1 1207 Henry III; 1685 Charles VI; 1881 William Edward Boeing; 1885 Louis Untermeyer; 1890 Stanley Holloway; 1909 Sam Yorty; 1920 Walter Matthau; 1921 James Whitmore; 1924 Jimmy Earl Carter, William Rehnquist; 1927 Tom Bosley; 1928 Laurence Harvey, George Peppard; 1930 Richard Harris; 1935 Julie Andrews; 1949 Annie Leibovitz; 1950 Randy Quaid; 1953 Greta Waitz.
• 1837: Treaty with Winnebago Indians stipulates that they get to keep some of their land in exchange for use of their name on "Slow-moving, gas-guzzling behemoths driven by people who talk about their grandchildren at the drop of a hat."
• 1898: Jews are expelled from Kiev Russia; when they leave they take all the chickens with them.
• 1903: Baseball first World Series, Pittsburgh v. Boston; Boston loses first game, blames New York.
• 1937: Pullman Co. formally recognizes Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters; doesn't tell them for 12 years, claiming, "We didn't want to wake them."
• 1955: Honeymooners premieres.
• 1962: Johnny Carson hosts his first Tonight Show.

2 1800 Nat Turner; 1869 Mohandas Gandhi; 1890 Groucho Marx; 1895 Bud Abbott; 1904 Graham Greene; 1928 Clay Felker, Spanky McFarland; 1938 Rex Reed; 1945 Don McLean; 1948 Donna Karan; 1951 Sting; 1954 Lorraine Bracco; 1970 Kelly Ripa.
• 1608: Prototype of modern telescope completed by Jan Lippershey; after its first demonstration, Lippershey's neighbors all buy drapes.
• 1936: First alcohol power plant established, in Atchison, Kansas; this might explain what's the matter with Kansas.
• 1950: Comic strip Peanuts first debuts in 9 newspapers; adult readers respond: "Wha, wha, wha-wha, wha."
• 1956: First atomic powered clock exhibited in NYC; neighbors complain about the eerie glow.
• 1959: Twilight Zone premieres
• 1984: Three Russian cosmonauts return to earth after a record 237 days in orbit; when asked about the other two that went up with them, they get real quiet and look at their feet.
• 1988: Police breakup domestic disturbance between Mike Tyson & Robin Givens; initially looks like a TKO for Tyson, but Givens wins in a split decision.

3 1925 Gore Vidal; 1941 Chubby Checker; 1947 Lindsey Buckingham; 1951 Dave Winfield; 1954 Al Sharpton; 1962 Tommy Lee.
• 1789: George Washington proclaims the first national Thanksgiving Day on Nov 26.
• 1863: Abraham Lincoln designates last Thursday in November as Thanksgiving Day.
• 1918: Boris becomes king of Bulgaria; his queen, Natasha, gushes, "Boris dahlink! Now we go after moose and squirrel?"
• 1922: First facsimile photo sent over city telephone lines; first facsimile received is ad for ink cartridges.
• 1955: Captain Kangaroo and The Mickey Mouse Club TV programs premiere.
• 1961: Dick Van Dyke Show debuts.
• 1970: Major League Baseball umpires call their first strike; that took balls.
• 1990: East and West Germany reunite as one country; rest of world looks on nervously and says, "Yeah, that's eh, great, sure. Congratulations. Okay, gotta go."

4 1861 Frederic Remington; 1880 Damon Runyon; 1923 Charlton Heston; 1944 Patti LaBelle.
• 1883: Orient Express makes its first run, linking Turkey to Europe by rail; no murders reported.
• 1931: Comic strip Dick Tracy debuts.
• 1957: Leave it to Beaver premieres.

5 1902 Ray Kroc; 1919 Allen Ludden, Donald Pleasence; 1923 Philip Berrigan; 1924 Bill Dana; 1943 Steve Miller; 1951 Karen Allen, Bob Geldof.
• 1945: Meet the Press premieres on radio.
• 1947: First Presidential address televised from White House; Truman carries on for several minutes about, I dunno, commies, or something.

