History

On November 9, 1906, Theodore Roosevelt departed for Panama on a trip that made presidential history. The Theodore Roosevelt Panama trip was the first time a sitting president of the United States travelled outside the country on an official visit — and its destination was one of the greatest engineering undertakings of the age: the construction of the Panama Canal. ...

Napoleon Coup — on November 9, 1799, Napoleon Bonaparte began the bloodless coup that elevated him to First Consul of France and ended the Directory. Known in history as the Coup of 18 Brumaire, it was one of the most consequential power grabs in modern European history: a single day that closed the chapter on the French Revolution’s experiment with ...

November 8 holidays, observances and history: here is everything the day holds, from Diwali lights and cappuccinos to X-rays, presidents, and Dracula. November 8 is a Sunday in 2026, and a day of light in every sense: it is Diwali, the Hindu festival of lights, and it is also World Radiography Day, marking the discovery of X-rays on this very ...

Gordon Ramsay, born November 8, 1966, is the Scottish chef and television personality known for Hell’s Kitchen, Kitchen Nightmares, and MasterChef. He is one of the most famous chefs in the world: a holder of Michelin stars, a restaurateur, and a TV star whose fiery temper and exacting standards made him a household name on both sides of the Atlantic. ...

Kazuo Ishiguro, born November 8, 1954, is the Japanese-British author who won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2017. He is one of the most admired novelists of his generation, a writer whose quiet, restrained prose has produced some of the most moving and most widely read fiction of recent decades, including The Remains of the Day and Never Let ...

Bonnie Raitt, born November 8, 1949, is the American blues singer-songwriter and slide guitarist known for Nick of Time and “I Can’t Make You Love Me.” A master of the slide guitar and a voice full of warmth and grit, she won thirteen Grammys and became a star at forty with Nick of Time (1989). Who is Bonnie Raitt? Bonnie ...

Patti Page, born November 8, 1927, was the American singer of Tennessee Waltz, one of the best-selling singles of all time. Born in Claremore, Oklahoma, she became the best-selling female singer of the 1950s — “the Singin’ Rage” — selling more than 100 million records over six decades. Among the first artists to overdub her own harmonies, Page won a ...

Margaret Mitchell, born November 8, 1900, was the American author of Gone with the Wind, one of the best-selling novels of all time. A former journalist from Atlanta, Georgia, she spent a decade writing her sweeping Civil War epic — and it won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1937. Mitchell died in 1949, aged 48, after being struck by ...

Dorothy Day, born November 8, 1897, was the American journalist and activist who founded the Catholic Worker movement. Born in Brooklyn, New York, she spent her youth as a socialist journalist before converting to Catholicism — and then spent the rest of her life serving the poor, advocating for workers, and preaching pacifism. With Peter Maurin, she founded the Catholic ...

Bram Stoker, born November 8, 1847, was the Irish author of Dracula, the novel that created the modern vampire. Born in Clontarf, Dublin, Ireland, Stoker spent his days as a theatre manager — and his nights imagining one of literature’s most enduring monsters. Published in 1897, Dracula drew on Eastern European folklore, the legend of Vlad the Impaler, and the ...