| November 18, 1820 | November 18, 1976 |
| • Capt. Nathaniel Palmer of the U.S. Navy discovered the frozen continent of Antarctica. | • Spain's parliament approved a bill to establish a democracy after 37 years of dictatorship. |
| November 19, 1863 | November 19, 1919 |
| • At the dedication of a military cemetary in Pennsylvania during the civil war, President Abraham Lincoln delivers one of the most memorable speeches in American history, the 272 word Gettysburg Address. | • The U.S. Senate rejected the Treaty of Versailles by a vote of 55-39, short of the two-thirds majoriy needed for ratification. |
| November 20, 1620 | November 20, 1820 |
| • Peregrine White is born aboard the Mayflower in Cape Code Bay. He is the first child born of English parents in New England. White eventually became a captain of militia and lived to the ripe old age of 83. | • The American whaler Essex is attacked by an 80 ton sperm whale 2,000 miles from the western coast of South America. Herman Melville's classic novel "Moby-Dick" (1851) was inspired in part by the story of the Essex. |
| November 21, 1877 | November 21, 1980 |
| • Thomas Edison announces his invention of the phonograph, a way to record and play back sound. The machione was a stylus on a tinfoil cylinder, which played back a short song he had recorded, "Mary Had a Little Lamb". | • 350 million people around the world tune in to television's popular primetime drama "Dallas" to find out who shot J.R. Ewing. The new episode solved the mystery, identifying Kristen Shepard, J.R.'s sister in-law and his former mistress, as the culprit. |
| November 22, 1955 | November 22, 1963 |
| • Record company RCA announces that it has purchased the recording contract for Elvis Presley from Sun Records. RCA paid $35,000 for the contract, a record sum at the time. Presley also received a $5,000 advance, which he used to buy a pink Cadillac for his mother. | • President John F. Kennedy is assassinated in Dallas. Three bullets allegedly were fired by Lee Harvey Oswald, fatally wounding Kennedy and injuring Texas Gov. John Connally. Kennedy was pronounced dead 30 minutes later. He was 46. |
| November 23, 1936 | November 23, 1980 |
| • The first issue of the pictorial magazine Life is published. Publisher Henry Luce meant for the magazine to provide a way for the American people "to see life; to see the world; to witness great events". | • About 4,800 people were killed by a series of earthquakes that devastated southern Italy. |
| November 24, 1859 | November 24, 1963 |
| • British naturalist Charles Darwin published On the Origin of Species, in which he explained his theory of evolution through the process of natural selection. | • In a scene captured on live network television, Dallas nightclub owner Jack Ruby shot and mortally wounded Lee Harvey Oswald, the accused assassin of President Kennedy. |