6 1846 George Westinghouse; 1887 Le Corbusier; 1906 Janet Gaynor; 1909 Carole Lombard; 1914 Thor Heyerdahl; 1925 Shana Alexander; 1973 Rebecca Lobo.
• 1889: Thomas Edison shows his first motion picture; audience is stupified by 90 minutes of footage of his family's trip to the Poconos.
• 1939: Hitler declares he has no intention of war with Britain & France; which is kind of true since he expects them to surrender without a fight.
• 1963: Babra Streisand appears on The Judy Garland Show.
• 1991: Elizabeth Taylor weds Larry "Elizabeth Taylor's 8th Husband" Fortensky.

7 1905 Andy Devine; 1917 June Allyson; 1931 Desmond Tutu; 1941 Martha Stewart; 1952 Vladimir Putin; 1955 Yo-Yo Ma.
• 1860: Telegraph line between LA & SF opens; first messages trade catty snipes about weather and respective music scenes in each city.
• 1871: Great Chicago Fire.
• 1935: Ozzie marries Harriet.
• 1957: American Bandstand premieres.
• 2003: Arnold Schwarzenegger is elected Governator of Kulifonyah.

8 1890 Eddie Rickenbacker; 1920 Frank Herbert; 1936 Rona Barrett, David Carradine; 1939 Paul Hogan; 1941 Jesse Jackson; 1943 Chevy Chase; 1949 Sigourney Weaver; 1951 Johnny Ramone.
• 1944: Adventures of Ozzie & Harriet debuts on radio; listeners check their dictionaries for the definition of the word "adventure".
• 1957: Brooklyn Dodgers announce their move to Los Angeles.
• 1964: Ringo Starr takes & passes his driving test; we're supposed to care about this, but we're not sure why.

9 1547 Miguel de Cervantes; 1890 Aimee Semple McPherson; 1900 Alastair Sims; 1903 Walter O'Malley; 1908 Jacques Tati; 1918 E. Howard Hunt; 1927 Robert Shaw; 1940 John Lennon; 1944 John Entwistle, Peter Tosh; 1954 Scott Bakula.
• 1967: Che Guevara executed in Bolivia.
• 1973: Elvis & Priscilla Presley divorce after six years; cult insisting that they're still married is founded almost immediately.

10 1900 Helen Hayes; 1918 Thelonious Monk; 1924 James Clavell; 1926 Richard Jaeckel; 1946 Ben Vereen; 1955 David Lee Roth.
• 1857: American Chess Association formed; wedgies all around!
• 1975: Liz Taylor's sixth marriage (re-marries Richard Burton).

11 1844 Henry John Heinz; 1884 Eleanor Roosevelt; 1918 Jerome Robbins; 1919 Art Blakey; 1925 Elmore Leonard; 1948 Daryl Hall; 1962 Joan Cusack; 1971 Luke Perry.
• 1890: Daughters of the American Revolution founded, although, technically, it should have been called Grand-daughters of the American Revolution.
• 1962: First appearance of a Gabor sister on the Merv Griffin Show.
• 1975: Saturday Night Live premieres with guest host George Carlin.

12 1935 Luciano Pavarotti; 1947 Chris Wallace.
• 1823: Scotsman Charles Macintosh begins selling Macs (raincoats); the "killer app" is that they keep you dry.
• 1960: Nikita Khrushchev pounds his shoe at UN General Assembly session; other nations unimpressed with quality of Soviet-made footwear open factories in China, instead.

13 1853 Lillie Langtry; 1909 Herblock (Herbert L. Block); 1925 Lenny Bruce, Margaret Thatcher; 1939 Melinda Dillon; 1942 Paul Simon; 1949 Sammy Hagar; 1959 Marie Osmond.
• 1947: Kukla, Fran & Ollie premieres.
• 1987: First military use of trained dolphins by U.S. Navy; American forces are able to slip past enemy soldiers distracted by the dolphins' tossing volleyballs and gliding along surface on their tails.

