100 Fun Facts About November

November's name comes from the Latin word for which number?

Nine: November comes from Latin novem, 'nine', because it was the ninth month of the early Roman calendar, which began in March; it kept the name after January and February were placed at the start of the year.

Which gemstone is November's traditional birthstone?

Topaz is November's birthstone, and most blue topaz sold today began as colourless topaz turned blue by irradiation and heating.

What is the birth flower of November?

The chrysanthemum flowers in autumn, just as many summer blooms fade, which is why this late-season flower is linked with November.

A person born on November 10 falls under which Western zodiac sign?

Scorpio covers birthdays up to about November 21, yet the Sun lines up with the real constellation Scorpius for only about a week each year.

US Thanksgiving is celebrated on which day of November?

The fourth Thursday became law in 1941, after Franklin Roosevelt moved the holiday a week earlier in 1939 to lengthen the Christmas shopping season.

Which president did editor Sarah Josepha Hale finally persuade to proclaim an annual national Thanksgiving?

Abraham Lincoln acted on Hale's 1863 letter at once, after several earlier presidents had ignored the petitions she began sending in 1846.

Which Wampanoag leader came with about 90 men to the Pilgrims' 1621 harvest celebration at Plymouth?

Massasoit and his men were feasted for three days, Edward Winslow wrote, and they went out and killed five deer for the colony's governor and captain.

Which cartoon star was among the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade's first balloons, in 1927?

Felix the Cat's 1927 balloon was propped up with sticks, and in the early years balloons were set free after the parade, with rewards for anyone who returned them.

Who traditionally arrives at the very end of the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade?

Santa Claus rides the final float; his arrival at Macy's Herald Square store is treated as the start of the Christmas season, a tradition dating to the first parade in 1924.

In which month does Canada celebrate its Thanksgiving?

October: Canada's first annual Thanksgiving, in 1879, was held on 6 November, and only in 1957 was it fixed on the second Monday in October.

Black Friday's shopping-day name is traced to police in which US city describing the traffic chaos?

Philadelphia police used the name for the day's jammed streets; earlier, 'Black Friday' had meant a Friday when financial markets crashed, as in 1869.

Which US holiday is observed every year on November 11?

Veterans Day falls on November 11 because First World War fighting ended at the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month of 1918.

Before 1954, the US federal holiday on November 11 was known by what name?

Armistice Day: on that day in 1921, an unidentified American serviceman from the First World War was buried at Arlington National Cemetery.

The red poppy worn in November for Remembrance Day was inspired by which First World War poem?

'In Flanders Fields' was begun by Canadian army doctor John McCrae after he led the burial service for his friend Alexis Helmer, killed at Ypres.

Guy Fawkes was arrested guarding explosives beneath which building?

The House of Lords: Fawkes was found in the undercroft beneath the Lords chamber early on 5 November 1605 with 36 barrels of gunpowder, meant to kill James I at the state opening of Parliament.

Which English town's bonfire societies stage a famous 5 November night of torchlit processions?

Lewes: its bonfire societies carry burning crosses in memory of the Protestants burned at the stake in the town under Mary I.

The Movember moustache-growing charity campaign began in which country?

Australia: Movember began there and has grown into a global men's health movement.

What are the home altars that families build for Mexico's Day of the Dead called?

Ofrendas display photos and belongings of the dead with their favourite food and drink, left to give the spirits what they need on their journey.

Which flower, called cempasúchil in Mexico, is believed to guide the spirits home for the Day of the Dead?

Marigold petals, bright and strongly scented, are laid in paths to lead the spirits from the cemetery to their family homes.

Mexico City's Day of the Dead parade, first held in 2016, was inspired by the opening of which film?

Spectre opened with James Bond chasing a villain through a Day of the Dead parade that didn't exist, so Mexico City staged a real one the following year.

Which Christian feast falls on November 1, with Halloween as its eve?

All Saints' Day was also called All Hallows, so the evening before became All Hallows' Eve, later shortened to Halloween.

The Berlin Wall opened on 9 November 1989 after an East German official fumbled an announcement at what kind of event?

A press conference: asked when new travel rules took effect, Günter Schabowski stammered 'immediately, without delay', and the Wall opened that night.

On which day of the week are US federal elections held?

Tuesday: Congress chose it in 1845 so farmers could travel to the county seat without breaking the Sunday sabbath or missing Wednesday market day.

