November 2 birthdays & history

Famous people born on November 2

• 1795James K. Polk, American lawyer and politician, 11th President of the United States
• 1965Shah Rukh Khan, Indian film actor, producer and television host
• 1815George Boole, English mathematician and philosopher
• 1911Odysseas Elytis, Greek poet and critic, Nobel Prize laureate
• 1913Burt Lancaster, American actor
• 1906Luchino Visconti, Italian director and screenwriter
• 1966David Schwimmer, American actor
• 1929Richard E. Taylor, Canadian physicist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate
• 2000Alphonso Davies, Canadian soccer player
• 1847Georges Sorel, French philosopher and author

What happened on November 2

• 1868Time zone: New Zealand officially adopts a standard time to be observed nationally.
• 1880James A. Garfield was elected as president of the United States; the election is the closest to date by popular vote margin.
• 1889North Dakota and South Dakota are admitted as the 39th and 40th U.S. states.
• 1916Hussein bin Ali proclaims himself "King of the Arab Countries".
• 1917The British government issued the Balfour Declaration in support of a Jewish homeland in Palestine, then an Ottoman region with a small Jewish minority.
• 1920In the United States, KDKA of Pittsburgh starts broadcasting as the first commercial radio station. The first broadcast is the result of the 1920 United States presidential election.
• 1936The BBC Television Service, the world's first regular, "high-definition" (then defined as at least 200 lines) service begins. Renamed BBC1 in 1964, the channel still runs to this day.
• 1949The Dutch–Indonesian Round Table Conference ended with the Netherlands agreeing to transfer sovereignty of the Dutch East Indies to the United States of Indonesia.
• 1959The first section of the M1 motorway, the first inter-urban motorway in the United Kingdom, is opened between the present junctions 5 and 18, along with the M10 motorway and M45 motorway.
• 1966The Cuban Adjustment Act comes into force, allowing 123,000 Cubans the opportunity to apply for permanent residence in the United States.
• 2000As members of Expedition 1, American astronaut William Shepherd and Russian cosmonauts Sergei Krikalev and Yuri Gidzenko became the first resident crew to arrive at the International Space Station.
• 2008Lewis Hamilton overtook Timo Glock in the final corners of the Brazilian Grand Prix to become the Formula One World Drivers' Champion by one point.

Also observed on November 2

• All Souls' Day (Roman Catholic Church and Anglican Communion)
• Coronation of Haile Selassie (Rastafari)
• Dziady (Belarus)
• Arrival of Indentured Labourers (Mauritius)
• Statehood Day (North Dakota and South Dakota, United States)