Today in History, November 18th
On November 18, 1883, North American railroads switched to standard time zones. Plus Steamboat Willie's debut and the Panama Canal treaty.
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November 18 is best known as the “Day of Two Noons” in 1883, when North American railroads switched to standard time zones. The date also marks Mickey Mouse’s screen debut in Steamboat Willie in 1928 and the signing of the 1903 treaty that gave the United States the Panama Canal Zone.
The big story: Railroads Put America on Standard Time (1883)
Before 1883, every town kept its own time, set by the sun. Noon arrived whenever the sun was highest, so neighboring cities could be minutes apart. Across the United States, that added up to more than 100 different local times, which made railroad timetables a mess. Scientists had pushed for a fix for years, and in 1883 the railroads’ own scheduling group, the General Time Convention, decided to act. On November 18, 1883, the Allegheny Observatory in Pittsburgh sent a telegraph signal when it was exactly noon on the 90th meridian, and railroad clocks across the continent were reset to one of four new zones. Many places got to enjoy noon twice that day, once by the sun and once by the railroad. Cities soon followed the railroads’ lead. Congress did not make the zones official until the Standard Time Act of 1918, a full 35 years later.
More events on November 18
| Year | What happened |
|---|---|
| 1626 | Pope Urban VIII consecrated the new St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome. |
| 1803 | Haitian revolutionary forces under Jean-Jacques Dessalines defeated the French at the Battle of Vertières, clearing the way for Haiti’s independence on January 1, 1804. |
| 1903 | The United States and Panama signed the Hay–Bunau-Varilla Treaty, giving the U.S. a strip about 10 miles wide across the isthmus to build a canal. |
| 1928 | Walt Disney’s Steamboat Willie, the first Mickey Mouse cartoon released and the first cartoon with synchronized sound, premiered at New York’s Colony Theater. |
| 1963 | Bell Telephone launched the first commercial push-button, touch-tone phone service, in Carnegie and Greensburg, Pennsylvania. |
| 1978 | Congressman Leo Ryan was shot dead at an airstrip in Guyana, and 918 people connected to the Peoples Temple died that day, most of them at the Jonestown compound. |
| 1985 | Bill Watterson’s comic strip Calvin and Hobbes debuted in newspapers. It ran until 1995. |
| 2002 | An advance team of UN weapons inspectors arrived in Baghdad to restart inspections in Iraq. |
| 2013 | NASA launched the MAVEN spacecraft to study how Mars lost its atmosphere and water. |
Born on November 18
- 1836: W. S. Gilbert, English playwright and lyricist of Gilbert and Sullivan’s comic operas.
- 1901: George Gallup, pollster whose Gallup Poll became shorthand for public-opinion surveys.
- 1923: Alan Shepard, the first American in space.
- 1939: Margaret Atwood, Canadian novelist who wrote The Handmaid’s Tale.
Sources
- Today in History: November 18, Library of Congress
- Standard Time, Chicago Public Library
- Time is of the essence… or the railroad?, Union Pacific Railroad Museum
- St. Peter’s Basilica at 400, National Catholic Register
- Battle of Vertières: November 18th, 1803, Haitian Art Society
- Hay–Bunau-Varilla Treaty, Britannica
- Steamboat Willie (film), D23
- Bell Telephone began offering world’s first touch-tone service, Hagley Museum and Library
- Jonestown: November 18, 1978, PBS American Experience
- Calvin and Hobbes at 40, NPR
- UN Arms Inspectors Arrive In Iraq, Scoop (UN release)
- MAVEN launched to study upper atmosphere of Mars, LASP, University of Colorado Boulder
- W. S. Gilbert, Britannica
- George Gallup, Britannica
- Alan B. Shepard Jr. biography, NASA
- Margaret Atwood, Britannica
