Today in History, November 7th
On November 7, 1917, Lenin's Bolsheviks seized power in Russia's October Revolution. Plus the Tacoma Narrows Bridge collapse and Marie Curie's birth.
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November 7 is best known for 1917, when Lenin’s Bolsheviks seized power in Petrograd in the October Revolution, creating the Soviet state. The date also saw Washington’s Tacoma Narrows Bridge shake itself apart in 1940 and the birth of Marie Curie in 1867.
The big story: The Bolsheviks Seize Power in Russia (1917)
Why is a revolution that happened in November called the October Revolution? Russia still ran on the old Julian calendar, so the takeover of November 6 and 7, 1917, fell on October 24 and 25 there. The tsar’s government had already been overthrown in March, and a Provisional Government was trying to run a country worn down by World War I, which it kept fighting. Vladimir Lenin’s Bolshevik Party wanted something else: power held by councils, or soviets, of workers, soldiers and peasants. In Petrograd, the capital, Bolsheviks and their allies moved on government buildings and other key points, meeting so little resistance that the coup was nearly bloodless. By November 7 the Provisional Government had fallen, and within two days a new government with Lenin at its head was in place. What began as a takeover in one city became the foundation of the Soviet state.
More events on November 7
| Year | What happened |
|---|---|
| 1811 | William Henry Harrison’s troops defeated forces led by Tenskwatawa, the Prophet and brother of Tecumseh, at the Battle of Tippecanoe near present-day Lafayette, Indiana. |
| 1885 | The last spike was driven at Craigellachie, British Columbia, completing Canada’s first transcontinental railway, years ahead of schedule. |
| 1916 | Montana’s Jeannette Rankin became the first woman elected to the U.S. Congress. She later voted against U.S. entry into both world wars. |
| 1940 | About four months after it opened, the Tacoma Narrows Bridge in Washington state buckled under wind-driven vibrations and collapsed into Puget Sound. |
| 1944 | Franklin D. Roosevelt won a fourth term as president. He died in office the following April. |
| 1989 | David Dinkins was elected New York City’s first Black mayor, and Douglas Wilder of Virginia became the first African American elected governor of any U.S. state. |
| 1991 | Lakers star Magic Johnson announced he had tested positive for HIV and retired at once. He was one of the first sports stars to go public with the diagnosis. |
| 1996 | NASA launched Mars Global Surveyor. Over about a decade in orbit it sent back more than 240,000 images of Mars. |
| 2000 | Election night ended with the presidential race between Al Gore and George W. Bush too close to call. Florida’s recount fight lasted until December 12. |
| 2000 | Hillary Rodham Clinton won a U.S. Senate seat from New York, the first former first lady elected to public office. |
Born on November 7
- 1867: Marie Curie, Polish-born physicist and chemist, the first woman to win a Nobel Prize and the only woman to win in two fields.
- 1913: Albert Camus, novelist and thinker born in French Algeria, winner of the 1957 Nobel Prize in Literature.
- 1918: Billy Graham, evangelist whose mass “crusades” made him one of the best-known preachers in history.
- 1943: Joni Mitchell, Canadian singer-songwriter behind “Both Sides Now” and the album Blue.
Keep reading
Sources
- Russian Revolution, History.com
- On This Day: November 7, Britannica
- This Day in History: November 7 (and its linked event articles), History.com
- William Henry Harrison, Britannica
- Mars Global Surveyor, NASA
- Marie Curie, Britannica
- Albert Camus, Biography.com
- Billy Graham, Britannica
