November 9 ...

In 1872 fire destroyed nearly a thousand buildings in Boston. In 1918 Germany's Kaiser Wilhelm II announced he would abdicate; he then fled to the Netherlands. In 1935 United Mine Workers president John L. Lewis and other labor leaders formed the Committee for Industrial Organization. In 1938 Nazis looted and burned synagogues as well as Jewish-owned stores and houses in Germany and Austria in what became known as "Kristallnacht." In 1953 author-poet Dylan Thomas died in New York at age 39. In 1965 the great Northeast blackout occurred as a series of power failures lasting up to 13 1/2 hours left 30 million people in seven states and two Canadian provinces without electricity. In 1967 a Saturn 5 rocket carrying an unmanned Apollo spacecraft blasted off from Cape Kennedy on a successful test flight. In 1970 former French president Charles De Gaulle died at age 79. In 1989 communist East Germany threw open its borders, allowing citizens to travel freely to the West; joyous Germans danced atop the Berlin Wall. In 2000 George W. Bush's lead over Al Gore in all-or-nothing Florida slipped beneath 300 votes in a suspense-filled recount as Democrats threw the presidential election to the courts, claiming "an injustice unparalleled in our history."