.: The Red Brick – Dubai College's Student Newspaper :.

November 16^th 1965: Launch of Venera 3

Venera 3 was a spacecraft launched by the Soviet Union from Kazakhstan, with the aim of exploring the surface of Venus. The probe crash-landed on the 1^st March 1966, becoming the first spacecraft to ever land on another planet’s surface, however its communications system failed before being able to send any information.

November 17^th 1558: The Elizabethan Era begins

Elizabeth I of the Tudor family succeeds her half-sister Mary I after her death, and continued to rule until her death in 1603. Elizabeth was the fifth and final Tudor monarch whose era is famous for William Shakespeare and the sea-faring achievements of adventurers such as Francis Drake.

November 18^th 1978: The mass suicide of the Peoples Temple

The Peoples Temple was a religious organization founded by Jim Jones in Indiana in 1955, its focus was a form of communism that promoted atheism and social equality. After moving to California, Jones and his church earned a reputation for aiding the cities’ poorest citizens, especially racial minorities, drug addicts, and the homeless. However, Jones implemented mind control and brain washing techniques, similar to those used in communist China, as well as a great deal of secrecy amongst the members to turn the association into a fiercely anti-American cult. Following an investigation by the US congress, leader Jim Jones decided on a tactic called ‘revolutionary suicide’, whereupon the mass suicide of its members would spread their message to the world as well as avoid the growing threat of an attack. 909 people died after drinking cyanide laced kool-aid, including 276 children, making this the second largest single loss of American lives in history. Jim Jones’ final 40 minute long speech is available on the internet, and makes for disturbing listening.

November 19^th 1969: Pelé scores his 1000^th goal

The Brazilian footballer Pelé, widely regarded as one of the greatest footballers ever, scored his 1000^th professional goal in a match against Vasco da Gama in Rio de Janeiro’s Maracana stadium.

November 20^th 1985: Windows 1.0 was released

It was Microsoft’s first attempt to implement a multi-tasking operating environment and was the first version of Windows launched. It achieved little popularity and Windows did not have notable success until the launch of Windows 3.0. Windows 1.0 was succeeded by Windows 2.0 in 1987 and support was discontinued on 31 December 2001. The most recent client version of Windows is Windows 7, with the 8^th currently in development.

November 21^st 1694: Birth of Voltaire

Voltaire was a famous French philosopher, writer and historian whose work influenced important thinkers of both the American and French revolutions. He was an avid advocate for freedom of religion, trade, civil liberties and the separation of state and church as well as being famed for his wit. Additionally, Voltaire had a huge influence on the development of historiography  through his fresh new way of looking at the past, focusing on the social aspects as opposed to diplomatic and military events.

“Si Dieu n’existait pas, il faudrait l’inventer” (“If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him”)

“Every man is guilty of the good that he did not do.”

 November 22^nd 1963: Assasination of John F. Kennedy

 John F. Kennedy, the 35^th president of the USA, was shot to death by a sniper in  Dallas, Texas by Lee Harvey Oswald, in an act which is still surrounded by controversy. After the 10 month investigation, during which Oswald himself was murdered, polls conducted found that as many as 80 percent of Americans have suspected that there was a plot or conspiracy theory surrounding the president’s death.

November 23^rd 1963: First episode of Doctor Who

The British science fiction television programme Doctor Who from the BBC is shown on TV for the first time. “The Doctor” played by William Hartnell in the first series travels through time and space in the TARDIS ( A blue 1950s police box ) . Over 40 years featuring a number of doctors fighting a variety of aliens, including the Daleks, Doctor Who has gained a cult status in Britain and is the longest-running science fiction television show in the world.

November 8^th 1923: The Beer Hall Putsch

The Beer Hall Putsch was the unsuccessful attempt by the Nazi party, led by Adolf Hitler, to seize power in Munich. They surrounded a Munich beer hall, where a political speech was being presented, and burst through the doors holding machine guns. Hitler fired a shot into the ceiling and jumped on a chair yelling: “The national revolution has broken out! The hall is filled with six hundred men. Nobody is allowed to leave. The Bavarian government and the government at Berlin are deposed. A new government will be formed at once. The barracks of the Reichswehr and those of the police are occupied [this was not in fact the case]. Both have rallied to the swastika.” They then forced the people to march unsuccessfully.  Two days later, Hitler was arrested and charged with high treason and after a much publicized trial, was sentenced to five years in jail.

November 9^th 1888: Jack the Ripper murders his last known victim

Jack the Ripper was the name given to an unidentified serial killer operating in the Whitechapel district of London in 1888, known to have brutally killed at least five prostitutes.  The large number of attacks against women in the East End during this era adds uncertainty to how many victims were killed by the same person, with eleven separate murders, stretching from April 1888 to February 1891, included in the police investigation, however only five confirmed as the work of the Ripper. His final established victim was Mary Jane Kelly, who was discovered naked and heavily mutilated in her lodgings.

