On November 10, 1958, New York jeweler Harry Winston donated the Hope Diamond to the Smithsonian Institution. Also known as "Le bleu de France," the gem is very large at 45.52-carats and deeply blue to the naked eye because of trace amounts of boron in its crystal structure. (It exhibits red phosphorescence after exposure to ultraviolet light.) It was cut from a massive, crude precursor stone (the Tavernier Blue, 115 carats) from India, and sold around 1668 to King Louis XVI. Notorious for supposedly being cursed, the "most famous diamond in the world" passed through multiple owners in France, Britain and the U.S. Harry Winston bought it in 1949. He delivered it to the Smithsonian by sending it via registered U.S. Mail in a box wrapped in brown paper, insured at a cost of $145.29. Its value now exceeds $250 million.
After a set of remarkable communications blunders by East German apparatchiks, the Berlin Wall was flung open on the evening of November 9, 1989, allowing citizens free access between East and West Germany. It was the single most significant event in the end of the Cold War and the eventual collapse of Communist regimes in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. In August of that year, Hungary had opened its border to Austria, allowing waves of East Germans to circumvent the Wall by traveling through those nations into West Germany. Massive demonstrations had also given birth to the “Peaceful Revolution” for civil and human rights. This marked the start of Die Wende (The Turn), which led to the reunification of Germany in October 1990. Pictured: The Berlin Wall and Brandenburg Gate on November 10, 1989.
November 8 is the birthdate of Edmond Halley, English astronomer, geophysicist, mathematician, meteorologist and physicist. Son of a wealthy soap-maker, he published papers on the Solar System and sunspots as an undergraduate at Oxford and financed the publication of Isaac Newton’s Principia Mathematica. In 1705, he published a work showing that comet sightings in 1456, 1531, 1607 and 1682 were the same comet, which he predicted would return in 1758. He did not live to see the return of what became known as Halley's Comet, which is visible to the naked eye every 75–76 years. Known sightings have occurred since at least 240 BCE. It last appeared in the inner Solar System in 1986 and will next appear in mid-2061. Pictured: The comet’s appearance in 1066, shown in the Bayeux Tapestry (1077).
French author and philosopher Albert Camus was born on November 7, 1913, in French Algeria. Though often regarded as an existentialist, Camus’ works, including L’Étranger (1942) and La Peste (1947), are landmarks in absurdism, which holds that the efforts of human beings to find inherent meaning will ultimately fail because certainty is impossible in the face of the unknown. He argued that man must find his own clarity and meaning in a world that offers neither, and must endure his struggles in spite of their ultimate lack of significance. It is the individual who gives meaning to circumstance. He received the 1957 Nobel Prize for Literature for work which, “with clear-sighted earnestness illuminates the problems of the human conscience in our times." He was killed in 1960 in an auto accident in France at age 46.
Belgian musical instrument designer and musician Antoine-Joseph "Adolphe" Sax was born on November 6, 1814. In Paris in the 1840s, he successfully worked on a new type of valved bugles that became known as saxhorns. In 1846 he patented his namesake instrument, the saxophone, with its single reed mouthpiece like a clarinet, conical brass body like an ophicleide (bugle) and acoustic properties of the French horn and clarinet. Most saxophones are made from brass but are categorized as woodwind instruments, since an oscillating reed produces the sound waves (not the player's lips against a mouthpiece) and pitches are produced by opening and closing keys. Pictured: President Bill Clinton accepting a Limited Edition Presidential Model Tenor Saxophone by the L.A. Sax Co., 1994.
Author and journalist Ida Tarbell was born on November 5, 1857. One of the progressive era’s leading "muckrakers" (a term she disliked), she began researching John D. Rockefeller’s Standard Oil trust in 1900 by documenting its tactics and interviewing a powerful executive, Henry H. Rogers. Her 19-part investigative series in McClure's Magazine, starting in 1902, became a landmark book, The History of the Standard Oil Company (1904), which hastened the company’s breakup in 1911 under the Sherman Antitrust Act. The exposé of monopolistic practices included specific cases of strong-arming competitors and arranging illegal transportation deals with railroads to undercut competitors' prices. By detailing corruption and mobilizing the public, Tarbell still stands as a towering example of the greatest purpose of journalism.
On November 4, 1922, British archaeologist Howard Carter and his excavation team found the steps leading to Tutankhamun's tomb in Egypt’s Valley of the Kings. Most ancient Egyptian tombs had been discovered, but with funding from wealthy aristocrat Lord Carnarvon, Carter was given one more year to find the elusive tomb of "King Tut,” who had died at age 18. On November 26, Carter breached the tomb’s first chamber and could see gold and ebony treasures and a sealed doorway between two sentinel statues, all preserved for more than 3,000 years. It was the best preserved and most intact pharaonic tomb ever found. When Carnarvon asked, "Can you see anything?" Carter replied, "Yes, wonderful things."
On November 3, 1948, the Chicago Tribune committed an infamous blunder by mistakenly declaring New York Governor Thomas Dewey the winner of the presidential election against incumbent Harry S. Truman. The headline – "Dewey Defeats Truman" – became notorious after a triumphant Truman was photographed holding a copy of the paper (pictured) during a train stop at St. Louis Union Station while returning to Washington from his home in Independence, Missouri. Truman comfortably defeated Dewey by 114 electoral votes. Many U.S. newspapers had predicted a Dewey victory that year. As a result, Truman circumvented the press by embarking on a 22,000-mile "whistle stop" train and auto tour and directly asked crowds to reelect him. Public sentiment gave birth to his slogan, "Give 'em Hell, Harry!"
On November 2, 1947, industrialist and movie producer Howard Hughes briefly flew the largest aircraft ever built, the Hughes Flying Boat. It was its first and only flight. In 1941 the U.S. government had commissioned Hughes Aircraft to build a large flying boat capable of carrying men and cargo over long distances. Because of wartime restrictions on steel, Hughes built the vehicle using plastic-laminated wood (mainly birch) covered with fabric. Some use of spruce (and its gray color at the time) earned the aircraft the name “Spruce Goose.” Powered by eight giant propeller engines, it had a wingspan of 320 feet, cost $23 million, and took far too long to build. The war had ended. The aircraft was also deemed infeasible. The Spruce Goose is now housed at the Evergreen Aviation Museum in McMinnville, Oregon.
Photographer Ansel Adams didn’t put a date on one of his most famous pictures, but the moon’s position later determined it to be November 1, 1941. While traveling in New Mexico on U.S. Route 84, Adams shot the moon rising over a village and its cemetery, with snow-capped mountains in the background, under a dark sky. The light on the crosses was fading rapidly – he would lose the scene! According to Adams’ later (dubious) account, he couldn’t find his light meter! Instead he used the moon’s luminance (light intensity) to calculate the proper exposure! He took the photo in the nick of time! Through the 1970s, Adams made more than 1,300 unique prints of “Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico,” the total value of which exceeded $25 million. In 2006 a single print sold for $609,600 at Sotheby's New York.
