SEABISCUIT
In 1934, Charles Howard hired Tom Smith to help him break into horse racing - the "sport of kings." Sent to the East Coast to find a good horse, Smith saw Seabiscuit for the first time. Bad-tempered, the horse had been raced too often. But there was something about him that later made Smith tell Howard: "Get me that horse."
Seabiscuit was an unlikely choice, but Tom Smith saw something special that few others saw in the knobby-kneed thoroughbred. And there was something more. Something unusual. When the future champion saw his future trainer for the first time, he nodded at him. Perhaps the horse also sensed something special in the man.
THE "SPRUCE GOOSE"
Allene Hughes was concerned about her son when she wrote to Lt. Aures, a stockade leader at Dan Beard's Outdoor School in Pennsylvania. It was the month before World War I erupted in Europe, and young Howard Robard Hughes, Jr. - an only child - was twelve years old.
His mother always worried about him. It was a time - before preventive vaccinations were available - when infantile paralysis (polio, the infectious disease which paralyzed President Franklin Roosevelt) was spreading among children everywhere. Howard, a somewhat sickly child, benefitted from his summers at the Outdoor School. He would return home in much better condition than when he left. But at camp, Howard was around other children. Other children had germs.
Fear of germs, and what they could do to him, had deep - ultimately paralyzing - roots in Howard's life. Before that happened, however, Howard Hughes experienced one of his most glorious moments. On the 2nd of November, 1947, he piloted his huge wooden airplane, "The Spruce Goose," on its first - and only - flight.
THE GUNPOWDER PLOT
Using the mercenary Guy Fawkes as their "trigger man," Robert Catesby and a small group of like-minded friends concocted a plan to kill King James I and members of Parliament in 1605. The conspiracy (known today as "The Gunpowder Plot") was engineered for maximum effect: Blow up the houses of Parliament on opening day, November 5, 1605. What happened next is still remembered every November on "Guy Fawkes Day."
SUSAN B. ANTHONY - ARRESTED for VOTING
Susan B. Anthony, the famous advocate for women's rights, supported Thomas Greeley in the 1872 presidential election. Of course, the 19th Amendment - giving American women the right to vote - wouldn't be law for nearly fifty years. So what difference did it make that Susan Anthony supported Greeley?
It made a significant difference to Anthony. She voted in the 1872 presidential election. Three weeks later, on Thanksgiving Day 1872, she was arrested for exercising her right - as an American citizen - to vote. She was 52 years old. Her trial would soon become what historians have called a mockery of justice.
NEZ PERCE and the CORPS OF DISCOVERY
On November 7, 1805, William Clark made an entry in his journal: "Ocian in view! O! The joy." Actually, it wasn't the Pacific Ocean after all, since the coast was still twenty miles away.
How the Corps of Discovery had come that far at all was, at least in part, due to help they had received from the Nez Perce. Later, the U.S. government thanked those Native Americans with territorial land reductions.
BERLIN WALL FALLS
On the 11th of November, 1989, Berliners tore down the first slab of the "Berlin Wall." How did that happen? Why was the wall built in the first place?
ELIZABETH I
Legend has it that Elizabeth Tudor was sitting under an oak tree, at Hatfield House, when courtiers paid her a visit on November 17, 1558. The men had been dispatched to advise the princess that she was now Queen of Britain.
The time in which she ruled is known as the Elizabethan Age. One of her most important achievements was the defeat of the Spanish Armada, thirty years after her coronation.
COLD MOUNTAIN: NATIONAL BOOK AWARD
In November of 1997, Charles Frazier won a National Book Award for his novel Cold Mountain. What is the story behind that successful book and film adaptation? We take you on a trip to the National Archives, and into the depths of the Official Record of the Civil War, to find out for yourself.
WOLFE TONE: DEATH of an IRISH HERO
As 1921 neared its end, people in Ireland debated whether to sign the Anglo-Irish Treaty with Britain. Was it in Ireland's best interests? What would Wolfe Tone, the Irish hero who died in prison on the 19th of November, 1798, have thought of the concept?
PILGRIMS and the "MAYFLOWER COMPACT"
The ship's log, of a vessel named Mayflower, tells us that a group of travelers we call "The Pilgrims" met aboard ship to decide how they would govern themselves in their new home. They created a document - "The Mayflower Compact" - to "regulate their civil government." Who were these people? Why had they left their homeland? What did their "compact" provide? And ... whatever happened to the Mayflower?
EDWIN HUBBLE: NAMESAKE of SPACE TELESCOPE
Edwin Hubble, the famous astronomer who declared the universe is expanding, was born on the 20th of November, 1889. His work inspired the Hubble Space Telescope - actually an orbiting observatory - which consistently provides scientists with incredible images of space. Learn about the observatory and the man whose work still influences scientific thinking.
ASSASSINATION of PRESIDENT KENNEDY
On the 22nd of November, 1963, Americans were stunned when their President, John F. Kennedy, was assassinated in Dallas. This story tells what happened, with links to primary sources at the National Archives and exhibits from the Warren Commission Report.
C.S. LEWIS and THE CHRONICLES of NARNIA
Nearly at the same time that President Kennedy died in Dallas, the creator of The Chronicles of Narnia - C.S. Lewis - died in Britain. Who was he?
During World War II, when his voice was the second-most familiar on the BBC (after Churchill's), Lewis and his brother took care of four children who had been evacuated from London during "The Blitz." Those children made an impact on the two brothers, becoming an inspiration for the four children in The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe.
THE WARSAW GHETTO
In November of 1940, the "Ghetto" in Warsaw was sealed off from the rest of the city. Why was the ghetto formed in the first place? What happened to cause its end?