Which state was the first to secede from the Union after the November 1860 election?

South Carolina declared itself 'a separate and independent State' in December 1860 and briefly stood alone before helping found the Confederacy.

The Gettysburg Address, delivered on November 19, 1863, was about how long?

About 270 words: it lasted about two minutes, and Edward Everett, who had spoken for two hours, wrote that it came nearer the day's central idea.

On 4 November 1922, excavators in Egypt's Valley of the Kings found the first step to whose tomb?

Tutankhamun: asked by Lord Carnarvon if he could see anything, Howard Carter is remembered as saying 'wonderful things', though his journal says 'Yes, it is wonderful'.

Which children's television show premiered on public television on November 10, 1969?

Sesame Street grew from a 1966 dinner party at which Joan Ganz Cooney and Lloyd Morrisett discussed using television to prepare young children for school.

Mickey Mouse's official 'birthday' is November 18, marking the 1928 premiere of which cartoon?

Steamboat Willie opened at New York's Colony Theatre on 18 November 1928, the first Mickey Mouse cartoon released with a synchronised soundtrack; Plane Crazy and The Gallopin' Gaucho had been made earlier but were released later with sound.

Which landmark science book, published 24 November 1859, sold out its 1,250-copy first printing before release?

On the Origin of Species came out after Alfred Russel Wallace's 1858 letter outlining the same theory pushed Darwin to publish instead of finishing a far bigger book.

Where did Soviet scientists find Laika, launched in November 1957?

Moscow's streets: Laika was a stray, and officials said she died painlessly after about a week, but in 2002 it emerged she overheated within hours.

In November 1889, Nellie Bly set off to beat the fictional record from which novel?

Around the World in Eighty Days: Bly made it round in about 72 days, and her newspaper, the World, ran a contest for readers to guess her time.

Which brothers built the balloon for the first crewed free flight, in November 1783?

The Montgolfiers had first sent a sheep, a duck and a rooster aloft, on an eight-minute flight watched by Louis XVI at Versailles.

Which Agatha Christie play, first staged in London's West End on 25 November 1952, has the world's longest run?

The Mousetrap's rights went to Agatha Christie's young grandson Mathew Prichard as a birthday present.

In November 2021, whose 10-minute song became the longest ever to top the Billboard Hot 100?

Taylor Swift had trimmed 'All Too Well' to five and a half minutes for Red in 2012, then restored the long version in 2021, beating the record 'American Pie' held.

Which horse race, run each November, is known as 'the race that stops the nation'?

The Melbourne Cup of 1930 was won by Phar Lap just days after criminals tried to shoot him.

Saint Andrew's Day, celebrated on 30 November, is the official national day of which country?

Scotland: Saint Andrew is traditionally shown with an X-shaped cross, which is why Scotland's flag, the saltire, is also called Saint Andrew's Cross.

Thailand's Loy Krathong festival, usually in November, involves floating what onto rivers and lakes?

Small decorated baskets with candles: a krathong, traditionally made from banana trunk, is floated at the full moon, often to honour the goddess of water.

World Diabetes Day, held on 14 November, marks the birthday of which co-discoverer of insulin?

Frederick Banting was angry that the 1923 Nobel Prize went to him and John Macleod rather than Charles Best, so he split his share of the award with Best.

What are the small oil lamps lit for Diwali, the Hindu festival of lights, called?

Diyas are oil lamps lit for Diwali, whose name comes from Sanskrit dipavali, 'row of lights'; one tradition links the lights to Rama's return to Ayodhya.

In which Dallas plaza was President John F. Kennedy shot on 22 November 1963?

Dealey Plaza: Dallas newspapers had printed the motorcade's route, including its turn onto Elm Street, days before Kennedy arrived.

Who shot Lee Harvey Oswald dead in a Dallas police basement two days after Kennedy's assassination?

Jack Ruby, a Dallas nightclub owner, was sentenced to death, but the verdict was overturned in 1966 and he died before a new trial.

The Anglo-Saxons called November 'blood month' for which activity?

Killing livestock: Bede wrote that the cattle due to be slaughtered that month were dedicated to the gods.

Which general seized power in the coup of 18 Brumaire, on 9 November 1799?

Napoleon Bonaparte overthrew the Directory and became First Consul, in a coup often seen as the end of the French Revolution.

Which meteor shower peaks in mid-November each year?