November 10^th 2001: Apple starts selling the iPod

 Digital cameras, camcorders and organizers had well-established mainstream markets, but Apple found existing digital music players “big and clunky or small and useless” with user interfaces that were “unbelievably awful,” so Apple decided to develop its own. As ordered by Steve Jobs, the Apple engineers developed the product in less than one year and unveiled it on October 23, 2001, making it available to be bought almost 3 weeks later.

November 11^th 1918: The Armistice Agreement

1^st November 1952: USA tests the first ever hydrogen bomb 

In the midst of the Cold War, USA detonates the world’s first thermonuclear weapon on an atoll in the pacific. It was codenamed “Mike” (‘M’ for Megatron), the fireball was approximately 5.2 km wide, and the mushroom cloud rose to an altitude of 17.0 km in less than 90 seconds. 

2^nd November 1965: Vietnam peace protests turn deadly

Norman Morrison was 31 years old when, doused with kerosene, he set himself alight in front of the office of the secretary of defense in the Pentagon. He was protesting against US involvement in the Vietnam War, where in total over 58 000 American lives were lost. Morrison’s suicide was an emulation of a Vietnamese Buddhist monk who had burned to death in 1963, in protest of the persecution of Buddhists by South Vietnam authorities, and was part of a large movement against the war.

3^rd November 1911: Chevrolet was founded

 In 1911, race car driver and engineer Louis Chevrolet co-founded the brand Chevrolet, which  was going to release mainstream vehicles to directly compete with Henry Ford’s car  models. The famous “bowtie emblem” logo was first used in 1913. It may have been designed  from wallpaper Durant once saw in a French hotel, while some believe it is a stylized Swiss cross in honor of Louis Chevrolet’s home country.

4^th November 1922: The entrance to Tutankhamen’s tomb is discovered

British archaeologist Howard Carter discovered the entrance to the famous pharaoh’s tomb in 1922, the tomb was densely packed with valuable items in great disarray and due to Carter’s meticulous recording technique the tomb took nearly a decade to empty with  the contents all being transported to the Egyptian museum in Cairo. They also discovered that the tomb had been entered twice before and it is estimated that 60% of the jewels and statues were stolen. This discovery was incredibly important because it sparked wide public interest in Ancient Egypt, in particular the rumored curse that meant death for those who entered the tomb.

 5^th November 1605: The Gunpowder Plot

“Remember remember the 5^th of November, Gunpowder, treason and plot, I see no reason why gunpowder, treason, should ever be forgot…”

 On the 5^th November, Guy Fawkes was arrested while guarding explosives that he and the  other plotters had placed beneath the House of Lords in an attempt to blow up and kill King  James I. The attempt had its origins in religion, planning to replace the protestant King and  install his daughter as a catholic Queen, following the high religious tensions that had been  growing since King Henry VIII took control of the English Church in 1533. The day was  enforced as an annual day of thanksgiving for the plot’s failure and is now celebrated with  large bonfires, often burning models of Guy Fawkes, and firework displays.

6^th November 1975: The Green March in Morocco

A mass demonstration by the Morocco people begins “The Green March” with 350,000 unarmed Moroccans crossing the border into the Spanish controlled area of Western Sahara demanding the return of the Moroccan Sahara. Spanish troops protecting the border are ordered not to fire to avoid bloodshed.

7^th November 1872: The Mary Celeste sets sail

The Mary Celeste was an American merchant ship famous for having been discovered on 4 December 1872, in the Atlantic ocean unmanned and apparently abandoned, despite the fact that the weather was fine and her crew had been experienced and able seamen. The Mary Celeste was in seaworthy condition and still under sail heading towards Gibraltar, having been at sea for a month and containing six months’ worth of food and water on board. Her cargo was virtually untouched and the personal belongings of passengers and crew were still in place, including valuables. The crew was never seen or heard from again.

24th October 1901: First person to successfully ride down the Niagara Falls

The first successful barrel ride over Niagara Falls occurred when Anna Edson Taylor, a school teacher, rode safely over the Falls on her 63^rd birthday. The ride through the rapids took 18 minutes and she dropped a total of 51 meters, sustaining only very small injuries.

October 10th 1731: Henry Cavendish, English physicist who measured the density and mass of the Earth, is born

October 11th 2002: Jimmy Carter wins Nobel Peace Prize

On this day in 2002, former President Jimmy Carter wins the Nobel Peace Prize “for his decades of untiring effort to find peaceful solutions to international conflicts, to advance democracy and human rights, and to promote economic and social development.”

