Moments in Time: President Roosevelt
The History Channel
On Nov. 4, 1960, English primatologist Jane Goodall was observing a group of chimpanzees in Gombe Stream National Park in Tanzania when she saw one of them making and using a tool, something previously believed exclusive to humans.
On Nov. 5, 1862, more than 300 Santee Sioux in Minnesota were found guilty of raping and murdering Anglo settlers and sentenced to hang. A month later, President Abraham Lincoln commuted all but 39 of the sentences. While one of the condemned was granted a last-minute reprieve, the others were hanged simultaneously on Dec. 26 in a mass execution witnessed by a large crowd.
On Nov. 6, 2013, it was announced that the only known copy of Napoleon's will, which had been written by his close adviser, would be auctioned off in Paris, France. It sold for $483,000.
On Nov. 7, 1944, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt was elected to a fourth term in office. He remains the only American president to have served more than two.
On Nov. 8, 1939, on the 16th anniversary of Adolf Hitler's Beer Hall Putsch (a failed takeover of the government in Bavaria), a bomb hidden in a pillar behind him exploded just after he finished giving a speech. He was unharmed, though seven people were killed and 67 others wounded.
On Nov. 9, 1965, one of history's largest power failures occurred when New York State, portions of seven nearby states, and parts of eastern Canada went black at the height of rush hour, thanks to the tripping of a 230-kilovolt transmission line near Ontario, Canada, which caused several other lines to fail as well. Eight hundred thousand people were trapped in subways, thousands more were stranded in office buildings, elevators, and trains, and 10,000 National Guardsmen and 5,000 off-duty policemen had to be called into service.
On Nov. 10, 1973, newspapers reported the confiscation and burning of 36 copies of Kurt Vonnegut's novel "Slaughterhouse-Five" by school officials in Drake, North Dakota, after a student's mother took a complaint about the book to the principal.
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