It's November 7!

And a lot of cool stuff happened today!  Here's some of it: 

Poor old Athanasius.  All he did (allegedly) was keep a grain fleet from sailing to the Imperial Capital, and for that, he was banished to Trier.  Oh, the inhumanity!

The London Gazette was first published.  You can still read it today, apparently.  I wonder if they cover the wacky antics of those 17th century vaudevillians....

In Indiana, the Battle of Tippecanoe was fought.  It sorta ended the struggle of the US and the Western Indians- those being the ones in the Indiana, Ohio, Illinois areas.  At least until the next year, when the War of 1812 broke out, right on schedule.  At Tippecanoe, the US forces were led by William Henry Harrison and John Tyler (not really).

An unknown, minor, yet in a sense, crucial battle was fought in 1861 in Missouri.  The Battle of Belmont.  The Union forces were led by an unknown general named Ulysses Simpson Grant.  Bruce Catton described the battle as having a vague mission which really seemed to be simply to stir up a fight.  Nothing really happened of import, except that, in his memoirs, Grant strikingly told of how, as his forces advanced, his heart rose higher and higher in his throat, and he wanted to call the whole thing off and return to base, except that in his words he "lacked the courage" to do so.  When he arrived at the Rebel camp which was his objective, he found that they had all fled, rather hastily.  This gave it, in his eyes, a new perspective.  Clearly, the enemy was just as frightened of him, he concluded, as he was frightened of them!  And so, as history clearly shows, Grant ceased worrying about what a rebel army was gonna do, and from then on, simply acted upon his own plans.  Yeah, it bit him in the ass a couple times, but in the end this attitude won the Civil War.  As somebody later said "do not take counsel of your fears".  That could be Grant's motto. 

In 1872, the ship Mary Celeste sailed from New York.  Wherever it was going (Genoa), it never arrived.  The ship was found floating in the Atlantic, with nobody on board.  At all.  The fate of the crew is unknown still, though the evidence suggests they climbed aboard a lifeboat to escape some kind of danger, and then the line fastening them to the ship broke.  The crew thus vanished, and the ship sailed on and on and on and on (as H.R. Pufnstuf would later recount).

In 1908, Bolivia reports that their soldiers killed Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid.  It's possible that the reports of their deaths were greatly exaggerated, as there is some proof suggesting they were both living quietly and anonymously in the US some years later.  I guess it depends who you ask.

Franklin Roosevelt was elected on this date to his 4th term as president.  As it happens, and to the surprise I think, of relatively few, he doesn't finish it.  Hell, he barely even got it started.  Ah well.  Truman got a promotion out of it, whatever else happened. 

Magic Johnson announced on this date that he was HIV Positive, and thus retired from the NBA.  If I recall correctly, he tried to come back later, but it didn't go too well.  He also tried to coach, but couldn't do well at that either, presumably because he cared more about playing, practicing, winning and performing than his players did.  Which is why basketball is so screwed up today. 

In 2000, George Bush was elected president.  Sadly, thanks to the media violating policies and reporting their projections of Gore winning Florida while the polls were still open, a number of people who would have voted for Bush decided not to bother.  The votes in the State were thus quite close, leading to Gore trying desperately to steal the election, while the media of course reported that it was Bush actually trying to steal it.  Looking back, that was probably the first obvious sign that the US was on the road to doom... The good news is, the Supreme Court finally ruled that Gore was full of crap, and that laws are laws, and denied Gore yet another chance to try and steal more votes.  Thank God, because really- can you imagine what an arrogant bastard like Gore would have done as president?