Nov. 10
Today in history
Today is Nov. 10. On this date in:
1775: The Continental Congress passed a resolution creating the first two battalions of what would become the U.S. Marine Corps.
1808: The Osage Nation signed a treaty ceding vast areas of Missouri and Arkansas to the United States.
1871: “Dr. Livingstone, I presume?” Those words, reportedly uttered by explorer and journalist Henry Stanley, might be a complete fabrication, but that is what Stanley later reported he said to David Livingstone when he found him in the village of Ujiji in modern-day Tanzania. Livingstone had become ill while searching for the source of the Nile River and fallen out of contact with the outside world, and the New York Herald sent Stanley to find him.
1885: Considered
by some to be the world’s first internal-combustion motorcycle, the Daimler Reitwagen, designed by Gottlieb Daimler, was first ridden a few miles (some accounts say on Nov. 10, some on Nov. 18) by the designer’s 17-year-old son, Paul. On the inaugural trip, a hot element of the bike caused the seat to catch fire.
1898: A mob of White supremacists overthrew the biracial city government of Wilmington, North Carolina. Black businesses were burned and estimates of the number of Black residents killed vary widely, from 14 to 300. The press at the time blamed the violence on a “race riot” caused by Black people, but those accounts have been debunked.
1903: Mary Anderson received a patent for the first windshield cleaning device. With personal automobiles not yet common, Anderson’s invention targeted the plight of streetcar operators in bad weather. Anderson tried to market the invention to automakers, but none initially were keen to adopt the device.
1958: The Hope Diamond, once owned by France’s kings Louis XV and Louis XVI but stolen in 1792 during the French Revolution, was donated by Harry Winston to the Smithsonian Institution. The deep blue gem had resurfaced in the 1800s, changed hands several times and was even recut before it came into Winston’s possession.
1969: Big Bird, Bert, Ernie and more of Jim Henson’s puppets, along with their human neighbors, welcomed TV viewers to “Sesame Street” for the show’s regular debut. Its pilot had run July 21, but this marked the beginning of its regular weekday programming.
1975: The cargo ship SS Edmund Fitzgerald sank in Lake Superior during a storm, taking with it a crew of 29. The exact cause of the large freighter’s demise during the storm remains a mystery.
1990: The audience at the Chicago premiere saw young Kevin McCallister foil the Wet Bandits in “Home Alone,” which got its wide release a few days later, on Nov. 16.
2001: The “protocol on accession” for China’s membership in the World Trade Organization was completed after 15 years of negotiations. China accepted the terms the next day, and its membership took effect Dec. 11.
2021: The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the World Health Organization reported that more than 22 million infants missed their first dose of the measles vaccine in 2020, due, in part, to the ways the COVID-19 pandemic had disrupted health care.
– USA TODAY Network
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Today in history, November 10