October 12th 1609: The song “Three Blind Mice” is published in London, believed to be the earliest printed secular song.

October 13th 1925: Margaret Thatcher, the first female UK prime minister (1979-1990), is born

October 14th1947: U.S. Air Force Captain Chuck Yeager becomes the first person to fly faster than the speed of sound

Yeager, born in Myra, West Virginia, in 1923, was a combat fighter during World War II and flew 64 missions over Europe. He shot down 13 German planes and was himself shot down over France, but he escaped capture with the assistance of the French Underground. After the war, he was among several volunteers chosen to test-fly the experimental X-1 rocket plane, built by the Bell Aircraft Company to explore the possibility of supersonic flight.

For years, many aviators believed that man was not meant to fly faster than the speed of sound, theorizing that transonic drag rise would tear any aircraft apart. All that changed on October 14, 1947, when Yeager flew the X-1 over Rogers Dry Lake in Southern California. The X-1 was lifted to an altitude of 25,000 feet by a B-29 aircraft and then released through the bomb bay, rocketing to 40,000 feet and exceeding 662 miles per hour (the sound barrier at that altitude). The rocket plane, nicknamed “Glamorous Glennis,” was designed with thin, unswept wings and a streamlined fuselage modeled after a .50-caliber bullet.

Because of the secrecy of the project, Bell and Yeager’s achievement was not announced until June 1948. Yeager continued to serve as a test pilot, and in 1953 he flew 1,650 miles per hour in an X-1A rocket plane. He retired from the U.S. Air Force in 1975 with the rank of brigadier general.

October 15th 1965: In a demonstration staged by the student-run National Coordinating Committee to End the War in Vietnam, the first public burning of a draft card in the United States takes place.

October 16th 1946: 10 high-ranking Nazi officials executed at Nuremberg

October 1st 1553: The Coronation of Queen Mary I 

Queen Mary I ruled over England and Ireland from 1553-1558, and was the fourth crowned monarch of the Tudor period.She is remembered for her restoration of Roman Catholicism after the short-lived protestant reign of her brother. In the process, she had over 280 religious dissenters burned at the stake which garnered her the nickname of ‘Bloody Mary’.

October 2nd 2006: Amish School Shooting

5 years ago today, Charles Carl Roberts IV took hostages and eventually shot ten girls (aged 6–13), killing five, before committing suicide in the schoolhouse of the West Nickel Mines School in Pennsylvania. The Amish community responded with an emphasis on forgiveness, a grandfather of one of the murdered Amish girls was heard warning some young relatives not to hate the killer, saying, “We must not think evil of this man.” The school buildings were torn down a week later and a new one built within the community, leaving green pastures to commemorate the site.

October 3rd 1990: The reunification of Germany

The German Democratic Republic (east) and the Federal Republic of Germany (west) were reunified after being split for 45 years – following the end of WWII. This was greatly helped by the opening of the Berlin Wall in 1989, which united the two sides of Berlin that had been previously been divided by the Soviets in the east to cut off the allied forces (America, Britain and France) in the west.

October 4th 1957: Launch of Sputnik

The Space Race begins when the Soviet Union launches the first artificial satellite SPUTNIK, which was only 22 inches in diameter. It spent 3 months in orbit, and took 1 hour 36 minutes to completely circle the earth. The launch of Sputnik both united the people of the Soviet Union and humiliated the United States with its lack of comparable technology, which pushed them to achieving the first moon landing.

October 5th 1962: The release of ‘Dr. No’ – First James Bond film

‘Dr.No’ is the first of the 22 James Bond films now released, which is now one of the highest grossing series ever. It is estimated that a quarter of the world’s population have seen at least one Bond film. ‘Dr. No’ also created the iconic images of the main character through the view of a gun barrel, the highly stylised opening credits and the instantly recognisable theme music.

October 6th 1914: Birth of Thor Heyerdahl

Thor Heyerdahl was a Norwegian adventurer who is remembered for his Kon-Tiki expedition, in which he sailed 8,000 km by raft from South America to the Tuamotu Islands. In May 2011, the Thor Heyerdahl Archives were added to UNESCO’s “Memory of the World” Register. The archives span the years 1937 to 2002 and include his photographic collection, diaries, private letters, expedition plans, articles, newspaper clippings, original book and article manuscripts. He is, of course, most remembered at DC for giving his name to one of our school houses.

October 7th 1982: ‘Cats’ first opens on Broadway

Andrew Lloyd Webber’s musical ‘Cats’ has its first production of an 18 year run on Broadway, almost 30 years ago today. It is the second longest running show in Broadway, winning multiple Tony and Olivier awards, and has even been turned into a film.