Today in History, November 26th
On November 26, 1922, Howard Carter first looked into King Tut's tomb. Plus Washington's Thanksgiving, Casablanca, and more.
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November 26 is best known as the day in 1922 when Howard Carter first looked into the tomb of Tutankhamun and saw “wonderful things.” It is also the date of the first national Thanksgiving under the U.S. Constitution in 1789 and the day Casablanca premiered in New York in 1942.
The big story: Archaeologists enter the tomb of King Tut (1922)
British archaeologist Howard Carter was searching Egypt’s Valley of the Kings with funding from his patron, the antiquities collector Lord Carnarvon. On November 4, 1922, his team uncovered a step cut into the rock. Over the following weeks they cleared a staircase and broke through a sealed doorway. On November 26, Carter made a small hole in a second door and held up a candle. Asked whether he could see anything, he replied that he saw wonderful things. He was not exaggerating. The antechamber was essentially intact. Ancient robbers had broken in soon after the burial but had been caught before they reached the inner rooms. Inside were several thousand objects, from gold and jewelry to furniture, weapons, and a chariot. Later work revealed a stone sarcophagus holding three nested coffins, the innermost made of solid gold, with the young king’s mummy inside. Tutankhamun, a minor pharaoh in his own time, became the most famous one of all.
More events on November 26
| Year | What happened |
|---|---|
| 579 | Pelagius II succeeded Benedict I as pope. |
| 1789 | Americans observed a national day of thanksgiving proclaimed by President George Washington, the first under the new Constitution. |
| 1864 | Lewis Carroll sent 12-year-old Alice Liddell a handwritten manuscript, Alice’s Adventures Under Ground, as a Christmas present. It grew into Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. |
| 1883 | Sojourner Truth, the formerly enslaved abolitionist and women’s rights speaker, died. |
| 1917 | The National Hockey League was founded with four Canadian teams. |
| 1941 | A Japanese carrier task force quietly set out toward Pearl Harbor, the same day Secretary of State Cordell Hull handed Japan a note demanding it withdraw from China and Indochina. |
| 1942 | Casablanca, starring Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman, premiered in New York City. |
| 1948 | The first Polaroid instant camera, the Model 95, went on sale at a Boston department store. |
| 1950 | Massive Chinese counterattacks in Korea struck U.S. and South Korean forces, ending hopes of a quick end to the Korean War. |
| 2008 | Ten gunmen launched coordinated terrorist attacks in Mumbai, India, that lasted three days and killed 166 people. |
| 2011 | NASA’s Curiosity rover launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida, bound for Mars. |
Born on November 26
- 1894: Norbert Wiener, American mathematician and founder of cybernetics.
- 1909: Eugène Ionesco, Romanian-born French playwright of the Theatre of the Absurd.
- 1922: Charles Schulz, American cartoonist who created Peanuts.
- 1939: Tina Turner, rock and soul singer, born in Brownsville, Tennessee.
Keep reading
Sources
- Archaeologists enter tomb of King Tut, History.com
- On This Day: November 26, Encyclopaedia Britannica
- This Day in History: November 26, History.com
- George Washington’s Thanksgiving Day Proclamation, DocsTeach, National Archives
- “Alice in Wonderland” manuscript is sent as a Christmas present, History.com
- Chinese counterattacks in Korea change nature of war, History.com
