It’s around two weeks before Thanksgiving and the start of a new quarter for the 2025-2026 school year, but what happened in history this week?
On November 10th, 1969, the pivotal TV show Sesame Street made its debut. Sesame Street is mostly known for teaching generations of kids about life skills, like how to count, and the letters of the alphabet. The show is also known for its famous theme song (“Can you tell me how to get/ How to get to Sesame Street”) and has been aired in 120 countries around the world. The show was created by Joan Ganz Cooney, a former documentary producer for public television. The 1960s were a time of political change with the Civil Rights Movement and the Vietnam War being broadcast on television, so Joan wanted a program to educate and entertain children who are between the ages of 3 to 5. The show was diverse for its time and still is today with the mix of human and Muppet characters that taught kids about being kind to one another, unity, and resolving issues without conflict. She brought the help of Jim Henson, a master in puppetry, and created a cast of characters like Bert and Ernie, Cookie Monster, Oscar the Grouch, Grover and Big Bird. As of 2025, Sesame Street can be found on Netflix due to the Trump Administration cutting federal funding for public broadcasting (PBS), but still the show has affected the lives of generations of children, shaping the world today.
All U.S. citizens know that November 11th is Veterans Day and the day that we honor our veterans for protecting our country in past wars or current wars. It’s important to offer our appreciation to veterans for their duties serving and protecting the United States. On November 11th, 1918, World War 1 ended with an armistice on the 11th hour on the 11th day of the 11th month. The war started with on June 28th, 1914, with the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the Austro-Hungarian empire, was shot with his wife by a Bosnian Serb named Gavrilo Princip in Sarajevo, Bosnia. This lit the fuse that would plug the world into a war, which caused a war with Serbia and Austria-Hungary, which led to Europe falling apart. Many new technologies like tanks, mustard gas, machine guns, aircraft, and submarines, with the creation of a new form of fighting: trench warfare. Trenches were long deep holes which allowed soldiers to fight without being shot in No Man’s Land and these trenches would fill up with water, causing the spread of trench foot and also the spread of the Spanish Flu, which caused a global pandemic similar to COVID-19, but deadlier. The United States joined later in the war with the constant attacks of ships by German submarines, the sinking of Lithuania, and the Zimmerman Telegram. This shifted the tide of the war and caused the Germans to sign an armistice, which caused Germany to be in debt to other nations and caused the rise of Hitler which would cause World War 2. The world erupted in celebration and the League of Nations would be created to stop another world war from happening, but that didn’t work out. It was only after World War 2 that Armistice Day would be renamed to Veterans Day to honor all veterans.
On November 12th, 1980, Voyager 1 passed by Saturn which led to key discoveries and a turning point in the mission with it en route to reach interstellar space. Voyager 1 was launched in 1977 carrying the Golden Record, a record containing information about Earth and humans that inhabited the planet. The probe flew within 70,000 to 124,000 kilometers (48,000 miles to 77,000 miles) away from the cloud tops on the planet. Some key discoveries include detailed images of Saturn’s rings, which showed their complex structure, extensive data on Titan (Saturn’s largest moon) with the discovery of a dense, Nitrogen-rich atmosphere, and measurements of Saturn’s atmosphere and wind speeds. Ten years later, Voyager 1 turns around and takes a picture of Earth from billions of miles away. This photo is known as the “Pale Blue Dot” which showed how small we are in a large universe. On November 12th, 2018, Stan Lee died at the age of 95 from cardiac arrest in Los Angeles, California. He was born on December 28th, 1922 in Manhattan, New York. Stan Lee is most famous for his comic books and his superheros that he co-created for Marvel. He helped create Spider-Man, the X-Men, Iron Man, the Fantastic Four, and Thor. He also revolutionized superheros with “flawed humanity”, not the perfect superheros with perfect lives, but superheroes with mental issues and real world issues. He expanded Marvel comics and made them best sellers. He is also known for his memorable film cameos and the world was extremely sad with his death, with many mourning and grieving over the death of a beloved comic book creator.
On November 1956, the Supreme Court struck down on Alabama city busses, trains, and public waiting rooms for racial segregation and led a major blow against the idea of “separate but equal. Segregation was huge in the South and most public places were racially segregated with Blacks and Whites getting separate places that were not as equal as white places. Two years earlier, the Brown v. The Board of Education case deemed racially segregated schools were unconstitutional which allowed the desegregation of schools in the South. The case was known as the Browder v. Gayle, grew out yearlong boycott on busses with Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. being a key player. The boycott was caused by the arrest of Rosa Parks, for refusing to give up her seat to a white male. This played a major role in the Civil Rights Movement and allowed more equality to show in the South.
On November 14th, 1889, New York reporter Nellie Bly began her 25,000 mile journey around the world, inspired by the popular Jules Verne book “Around the World in Eighty Days”. She wrote about her trip around the world and beat the book by travelling around the world in 72 days. She started in Jersey City, and traveled to London, Amiens, Brindisi, Port Said, Singapore, Hong Kong, San Francisco, and ended her trip back to Jersey City. This impacted journalism, global adventure, and inspiration for women.