The Leonids are dust shed by Comet Tempel-Tuttle, which takes 33 years to orbit the Sun, and about as often the shower can erupt into a storm of thousands of meteors an hour.

Which Western zodiac sign begins in late November?

Sagittarius (the archer) is the sign, yet from late November to mid-December the Sun really sits in Ophiuchus, a 13th constellation the zodiac leaves out.

Which variety of quartz is also listed as a November birthstone?

Citrine is rare in nature, so most citrine sold today is amethyst turned yellow by heat treatment.

In Catholic tradition, November is the month of prayer for whom?

The Holy Souls in Purgatory: the Church teaches that prayers of the living can help purify them, and All Souls' Day on November 2 is set aside for them.

Which observance shares 19 November with International Men's Day?

World Toilet Day was already marked by campaign groups before the UN General Assembly made it an official UN day in 2013.

Which band released the 1992 power ballad 'November Rain'?

Guns N' Roses' 'November Rain' video was inspired by 'Without You', a short story by writer Del James.

What name is given to the Monday shopping day after the US Thanksgiving weekend?

Cyber Monday was coined in 2005 by the National Retail Federation, which noticed people kept shopping online at work, where internet connections were faster.

Which Oxford don and children's author died on 22 November 1963, about an hour before President Kennedy was shot?

C. S. Lewis died at home in Oxford a week short of his 65th birthday. Aldous Huxley, author of Brave New World, died the same day, and the news from Dallas pushed both deaths off the front pages.

By what name is the hijacker known who parachuted from a Boeing 727 with $200,000 in ransom in November 1971?

D. B. Cooper was a reporter's slip: the ticket was bought as Dan Cooper. He jumped into the night with the cash and was never identified, the only unsolved hijacking in commercial aviation history.

The fossil skeleton 'Lucy', unearthed in Ethiopia in November 1974, was named after a song by which band?

The Beatles' 'Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds' played loudly and repeatedly in camp on the night of the find, so the name stuck to a hominin who lived around 3.2 million years ago.

Which NFL team began its tradition of hosting a Thanksgiving Day game in 1934 as a gimmick to sell tickets?

Detroit Lions' owner at the time also owned radio station WJR, so he persuaded NBC to carry the game live across its network, and a national habit was born.

Apart from most of Arizona, which US state never changes its clocks when daylight saving time ends each November?

Hawaii opted out of daylight saving time in 1967. Lying in the tropics, it sees little change in day length through the year, which leaves little daylight to shift.

November's full moon is traditionally named after which animal, once trapped at this season for its winter pelt?

Beaver Moon has a second reading too: this is when the animals retreat into their lodges with enough food stored to last the winter.

November stands for N in the NATO phonetic alphabet; which code word comes straight after it, for the letter O?

Oscar follows November in the spelling alphabet used by pilots and radio operators. November is a latecomer: it replaced Nectar in 1956, after Nectar kept being confused with Victor.

In the traditional rhyme for remembering month lengths, which month is named first, ahead of April, June and November?

September usually leads the verse, though early versions often opened with November instead: the two names share a rhythm and a rhyme, so they swap places freely.

Which animals are treated to a banquet of fruit and vegetables at a festival held each November in Lopburi, Thailand?

Monkeys in Lopburi are crab-eating macaques that have long lived around its old Khmer temples, and the feast is laid out for them there, with some of the fruit frozen into blocks of ice.

Which film, released in US cinemas in November 1995, was the first feature made entirely with computer animation?

Toy Story was also Pixar's first feature, and its script became the first for an animated film to earn an Academy Award nomination for original screenplay.

Which ship's passengers signed a pact to govern themselves while anchored off Cape Cod in November 1620?

Mayflower passengers drew up the pact because storms had forced them to stop outside their Virginia grant, and some declared that nobody there had power to command them.

Which form of radiation did the German physicist Wilhelm Röntgen first detect in his laboratory on 8 November 1895?

X-rays got their name from the mathematical symbol for an unknown, because Röntgen had no idea what they were. He refused to patent them so that everyone could benefit.

Which waterway, opened in November 1869 after ten years of digging, links the Mediterranean Sea to the Red Sea?

The Suez Canal opened with days of parties: fireworks, a banquet on the khedive's yacht, and Muslim and Christian blessings held side by side on the beach.

Which Michael Jackson album, released in November 1982, had become the best-selling album of all time by early 1984?

