November 5
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1605
Guy Fawkes and the Gunpowder Plot
On this day in 1605, English authorities caught a man in the cellar underneath the House of Lords in London, surrounded by barrels of gunpowder. It was Guy Fawkes, a young Roman Catholic soldier. He had been recruited to take part in the plot to blow up the English government. The plan had been developed by a group of Roman Catholics who were upset about a series of laws that basically criminalized their religion. How was the plot uncovered? And what happened to Fawkes and his coconspirators?
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© Roger Viollet Collection/Getty Images; Photo Illustration Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.
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Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. (reproduction no. LC-USZ62-27885)
On this day in 1872, Susan B. Anthony, a leader in the American women’s suffrage movement, cast a ballot in the presidential election, and she was later arrested for voting illegally and convicted in a trial she called “the greatest outrage history ever witnessed.”
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Featured Biography
Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.
Years ago I recognized my kinship with all living things, and I made up my mind that I was not one bit better than the meanest on the earth. I said then and I say now, that while there is a lower class, I am in it; while there is a criminal element, I am of it; while there is a soul in prison, I am not free.
Eugene V. Debs, born this day in 1855, was a five-time Socialist candidate for U.S. president and won nearly one million votes in 1920 while in prison for his criticism of prosecutions under the 1917 Espionage Act.
Famous Birthdays
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© Jim Watson—AFP/Getty Images
2024
Donald Trump won the U.S. presidential election, defeating Kamala Harris and making him the second president in U.S. history to win a second nonconsecutive term. [Learn about five major political comebacks.]
Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO)
2013
India launched its first interplanetary spacecraft, the uncrewed Mars Orbiter Mission. [Sort fact from fiction in our quiz about space exploration.]
Courtesy National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., Gift of Thomas Jefferson Coolidge IV in memory of his great-grandfather, Thomas Jefferson Coolidge, his grandfather, Thomas Jefferson Coolidge II, and his father, Thomas Jefferson Coolidge III, 1986.71.
1998
The journal Nature published a report that DNA testing had confirmed (still disputed by some) that a member of Thomas Jefferson’s family had fathered a child with the slave Sally Hemings; the testing, however, was unable to definitively prove that Jefferson was the father. [Read more about the Jefferson-Hemings paternity debate.]
UPI/Bettmann Archive
1940
Franklin D. Roosevelt was elected to an unprecedented third term as president of the United States. [Take our quiz about U.S. presidential firsts.]
The Granger Collection, New York
1930
Social critic Sinclair Lewis won the Nobel Prize for Literature, the first American to receive the honor. [Test your knowledge of literary Nobelists.]
Hulton Archive/Getty Images
1914
France and Britain declared war on Turkey, widening the conflict of World War I. [Sort fact from fiction in our quiz about World War I.]
© 1951 Warner Bros.
1913
British actress Vivien Leigh—who achieved motion picture immortality by playing two of American literature’s most-celebrated Southern belles, Scarlett O’Hara and Blanche DuBois—was born in India. [Take our quiz about women in classic cinema.]
Republic Pictures Corporation; photograph from a private collection
1911
American cowboy actor and singer Roy Rogers—who starred in films and television shows, often alongside his wife, Dale Evans—was born. [Test your knowledge of actors and acting.]
Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.
1838
Honduras declared its absolute independence, seceding from the United Provinces of Central America. [Sort fact from fiction in our quiz about Latin America.]
© Universal History Archive—Universal Images Group/Getty Images
1556
Mughal power was restored in India following the Second Battle of Panipat, fought between Mughal ruler Akbar and Hindu minister Hemu. [Explore the 500-year history of the Mughal Empire.]