee.

November 1, 1849 – The legislature establishes funding for the territory’s public schools. By decree of the Northwest Ordinance, one section in each township had been set aside to support a school. Minnesota’s Territorial Governor Alexander Ramsey would consider this his most important piece of legislation.

November 2, 1734 – American pioneer and frontiersman, Daniel Boone, was born near Reading, PA. One of the first folk heroes of the U.S., Boone became famous for his exploration and settlement of what is now Kentucky, which was then beyond the western borders of the Thirteen Colonies.

November 2, 1983 – President Ronald Reagan signs bill establishing the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday.

November 3, 1952 – Clarence Birdseye begins to market frozen peas.

November 3, 1908 – Bronislav “Bronko” Nagurski is born in Ontario. In 1929 he was named All-American as both defense tackle and offensive fullback for the Gophers, the only player to be named All-American for two positions in the same year. He later played for the Chicago Bears football team and performed as a professional wrestler. After his retirement from sports he operated a service station in his hometown, International Falls.

November 4, 1879 – One of the most beloved of American humorists, Will Rogers, was born in Oologah, Indian Territory (now Oklahoma). “I don’t make jokes. I just watch the government and report the facts,” he once joked. He died in an airplane crash with aviator Wiley Post near Point Barrow, AK.

November 4, 1979 – About 500 Iranians stormed the U.S. Embassy in Teheran, Iran, and took 90 hostages, including 70 Americans. What was meant to be a short-lived, symbolic takeover lasted 444 days and, along with America’s ruined economy, helped destroy President Jimmy Carter’s administration because of its incompetent handling of the crisis. But Iran feared Ronald Reagan, who had won by a landslide in November 1980, and the hostages were promptly released when Reagan was inaugurated on January 20, 1981.

November 5, 1935 – Parker Brothers launches the game of Monopoly.

November 5, 2002 – Norm Coleman was elected to the U.S. Senate for Minnesota. He had been elected as the Democratic mayor of St. Paul in 1992; he then then joined the Republican Party in 1996 before defeating former Vice President Walter Mondale for the senate seat. He would go on to seemingly lose his Senate reelection campaign in 2008 to Al Franken. After several investigations not completed until 2010, it was found that Coleman would have won as the result of Democrat voters being allowed to vote who, under existing law, shouldn’t have been.

November 6, 1854 – American conductor John Philip Sousa was born in Washington, D.C. Best known for his rousing marches including The Stars and Stripes Forever.

November 6, 1860 – Abraham Lincoln was elected as 16th President and the first Republican.

November 6, 1861 – Inventor of basketball, James Naismith was born in Almonte, Ontario, Canada.

November 6, 1928 – Colonel Jacob Schick patents the first electric razor.

November 6, 1935 – Revivalist Billy Sunday, a baseball player who became one of America’s most famous evangelists dies at age 73. More than 100 million people heard him speak at his evangelistic crusades, and about 300,000 of them became Christians.

November 7, 11793 – During the atheistic French Revolution, “Christianity” was abolished on this date. Reason was deified, and as many as 2,000 churches were afterward destroyed throughout France.

November 6, 1984 – President Ronald Reagan re-elected President in a record landslide; winning all states except one—Minnesota—defeating Democrat Walter Mondale.

November 7, 1867 – Polish chemist Marie Curie was born in Warsaw, Poland. In 1903, she and her husband received the Nobel Prize for physics for their discovery of radium.

November 7, 1918 – Christian evangelist Billy Graham was born near Charlotte, NC. After his conversion at a revival meeting at age 16, he embarked on a career of preaching and became known worldwide. At least 100 million people heard him speak at his evangelistic crusades, and countless millions more over the airwaves and in films. For virtually every year since the 1950s until his death in 2018, he has been a fixture on lists of the ten most admired people in America and the world. He has received both the Presidential Medal of Freedom (1983) and the Congressional Gold Medal (1996).

November 7, 1989 – The East German government, a puppet socialist-communist regime under the Soviet Union, fell after massive pro-freedom protests.