14 1633 James II; 1644 William Penn; 1888 Katherine Mansfield; 1890 Dwight D. Eisenhower; 1894 e. e. cummings; 1896 Lillian Gish; 1916 C. Everett Koop; 1927 Roger Moore; 1938 John Dean III; 1939 Ralph Lauren; 1940 Cliff Richards; 1946 Justin Hayward; 1952 Harry Anderson; 1958 Thomas Dolby.
• 1912: Bull Moose Party candidate Teddy Roosevelt is shot while campaigning for the presidency; almost a century passes before shooting a moose becomes a campaign issue again.
• 1926: Winnie-the-Pooh published (1926); A.A. Milne shouts, “Show me the hunny!”

15 1858 John L. Sullivan; 1881 P.G. Wodehouse; 1900 Mervyn Le Roy; 1908 John Kenneth Galbraith; 1921 Mario Puzo; 1924 Lee Iacocca; 1942 Penny Marshall; 1945 Jim Palmer; 1946 Richard Carpenter.
• 1860: Eleven-year-old Grace Bedell writes to Abraham Lincoln, telling him to grow a beard; he writes back, telling her to go jump in a lake.
• 1985: Shelley Taylor of Australia makes fastest swim ever around Manhattan Island, 6 hours 12 minutes 29 seconds; her support vehicle, stuck in midtown traffic, arrives 3 days later.

16 1854 Oscar Wilde; 1886 David Ben-Gurion; 1888 Eugene O'Neill; 1890 Paul Strand; 1898 William O. Douglas; 1925 Angela Lansbury; 1927 Gunter Grass; 1931 Charles Colson; 1946 Suzanne Somers; 1947 Bob Weir; 1958 Tim Robbins.
• 1869: Hotel in Boston becomes the first to have indoor plumbing; it is soon flush with success.
• 1923: Disney Co. founded; first lawsuit filed three days later.
• 1964: China detonates its first nuclear bomb; detonates the second one an hour later.

17 1903 Jerry Colonna, Irene Ryan, Nathanael West; 1905 Jean Arthur; 1912 John Paul I; 1915 Arthur Miller; 1919 Rita Hayworth; 1920 Montgomery Clift; 1930 Jimmy Breslin; 1938 Robert "Evel" Knievel; 1942 Gary Puckett; 1947 Michael McKean; 1948 Margot Kidder, George Wendt; 1949 Timothy Bottoms; 1952 Howard E. Rollins Jr.; 1955 Sam Bottoms; 1959 Dolph Lundgren.
• 1931: Al Capone, convicted of tax evasion, is sentenced to 11 years in prison; this entry brought to you by the American Tax Accountant Association.
• 1933: Albert Einstein arrives in the U.S.; spends hours arguing with immigration that he doesn't want to change his name to "Brooks".
• 1961: NY Museum of Modern Art hangs Henri Matisse's Le Bateau upside-down, it isn't noticed and corrected until December 3; curators decide to have a second look at another recent installation, Rodin's sculpture Thinker Doing Headstand While Balancing Huge Chunk of Marble on his Feet.
• 1967: Hair is first performed.

18 1889 Fannie Hurst; 1898 Lotte Lenya; 1921 Jesse Helms; 1925 Melina Mercouri; 1926 Chuck Berry, George C. Scott; 1933 Peter Boyle; 1939 Mike Ditka, Lee Harvey Oswald; 1947 Laura Nyro; 1951 Pam Dawber; 1956 Martina Navratilova; 1958 Jean-Claude Van Damme; 1961 Wynton Marsalis, Erin Moran; 1962 Vincent Spano.
• 1767: Mason Dixon line established, dividing U.S. into "whistling" and "non-whistling" sections.
• 1867: U.S. takes possession of Alaska; people in Rocky Mountain states respond, "Yeah, great. Just what we needed, more snow."
• 1922: British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) established.

