On November 5, 1964, Lt. Everett Alvarez becomes first American pilot shot down over North Vietnam.

On November 6, 1869, on a cold, windy day in New Brunswick, New Jersey, two teams from Rutgers and the College of New Jersey met in a contest often regarded as the first intercollegiate football game. 

On November 7th, 1874, the Republican Elephant became the official mascot of the Republican Party. It was a cartoon created by Thomas Nast in Harper’s Weekly.

On this day November 8 in the year 2000, Florida begins a statewide recount of ballots to decide the winner of the presidential race between George W. Bush and Vice President Al Gore.

On this day in 1989, a spokesperson for East Berlin's Communist Party announced an end to the use of the Berlin Wall.

On this day in 1775, the Continental Congress founded the U.S. Marine Corps. The Marine Corps traces its origins to November 10, 1775, during the Revolutionary War.

On November 11, 1918, World War I ends with the signing of an armistice in France.

On this day in 1813, J. Hector St. John de Crèvecoeur dies, leaving behind a vivid portrait of life as an American.

The Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C., dedicated on November 13, 1982, honors American men and women who served in a long and controversial war.

November 14, 1851, brought the publication of Herman Melville’s Moby Dick, a classic chock-full of American themes from its opening pages: the urge to strike out for frontiers, the dignity of the common man, and a democratic spirit of equality.

On this day in 1806, Zebulon Pike spots the mountain now known as Pike's Peak. 'At two o’clock in the afternoon I thought I could distinguish a mountain to our right, which appeared like a small blue cloud,' wrote Lieutenant Zebulon Pike.

On November 16, 1907 Oklahoma became the forty-sixth state of the United States.  The land was originally acquired as part of the Louisiana Purchase in 1803.

On November 17, 1800, the United States Congress officially convened in its new home. The United States Capitol building in Washington, D.C.

On November 18, 1889, the Navy launched the battleship USS Maine at the Brooklyn Navy Yard.

In the autumn of 1863, President Abraham Lincoln received an invitation to give a speech at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, where a few months earlier Americans had fought one of the bloodiest battles of the Civil War.

On this day in 1953, Scott Crossfield became the first pilot to ever break Mach two, flying at twice the speed of sound in a Douglas Skyrocket at Edwards Air Force Base.

In November 1620, after a stormy, two-month Atlantic voyage, the Pilgrims reached the coast of what is now Massachusetts.

On November 22, 1963 John F. Kennedy is assassinated in Dallas and Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson is sworn in as the thirty-sixth U.S. president.

November 23, 1938, Eleanor Roosevelt attends the Southern Conference on Human Welfare in Birmingham.

In 1863, when Abraham Lincoln was president, the cooks at the White House received a live turkey to fatten up for a holiday feast. The turkey’s name was Jack, and it didn’t take long for Lincoln’s son Tad, age 10, to make friends with the bird. The turkey’s life would eventually be spared.

Our nation has inherited a long, rich tradition of thanking God for his blessings. In 1541 Spanish explorer Francisco Vásquez de Coronado and his men conducted a service of thanksgiving for the abundant food and water they found along the Palo Duro Canyon in the Texas Panhandle.