On This Day - What Happened on November 12

1933

On camera for the first time: Nessie?

On this day in 1933, Hugh Gray was walking with his dog along the shore of Scotland’s Loch Ness, near the mouth of the River Foyers, when he saw “an object of considerable dimensions.” Luckily, Gray had a Kodak box camera with him and took several photos. Only one showed something: Gray had taken the first photo of the Loch Ness monster. Or had he?

November 12, 1933: Hugh Gray saw something strange in the waters of Loch Ness

Featured Event

Japanese Emperor Akihito, wearing a dark suit and tie, smiles and waves with his right hand to onlookers, with blurred people in the background.

Sean Gallup/Getty Images

Akihito enthroned

Japanese Emperor Akihito—according to tradition, the 125th direct descendant of Jimmu, Japan’s legendary first emperor—was formally enthroned on this day in 1990, nearly two years after the death of his father, Hirohito.

Featured Biography

Sportschrome/Newscom

Nadia Comăneci

Hard work has made it easy. That is my secret. That is why I win.

Nadia Comăneci

Born this day in 1961, Romanian Nadia Comăneci (who later defected to the U.S.) was the first gymnast to be awarded a perfect 10 in Olympic competition, scoring seven of them at the 1976 Summer Games in Montreal.

Famous Birthdays

1953

Baaba Maal

Senegalese musician

1908

Harry A. Blackmun

associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court

1904

Jacques Tourneur

French-American director

1746

Jacques Charles

French physicist

MORE BIRTHDAYS

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2025

The U.S. Mint ended production of the penny, pressing the final one-cent coins in Philadelphia. The penny had been produced in the United States since 1793.

Stan Lee smiling and wearing sunglasses, a dark jacket, and a light sweater, standing in front of a colorful poster.

2018

American comic book writer Stan Lee—who helped create such iconic characters and teams as the Fantastic Four, Spider-Man, the Avengers, and the X-Men for Marvel Comics—died at age 95. [Sort fact from fiction in our comic books quiz.]

Silvio Berlusconi, Prime Minister of Italy, speaks at the podium with the United Nations emblem during the General Assembly in New York City.

Mark Castro/UN Photo

2011

As Italy struggled amid the euro-zone debt crisis, Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi submitted his letter of resignation; four days later he was succeeded by Mario Monti. [Take our quiz about notable prime ministers.]

U.S. Department of State

2000

India’s Congress (I) Party elected as its leader Sonia Gandhi, widow of former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi, who was assassinated in 1991.

1994

Wilma Rudolph, who overcame crippling childhood illnesses to become the first American woman to win three track-and-field gold medals in a single Olympics, died in Tennessee. [Test your knowledge of track and field.]

B.A. Smith/National Space Science Data Center

1980

The U.S. space probe Voyager 1 reached the planet Saturn. [Read our list of 10 places to visit in the solar system.]

Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. (neg. no. LC-USZ62-44543)

1975

William O. Douglas retired from the U.S. Supreme Court. Known for his consistent and outspoken defense of civil liberties, he had served as an associate justice for more than 36 years. [Who are the longest-serving U.S. Supreme Court justices?]

Delicate Arch, a large natural sandstone arch, rises from red rock formations in Arches National Park, Utah, with dramatic clouds in the sky.

1971

Arches National Park—a desert area of sandstone formations in eastern Utah—was established. The region had been designated a national monument in 1929. [Discover seven wonders of America.]

Black and white satellite image showing the swirling cloud pattern of the Bhola cyclone over the Ganges-Brahmaputra delta, with latitude and longitude grid lines overlaying the region.

NOAA

1970

The Bhola cyclone struck East Pakistan (now Bangladesh), killing hundreds of thousands of people in the densely populated Ganges-Brahmaputra delta; it was perhaps the deadliest tropical cyclone in recorded history and one of the greatest natural disasters. [Take our quiz about disasters of historic proportions.]

Aerial view of Ellis Island in Upper New York Bay, showing historic red-brick buildings, green lawns, and the immigration museum surrounded by water.

1954

The immigration reception center at Ellis Island in New York Harbor, which processed more than 12 million immigrants, was closed. [What happened to Ellis Island after it closed?]

Entrance to Abbey Road Studios in London, showing stone steps, two potted trees, and a green plaque on the white exterior wall.

1931

Abbey Road Studios opened in London and was later made famous by the Beatles, who recorded most of their albums there. [Sort fact from fiction in our quiz about the Beatles.]

Mohandas K. Gandhi, wearing a traditional shawl, stands at the front left beside Sarojini Naidu in a sari, with other delegates behind them at the 1931 Round Table Conference in London.

Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.

1930

The first Round Table Conference, called by the British government to consider the future constitution of India, opened in London. [Explore the history of the Indian Independence Movement.]

1918

One day after Emperor Charles’s abdication, the National Assembly of Austria resolved unanimously that “German Austria is a democratic republic” and “German Austria is a component part of the German republic.” [How much do you know about European history?]

George Grantham Bain Collection/Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. (Digital File Number: LC-DIG-ggbain-06207)

1912

Spanish Prime Minister José Canalejas was assassinated by the anarchist Manuel Pardiñas. [Read about nine infamous assassins and the world leaders they dispatched.]

1859

The first flying trapeze act was performed, by Jules Léotard, without a net, at a circus in Paris. (A one-piece garment that he popularized was named for him.)

Illustration of the 1870 Leonid meteor shower with bright meteor trails in a starry night sky above clouds, and a hot air balloon floating at right.

1833

The massive Leonid meteor shower, in which hundreds of thousands of meteors were observed in one night, was seen all over North America, initiating the first serious study of meteor showers. [Sort fact from fiction in our quiz about space objects.]

American women's rights leader Elizabeth Cady Stanton

Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. (LC-USZ62-28195)

1815

Elizabeth Cady Stanton, who was a leader in the women’s rights movement and in 1848 formulated the first organized demand for women’s suffrage in the United States, was born in Johnstown, New York. [Test your knowledge of famous suffragettes.]

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