On November 6, 1913, Mohandes K. Gandhi was arrested for participating in a march of Indian miners in South Africa.
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Gandhi Arrested
Category: Today
On the Fifth of November, 1605, Guy Fawkes was arrested in the cellars of the Houses of Parliament, where he had planted gunpowder in an attempt to blow up the building and kill King James I of England. Now known as the Gunpowder Plot of 1605, originally called the Gunpowder Treason Plot or the Jesuit Treason, the conspiracy was an unsuccessful attempted regicide against by a group of English Catholics, led by Robert Catesby.
Guy Fawkes himself had been assigned to light the fuse. He was tortured, tried, and finally executed on the last day of the first month of the next year. Parliament declared a memorial day of November Fifth, and the event has been celebrated in one form or other ever since, echoed in literature, with poems by John Milton (1626), a novel by William Harrison Ainsworth (1841), and a comic by Alan Moore and David Lloyd (1982-1989) contributing to the memorials. The latter was turned into a movie, V for Vendetta (2006), in which the hero wears a Guy Fawkes mask (designed by Lloyd) and recites a famous nursery rhyme on the subject:
Remember, remember, the 5th of November,
The Gunpowder Treason and plot.
I see no reason
Why the Gunpowder Treason
Should ever be forgot.
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Cyber-Dissident
On November 4, 2002, Chinese authorities arrested cyber-dissident He Depu for signing a pro-democracy letter to the 16th Communist Party Congress. He Depu was released from prison on January 24, 2011; the day of his release he was beaten by four police officers.
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Army Disbands
On November 3, 1783, the American Continental Army — its mission fulfilled — was disbanded.
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Committee of Correspondence
On November 2, 1772, Samuel Adams and Joseph Warren formed the first Committee of Correspondence, which were instrumental in preparing the colonies from their 1776 breakaway from the British Empire of George III.
On November 1, 1765, the British Parliament enacted the Stamp Act on the Thirteen Colonies. Officially called the Duties in American Colonies Act 1765, it was a direct tax requiring many printed materials in the colonies be produced on stamped paper from London that included an embossed revenue stamp. Though created to help defray costs of British military operations in North America, British subjects in those colonies objected to it strenuously, eventually leading to secession and the Revolutionary War.
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Hallowe’en
As if to perform a Day of the Dead act, Josef Stalin’s body was removed from Lenin’s Tomb on October 31, 1961.
Ireland, Canada, United Kingdom, United States and other nations celebrate Halloween on October 31.
The word Halloween or Hallowe’en dates to about 1745 and is of Christian origin, meaning “hallowed evening” or “holy evening.” It comes from a Scottish term for All Hallows’ Eve (the evening before All Hallows’ Day). In Scots, the word “eve” is “even,” and this is contracted to “e’en” or “een.” Over time, (All) Hallow(s) E(v)en shortened into Halloween.
It is one of those darker-themed celebrations, often conjuring up images of death and horror. Randall Carlson notes that this autumnal celebration is ancient and global, and speculates that it originates in ancient comet approaches that had terrifying and deadly results on the surface of the planet.
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Nazi Death Camps
On October 30, 1941, Nazis sent 1500 Jews from Pidhaytsi to the Bełżec extermination camp. Three years later, to the day, Anne and Margot Frank were deported from Auschwitz to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, where they both died from disease shortly before the end of WWII.
On October 29, 539 B.C., Cyrus the Great entered the city of Babylon as conqueror. His general policy of religious toleration would be extended to the exiled Hebrews, who were, not long after, allowed to return to their homeland.
On the same date in 1923 A.D., the Ottoman Empire’s dissolution marked the start of the Turkish Republic.
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The Statue of Liberty
On October 28, 1886, in New York Harbor, the Statue of Liberty was dedicated by President Grover Cleveland, despite the fact that the monument was not a federally funded project and that Cleveland was adamant in sticking to the private funding of the project.