May 6

November 8

397 Saint Martin of Tours died on November 8, 397. The Franks recounted the tale of a blind beggar and a lame beggar who found themselves caught in a procession carrying the relics of Saint Martin of Tours. Concerned that they might be cured and therefore deprived of their alms they attempted to escape. The blind beggar fled with his lame friend on his shoulders but they were not quick enough and were cured.

1226 Louis IX of France was twelve years old when his father died on November 8, 1226. He was crowned king within the month at Reims cathedral. Because of Louis' youth, his mother, Blanche of Castile, ruled France as regent until 1234, when Louis was deemed of age to rule himself. She continued as an important counselor to the king until her death in 1252.

Contemporary depiction from about 1230

1519 When Hernán Cortés arrived in Tenochtitlán, Mexico, the Aztec ruler Montezuma II was immediately informed. He chose to welcome the Spanish Conquistador as an honored guest. On November 8, 1519, Montezuma met Cortés on the causeway leading into Tenochtitlan and the two leaders exchanged gifts. Montezuma gave Cortés the gift of an Aztec calendar, one disc of crafted gold and another of silver.

1674 Paradise Lost author John Milton died aged 65 of kidney failure on November 8, 1674.  He passed away with so little pain or emotion that no one noticed him dying. He was buried in the church of St Giles Cripplegate, Fore Street, London, next to his father. Gravedigger Elizabeth Grant was later found to be charging visitors sixpence a time for viewing of Milton’s teeth and part of his leg.

1823 American showman P.T. Barnum married Charity Hallett on November 8, 1829. They had four children one of whom died in infancy. His wife died in November 1873, and a three months later Barnum married his friend's daughter, English socialite Nancy Fish. 

Phineas Taylor Barnum and Charity Hallett Barnum

1847 Bram Stoker, the inventor of the Dracula character, was born in Dublin, Ireland on November 8, 1847. The manager of the actor Sir Henry Irving's London's Lyceum Theatre, Stoker began writing in his spare time. He was inspired by a trip to Whitby on the North Yorkshire coast in 1890 to write his vampire fantasy novel. Stoker never visited Transylvania; he simply read travel books for details about the country.

1895 While experimenting with high voltages applied to an evacuated tube on November 8, 1895, German scientist Wilhelm Röntgen noticed a fluorescence on a nearby plate of coated glass. Within a month, he discovered that the radiation causing this was able to pass through everyday materials such as paper, wood and living tissue and it produced an image on photographic plates as well as a fluorescent screen. Röntgen called this type of radiation X rays.

First medical X-ray by Wilhelm Röntgen of his wife Anna Bertha Ludwig's hand

1898 In 1893 the Serbian-American inventor, Nikola Tesla successfully demonstrated a radio-controlled boat at the Electrical Exhibition held at Madison Square Garden, New York City. Tesla was awarded U.S. patent No. 613,809 on November 8, 1898 for it, which describes the first ever wireless remote control device.

1917 In late autumn 1917 The Bolsheviks, led by Vladimir Lenin and Leon Trotsky overthrew the provisional government and announced that Russia was a socialist country. On November 8, 1917, Lenin was chosen as President of Russia, the world's first communist leader.  One of his first acts as its leader was to sign a peace treaty with Germany that ended Russia's participation in the First World War.


1923 Adolf Hitler led an unsuccessful rising, the Beer Hall Putsch, in Munich on November 8-9, 1923. After its failure, Hitler hid in the attic bedroom at Uffing of a follower and tried to commit suicide by shooting himself, when the police came to rescue him. However, a police agent managed to disarm him. Hitler spent only nine months as a prisoner, during which he wrote Mein Kampf.

1927 English comedian Ken Dodd was born on November 8, 1927 in Knotty Ash, Liverpool.
He was the second of three children of a coal merchant, Arthur Dodd, and wife Sarah (née Gray).
Ken Dodd kept a ‘giggle map’ of Britain to record which jokes go down best in which parts of the country. He set in 1967 a world record for the longest joke-telling session, telling 1,500 jokes in three and a half hours.


1946 On November 8, 1946 Viola Desmond, a Canadian businesswoman of Black Nova Scotian descent defied the segregation policy of a movie theater in Nova Scotia, taking a seat in the the floor section, which was reserved for white patrons. She was charged with tax evasion of one cent for refusing to leave a whites-only section of a theater. Her courageous refusal to accept an act of racial discrimination provided inspiration to a later generation of black persons in Canada.

1960 On November 8, 1960, John F Kennedy was elected President, beating Richard Nixon by the narrowest of margins - 113,000 votes out of the 69 million cast. Kennedy was just 43, the youngest President ever to be elected and the first to be born in the 20th century. During his presidency, there were a number of historical events, including the Cuban Missile Crisis and the African-American Civil Rights Movement.

1964 Judy Garland and her daughter, Liza Minnelli appeared together at the London Palladium on November 8, 1964. The program was shown on American television and the album Live at the London Palladium became a classic on Capitol Records.


1965 The Murder (Abolition of Death Penalty) Act 1965 replaced capital punishment in the United Kingdom with a mandatory sentence of life imprisonment. It was given Royal Assent, formally abolishing the death penalty on November 8, 1965.

1966 Former Massachusetts Attorney General Edward Brooke became the first African American politician elected to the United States Senate since Reconstruction on November 8, 1966. (Hiram Rhodes Revels, an African American Republican from Mississippi, was elected in 1870 during the Reconstruction era).

1967 Barclays Bank launched Barclaycard in June 1966, initially as a charge card. Following Bank of England agreement to the offering of revolving credit, it became the first credit card in the United Kingdom on November 8, 1967. Barclaycard enjoyed the monopoly of the credit card market in the United Kingdom, until Lloyds Bank, Midland Bank and National Westminster Bank launched the Access Card in October 1972.

1978 Eric Money is the only player to score for both teams in an NBA game. The game between the New Jersey Nets and Philadelphia 76ers was started on November 8, 1978 but the outcome was protested by the Nets. It was ordered to be replayed on March 23, 1979 starting at the 3rd quarter. In between the original and replayed games, Money was traded to the 76ers. He ended up scoring in the same game for both teams.


1998 When You Dish Upon a Star, the fifth episode of The Simpsons' tenth season, originally aired in the United States on November 8, 1998. The show lampooned 20th Century Fox as a division of The Walt Disney Company. Nineteen years later, Disney indeed made a deal to purchase the studio from Rupert Murdoch.

2011 Rhein II is a photograph made by German visual artist Andreas Gursky in 1999, which was auctioned on November 8, 2011 for $4,338,500, making it at the time the most expensive photograph ever sold. The photograph shows the Lower Rhine flowing horizontally across the field of view, between flat green fields, under an overcast sky. Its record was broken by the original print of  Le Violon d'Ingres by Man Ray which sold for $12,400,000 in May 2022.



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