Thriller was the first album to send seven singles into the US top ten, and its sales surged again after Jackson unveiled his moonwalk on the Motown 25 television special.

In which German city did the trial of leading Nazis open in November 1945, at a courthouse with its own prison?

Nuremberg was chosen partly as a symbol, having hosted the Nazi party rallies, and partly because its Palace of Justice had come through the bombing relatively intact.

Whom did Britain's Princess Elizabeth marry on 20 November 1947, buying the dress fabric with ration coupons?

Philip Mountbatten was born a prince of Greece and Denmark but dropped those titles on becoming British. He was made Duke of Edinburgh on the morning of the wedding.

Which ocean did Ferdinand Magellan's ships reach in November 1520 after threading a strait at South America's tip?

The Pacific got its name from Magellan himself, who called it peaceful because the water lay so still after the storms of the strait.

Which industry introduced standard time zones across North America on 18 November 1883, the so-called Day of Two Noons?

The railroads acted without any law: station clocks were simply reset when the new noon arrived in each zone. Congress did not make the zones official until 1918.

Whom did the 18-year-old William Shakespeare marry in November 1582, six months before the birth of their first child?

Anne Hathaway was 26 at the wedding, eight years older than her groom. His will famously left her just one thing by name: his second-best bed.

Which missing explorer did journalist Henry Morton Stanley find at Ujiji, beside Lake Tanganyika, in November 1871?

David Livingstone had been searching for the source of the Nile. Stanley's famous greeting is missing from his own journal, where the pages covering the meeting were torn out.

Which invention did Thomas Edison announce on 21 November 1877 and demonstrate for the first time eight days later?

The phonograph grew out of Edison's attempts to play back recorded telegraph messages. His first machines stored sound as dents in a sheet of tinfoil wrapped round a cylinder.

Which NASA mission, struck twice by lightning just after launch, made the second crewed Moon landing in November 1969?

Apollo 12 set down within walking distance of Surveyor 3, a robot probe that had landed in 1967, which proved that astronauts could make pinpoint landings.

Which comic strip about a six-year-old boy and his stuffed tiger first ran in newspapers on 18 November 1985?

Calvin and Hobbes reached more than 2,000 newspapers at its peak, yet its creator Bill Watterson refused to license the characters, so no official toys or cartoons were made.

Which country's Velvet Revolution began on 17 November 1989 when riot police broke up a student demonstration?

Czechoslovakia shed 41 years of one-party rule in under a fortnight. The students had gathered to mark 50 years since a Nazi crackdown on Prague's university.

The ceasefire ending First World War fighting on 11 November 1918 was signed in a rail carriage in which French forest?

Compiègne saw the scene replayed in June 1940, when Hitler had the very same dining car hauled back to the exact spot to dictate terms to a defeated France.

Which college beat Princeton 6–4 in November 1869 in what is counted as the first American football game?

Rutgers won under rules that banned carrying or throwing the ball, so the match looked far more like soccer than the sport that grew out of it.

The Atlantic's official season for which natural hazard runs from 1 June until it closes on 30 November?

Hurricanes ignore the calendar, though: the dates are only a convention covering the months when most storms form, and a tropical cyclone can spin up at any time of year.

Which two keys were missing from the first push-button telephones sold in November 1963 and only added in 1968?

Star and pound arrived when a twelve-button model replaced the original ten-button phone, which Bell had first offered to customers in two towns near Pittsburgh.

Which American naval officer led the first flight over the South Pole, launched from Antarctica on 28 November 1929?

Richard E. Byrd and his crew struggled to climb above the polar plateau, and had to dump empty fuel tanks and their emergency supplies overboard to clear it.

Which president moved Thanksgiving a week earlier in 1939 to lengthen the holiday shopping season?

Franklin Roosevelt hoped an extra week of shopping would lift the economy. Critics mocked the new date as Franksgiving, a name coined by the mayor of Atlantic City.

Which president made the Thanksgiving turkey pardon permanent, two years after his predecessor joked about one?

George H. W. Bush made the pardon official in 1989. Ronald Reagan had floated the idea in 1987 as a joke, to deflect questions about whether he would pardon Oliver North.

Which folk singer's 18-minute song 'Alice's Restaurant' retells his arrest for dumping rubbish one Thanksgiving?

Arlo Guthrie turned his littering conviction into a deadpan protest against the Vietnam draft, and many American radio stations still play the whole track every Thanksgiving.