19 1895 Lewis Mumford; 1922 Jack Anderson; 1931 John Le Carré; 1945 John Lithgow.
• 1849: Elizabeth Blackwell becomes first woman in U.S. to receive a medical degree; turns out it was just a wacky mailroom mix-up and not actually hers.
• 1957: Damn Yankees closes after 1,022 performances on Broadway; a production in Boston, however, has been playing continuously to sold-out audiences since then.

20 1632 Sir Christopher Wren; 1859 John Dewey; 1874 Charles Edward Ives; 1889 Margaret Dumont; 1908 Arlene Francis; 1925 Art Buchwald; 1932 William Christopher; 1934 Martin Landau; 1935 Jerry Orbach; 1953 Tom Petty.
• 1944: General Douglas MacArthur return to the Philippines as promised; upon wading ashore, he asks, "Anybody seen my corn-cob pipe? I left it around here, someplace."
• 1968: Jacqueline Kennedy marries Aristotle Onassis, providing Life magazine photographers with material for several years.

21 1772 Samuel Taylor Coleridge; 1917 Dizzy Gillespie; 1925 Joyce Randolph; 1928 Edward "Whitey" Ford; 1929 Ursula LeGuin; 1940 Frances FitzGerald, Manfred Mann; 1956 Carrie Fisher.
• 2137 BC: Chinese first record total eclipse of the sun; is there anything the Chinese didn't do first?
• 686: Conon begins his reign as pope; previous pope moves to 10 p.m.
• 1950: Chinese forces occupy Tibet; enlightenment does not ensue.
* 1954: French women get the vote; French men shrug indifferently and continue smoking.

22 1811 Franz Liszt; 1845 Sarah Bernhardt; 1887 John Reed; 1917 Joan Fontaine; 1919 Doris Lessing; 1925 Robert Rauschenberg; 1929 Dory Previn; 1938 Derek Jacobi, Christopher Lloyd; 1939 Tony Roberts; 1942 Annette Funicello; 1943 Catherine Deneuve; 1952 Patti Davis, Jeff Goldblum.
• 1934: Charles "Pretty Boy" Floyd is killed in shootout; gets off FBI's "10 Most Wanted List" the hard way.

23 1925 Johnny Carson; 1935 Chi Chi Rodriguez; 1942 Michael Crichton; 1956 Dwight Yoakam; 1959 "Weird Al" Yankovic; 1962 Doug Flutie.
• 1679: Meal Tub Plot against James II of England; had it been successful, all meals in England would now be served in tubs.
• 1991: Dr. Jack Kevorkian's suicide machine kills 2 women; it then goes on the lam and is captured after a police standoff at a cheap motel in Fallbrook, California.

24 1904 Moss Hart; 1926 Y.A. Tittle; 1936 David Nelson, Bill Wyman; 1940 F. Murray Abraham; 1947 Kevin Kline.
• 1836: The match is patented; what, you thought it invented itself?
• 1861: First transcontinental telegram sent, ending Pony Express mail delivery service; message reads: DUMP HORSE STOCKS STOP INVEST EVERYTHING IN TALL POLES STOP.
• 1929: "Black Thursday," beginning of stock market crash that leads to Great Depression; no, not this current one.
• 1931: George Washington Bridge connecting NY and NJ opens.

25 1881 Pablo Picasso; 1912 Jack Kent Cooke; 1912 Minnie Pearl; 1928 Anthony Franciosa, Marion Ross; 1941 Anne Tyler; 1941 Helen Reddy; 1967 Julia Roberts.
• 1415: Battle of Agincourt, Henry V's Welsh longbows defeats the armored knights of the French army despite being vastly outnumbered. Oh, and it's also St. Crispin's Day.
• 1854: The Light Brigade charges; they probably should've reasoned why.
• 1924: First appearance of Little Orphan Annie comic strip.

