November 2

What happened that day?

• 1990: British Satellite Broadcasting and Sky Television plc merge to form BSkyB as a result of massive losses.
• 1988: The Morris worm, the first Internet-distributed computer worm to gain significant mainstream media attention, is launched from MIT.
• 1986: US Hostage, David Jacobsen, is released in Beirut after 17 months in captivity.[2]
• 1984: Capital punishment: Velma Barfield becomes the first woman executed in the United States since 1962.
• 1983: U.S. President Ronald Reagan signs a bill creating Martin Luther King, Jr. Day.
• 1967: Vietnam War: US President Lyndon B. Johnson and "The Wise Men" conclude that the American people should be given more optimistic reports on the progress of the war.
• 1966: The [Cuba](https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuba)n Adjustment Act comes into force, allowing 123,000 Cubans the opportunity to apply for permanent residence in the United States.
• 1965: Norman Morrison, a 31-year-old Quaker, sets himself on fire in front of the river entrance to the Pentagon to protest the use of napalm in the Vietnam war.
• 1964: King Saud of Saudi Arabia is deposed by a family coup, and replaced by his half-brother Faisal.
• 1963: South Vietnamese President Ngô Đình Diệm is assassinated following a military coup.
• 1960: Penguin Books is found not guilty of obscenity in the trial R v Penguin Books Ltd, the Lady Chatterley's Lover case.
• 1959: The first section of the M1 motorway, the first inter-urban motorway in the United Kingdom, is opened between the present junctions 5 and 18, along with the M10 motorway and M45 motorway.
• 1959: Quiz show scandals: Twenty One game show contestant Charles Van Doren admits to a Congressional committee that he had been given questions and answers in advance.
• 1951: Canada in the Korean War: A platoon of The Royal Canadian Regiment defends a vital area against a full battalion of Chinese troops in the Battle of the Song-gok Spur. The engagement lasts into the early hours of November 3.
• 1951: 6,000 British Troops flown into Egypt to quell unrest in the Suez Canal zone.[1]
• 1949: The Dutch-Indonesian Round Table Conference ends with the Netherlands agreeing to transfer sovereignty of the Dutch East Indies to the United States of Indonesia.
• 1947: In California, designer Howard Hughes performs the maiden (and only) flight of the Hughes H-4 Hercules (also known as the "Spruce Goose"), the largest fixed-wing aircraft ever built.
• 1940: World War II: First day of Battle of Elaia-Kalamas between the Greeks and the Italians.
• 1936: The British Broadcasting Corporation initiates the BBC Television Service, the world's first regular, "high-definition" (then defined as at least 200 lines) service. Renamed BBC1 in 1964, the channel still runs to this day.
• 1920: In the United States, KDKA of Pittsburgh starts broadcasting as the first commercial radio station. The first broadcast is the result of the United States presidential election, 1920.
• 1917: The Military Revolutionary Committee of the Petrograd Soviet, in charge of preparation and carrying out the Russian Revolution, holds its first meeting.
• 1917: The Balfour Declaration proclaims British support for the "establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people" with the clear understanding "that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities".
• 1914: World War I: The Russian Empire declares war on the Ottoman Empire and the Dardanelles are subsequently closed.
• 1912: Bulgaria defeats the Ottoman Empire in the Battle of Lule Burgas, the bloodiest battle of the First Balkan War, which opens her way to Constantinople.
• 1899: The Boers begin their 118-day siege of British-held Ladysmith during the Second Boer War.
• 1889: North Dakota and South Dakota are admitted as the 39th and 40th U.S. states.
• 1868: Time zone: New Zealand officially adopts a standard time to be observed nationally.
• 1795: The French Directory, a five-man revolutionary government, is created.
• 1675: Plymouth Colony governor Josiah Winslow leads a colonial militia against the Narragansett during King Philip's War.
• 1410: The Peace of Bicêtre suspends hostilities in the Armagnac-Burgundian Civil War.
• 619: A qaghan of the Western Turkic Khaganate is assassinated in a Chinese palace by Eastern Turkic rivals after the approval of Tang emperor Gaozu.