Sadie Hawkins Day, when women ask men to dance each November, began as a 1937 storyline in which comic strip?

Li'l Abner creator Al Capp imagined a foot race in which the unmarried Sadie chased the bachelors of Dogpatch. Within two years, 201 American colleges were holding their own.

Which French red wine is rushed to shops around the world each November, only weeks after its grapes were picked?

Beaujolais Nouveau is made from Gamay grapes and fermented for just a few weeks. Distributors race one another to land the first bottles in markets across the globe.

Which country's Singles' Day falls on 11 November because its four ones look like bare sticks, slang for bachelors?

China's students began marking the day at Nanjing University in 1993. Alibaba turned it into a sales festival in 2009, and by 2017 its own sites took over 25 billion US dollars in the 24 hours.

Which West African country, settled by freed American slaves, celebrates its own Thanksgiving holiday each November?

Liberia made the day a national holiday in 1883 but dropped the menu: no particular food goes with it, and plenty of families hold no feast at all.

Which bird is the traditional St Martin's Day feast on 11 November, said to have betrayed the saint's hiding place?

Goose is the Martinmas dish because, legend says, Martin hid in a pen of geese to avoid being made a bishop, and their cackling gave him away.

Stir-up Sunday, the last Sunday before Advent in late November, is when British families traditionally make what?

Christmas pudding is cooked well ahead and reheated on the day. Everyone takes a turn at stirring and makes a wish, though the name really comes from the opening words of the day's prayer.

In which country do children aged three, five and seven dress up for shrine visits at Shichi-Go-San each 15 November?

Japan favours those ages because odd numbers are thought lucky. The children are given chitose ame, long red and white sticks of 'thousand-year candy' that stand for a long life.

Which city's marathon, held on the first Sunday of November, began in 1970 as laps of a single park?

New York's first marathon in 1970 was just 127 runners lapping Central Park. Since 1976 the course has crossed all five boroughs.

Which trophy, commissioned in 1909, is played for each November by the two finalists of the Canadian Football League?

The Grey Cup was meant for ice hockey: Earl Grey, the governor general, gave it to football only after the Allan Cup took that role. It has since been broken, stolen twice and held for ransom.

Which Yankees shortstop was dubbed 'Mr November' on the stadium scoreboard after a World Series home run in 2001?

Derek Jeter's game-winning home run came just after midnight, the first time major-league baseball had been played in November, after the 2001 terror attacks had pushed the whole postseason back.

Which Great Lake claimed the freighter Edmund Fitzgerald in a November 1975 storm, inspiring a Gordon Lightfoot ballad?

Lake Superior took the whole crew of 29 with the ship. The Fitzgerald had been the largest vessel on the Great Lakes when she was launched in 1958.

Which Herman Melville novel was published in the United States on 14 November 1851, weeks after its London edition?

Moby-Dick first appeared in London under the title The Whale. The book was a commercial failure, and it was out of print by the time Melville died in 1891.

Which 2005 film's masked hero urges Britons to gather outside Parliament on the fifth of November a year later?

V for Vendetta is credited with turning the Guy Fawkes mask into a badge of anti-establishment protest. Its release was first planned for the eve of the 400th Bonfire Night.

Brumaire, the French Republican calendar month that covered most of November, was named after which kind of weather?

Fog is brume in French, and it settles over much of France at that time of year. The following month, Frimaire, was named in the same spirit, after frost.

In which Nordic country's language is November called marraskuu, a name built from the words for death and month?

Finland's name for the month is usually explained by the land seeming to die as winter sets in, though another account ties it to a belief that the dead roamed at this time.

Which Roman emperor, born on 16 November, is said to have refused the Senate's offer to rename November after him?

Tiberius, in the historian Cassius Dio's telling, brushed the flattery aside by asking the senators what they would do once there had been thirteen Caesars.

In which US state did a meteorite crash through Ann Hodges's roof in November 1954 and bruise her as she napped?

Alabama's Ann Hodges is the first documented person to be struck by a meteorite and survive. The rock punched through her roof and bounced off a radio before hitting her thigh and hand.

Which arcade game did Atari announce on 29 November 1972, after a test machine in a bar jammed with coins?

Pong was the first commercially successful video game. The prototype at Andy Capp's Tavern seemed to have broken down, but its coin box had simply overflowed with quarters.