Category: Today

On November 19, 1863, President Abraham Lincoln delivered the Gettysburg Address at the ceremonial dedication of the military cemetery in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, appropriating an old phraseology for republican government — “of the people, by the people, for the people” — and giving it its most memorable usage.

On the same date in 1955, National Review published its first issue.

On November 18, 1307, legend has it, William Tell shot a crossbow bolt to pierce an apple, toppling it off his son’s head. He was forced to do this by the local Austrian authority, whose hat hung on a pole in the Altdorf town square Tell had refused to bow to when entering the village. Tell endures as a Swiss folk hero, and provides the subject of a famous opera by Rossini — the music of which is associated with, in many ears, Bugs Bunny and the Lone Ranger.

In 1926, on this date, George Bernard Shaw formally refused to accept the money for his Nobel Prize for Literature, saying, “I can forgive Alfred Nobel for inventing dynamite, but only a fiend in human form could have invented the Nobel Prize.”

On November 17, 1777, the Articles of Confederation were submitted to the states for ratification.

On that date in 1800, the United States Congress held its first session in Washington, D.C.

On November 15, 1777, the Continental Congress approved, and sent to the states for ratification, the “Articles of Confederation — after 16 months of deliberation. The first article gave the official name of the confederacy:

The Stile of this Confederacy shall be
The United States of America.

On November 14, 1918, Czechoslovakia became a republic.

Born on the same date 29 years later — American writer P. J. O’Rourke.