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.
October 31 is the baptismal date of Flemish painter Johannes Vermeer, born in Delft (1632), who created some of Western art’s most exquisite paintings. Only 35 or 36 works are attributed to him, most showing figures in interiors, all admired for an intense sensitivity to light and color and for captivating, poetic images. Little is known for certain of his life or artistic background, though he painted slowly, had 14 children and died in debt and relative obscurity. His work was rediscovered in 1866. In recent years he has been heralded as a master, amid speculation that he used a camera obscura – an optical device that projects an image of its surroundings onto a surface – to achieve the precise positioning, perspectives and stunning light effects in his compositions. Pictured: the renowned “Girl With a Pearl Earring” (1665).
October 30 is the birthdate of John Adams, a Founding Father, second President of the United States and previously the first Vice President in George Washington’s two terms. During his single term Adams endured vicious attacks by the Jeffersonian Republicans and the dominant faction in his own Federalist Party led by Alexander Hamilton, a bitter enemy. When he was defeated by Thomas Jefferson in 1800, he retired to his home, Peacefield (pictured), in Quincy, Massachusetts. The house, which dates back to 1731, was bought by John and Abigail Adams in 1787. During John’s long absences (spanning 12 years), Abigail managed the house and greatly expanded it, adding what is now the right side of the front facade, with a fine hallway and large parlor on the ground floor and a large study above.
The exuberance of the 1920s began to unravel on October 29, 1929 – Black Tuesday – when investors lost billions of dollars on the New York Stock Exchange. Tickertapes failed to cope with the trading of more than 16.4 million shares (a record). The Twenties’ excess had lured people to speculate in the market on margin with borrowed money, so that by 1929, two out of every five dollars in bank loans went to stock purchases. Loans totaled $8.5 billion – more than the entire amount of currency circulating in the U.S. Consumer goods increasingly were bought on credit. From their peak on September 3, stock prices began to slide on a lack of confidence, and the Crash fed an ongoing, slow-motion economic collapse. By 1933, nearly half of U.S. banks had failed and unemployment approached 30 percent of the workforce.
The United States began a destructive era in its history on October 28, 1919, when Congress passed the Volstead Act, which implemented the Eighteenth Amendment establishing Prohibition; it then overrode President Wilson’s veto on the same day. The law defined “intoxicating liquors” that were prohibited and set forth enforcement rules, which proved largely ineffective. Prohibition was not entirely about booze. It represented a growing conflict between urban and rural values; it imposed mainly rural Protestant ideals on urban, non-Protestant populations; and reflected “nativistic” notions that America’s greatness resulted from a white Anglo-Saxon ancestry. Repealed in 1933, Prohibition led to multi-faceted corruption and criminal activity in America, loosening of morals in the 1920s, and the illicit joys of speakeasies (pictured).
October 27 is the birthdate of poet Dylan Thomas, born in Wales in 1914. He became popular in his lifetime, owing to broadcasts and recordings of his poetry, and perhaps even more famous after his death (1953) from alcoholic overdose. He gained attention with Eighteen Poems (1934), an emotionally and sexually charged collection, and achieved fame with poems that include "Do not go gentle into that good night," "And death shall have no dominion," and the well-known Under Milk Wood, evoking life in a Welsh seaside town. His poetic style played against strict verse forms, and his themes focused on the process of life, death and new life as a magical transformation linking the generations. Thomas had a deep connection with Wales but – incredibly – decried any notion of "Welshness" in his poetry.