26 1879 Leon Trotsky; 1911 Mahalia Jackson; 1914 Jackie Coogan; 1942 Bob Hoskins; 1945 Pat Conroy; 1946 Pat Sajak; 1947 Hillary Rodham Clinton, Jaclyn Smith; 1962 Cary Elwes.
• 1881: Shootout at the OK Corral; ensuing myth full of holes.
• 1955: Normal Mailer co-founds the weekly newspaper, The Village Voice, in New York.
• 1970: Doonesbury debuts.
• 1972: Henry Kissinger declares "Peace is at hand" in Vietnam; Vietnamese ask, "Whose hand?"

27 1728 James Cook; 1782 Niccolo Paganini; 1811 Issac Merrit Singer; 1858 Theodore Roosevelt; 1872 Emily Post; 1910 Fred de Cordova; 1914 Dylan Thomas; 1922 Ralph Kiner; 1923 Ruby Dee, Roy Lichtenstein; 1926 H.R. Haldeman; 1932 Sylvia Plath; 1939 John Cleese.
• 1787: Federalist letters start appearing in NY newspapers; they're in the Advice to the Lovelorn column, but still.
• 1810: U.S. "annexes" West Florida from Spain; and by "annex" we mean "takes over at gunpoint".
* 1904: New York subway opens; garbled station announcement made by conductor Milo "Mumbles" O'Reilly establishes century long tradition.
• 1969: Ralph Nader sets up consumer organization later dubbed "Nader's Raiders."

28 1846 Auguste Escoffier; 1902 Elsa Lanchester; 1903 Evelyn Waugh; 1907 Edith Head; 1914 Dr. Jonas Salk; 1926 Bowie Kuhn; 1944 Dennis Franz; 1949 Bruce Jenner; 1952 Annie Potts; 1956 Mahmoud Ahmadinejad; 1965 Jami Gertz.
• 1636: Harvard University founded.
• 1886: Statue of Liberty unveiled.
• 1929: First baby born on airplane; parents will neither confirm or deny that the conception took place during their Mile-High-Club initiation.
• 1965: Gateway Arch in St. Louis is completed.

29 1884 Bela Lugosi; 1891 Fanny Brice; 1921 Bill Mauldin; 1947 Richard Dreyfuss; 1948 Kate Jackson; 1971 Winona Ryder.
• 1682: William Penn arrives in what will become Pennsylvania; residents are relieved to now have a name for what they'd been calling "here."
• 1833: First US college fraternity house founded; first fraternity house toga party, 1834; first fraternity placed on "super-secret double probation," 1835.
• 1956: Chet Huntley & David Brinkley are teamed up.
• 1979: Billy Martin fired as Yankee manager for the second of five times.

30 1735 John Adams; 1821 Feodor Mikhailovich Dostoevski; 1885 Ezra Pound; 1893 Charles Atlas; 1896 Ruth Gordon; 1932 Louis Malle; 1939 Grace Slick; 1945 Henry Winkler; 1946 Andrea Mitchell.
• 1888: Ballpoint pen patented; runs out of ink after filling out all of the requisite patent office forms.
• 1919: Baseball league presidents, who have seats right behind home plate, call for abolishment of the spitball.
• 1938: Orson Welles' radio play of H.G Wells (no relation) War of the Worlds frightens the public with its effective imitation of news broadcast techniques to tell scary, fictional story; pretty much the same way Fox News does today.
• 1939: USSR & Germany agree on partitioning Poland; Poland responds, "Not again!"
• 1975: NY Daily News runs headline "Ford to City: Drop Dead." City remains alive, mostly for spite.

31 All Hallow's Eve
1632 Jan Vermeer; 1896 Ethel Waters; 1912 Dale Evans; 1920 Dick Francis; 1922 Barbara Bel Geddes; 1928 Andrew Sarris; 1931 Dan Rather; 1937 Michael Landon; 1942 David Ogden Stiers; 1944 Kinky Friedman, Sally Kirkland; 1950 John Candy; Jane Pauley; 1968 Vanilla Ice.
• 1926: Harry Houdini dies.
• 1956: Brooklyn ends streetcar service.
• 1988: Yugoslavian journalists demand greater freedoms; like maybe not getting shot quite so often.