November 1 in history

After four grueling years working on scaffolding of his own design, Michelangelo unveiled the ceiling on All Saints' Day. Pope Julius II, who had impatiently pressed the artist to finish, celebrated Mass beneath the newly revealed Creation of Adam and dozens of other biblical scenes. The work redefined the possibilities of fresco painting and cemented Michelangelo's reputation as the era's supreme artist.

Around 9:40 a.m., as churches filled for All Saints' Day mass, the ground shook for nearly six minutes. Candles toppled and set the wooden city ablaze, while a tsunami surged up the Tagus River, drowning survivors who had fled to the waterfront. Between 30,000 and 50,000 people died. The disaster reshaped European thought, prompting Voltaire's skepticism in Candide and Immanuel Kant's early writings on seismology.

On the night of October 31 into November 1, 1954, the newly formed National Liberation Front (FLN) launched dozens of coordinated bombings and attacks against French police, military, and infrastructure across Algeria. The uprising, remembered as 'Toussaint Rouge' (Red All Saints' Day), marked the start of the Algerian War of Independence, an eight-year conflict marked by brutal counterinsurgency and terrorism that ultimately ended 132 years of French colonial rule in 1962.

Mercury-Atlas 4 carried no astronaut but tested the environmental control system, communications, and the ability to command the capsule remotely from the ground, including a first successful demonstration of orbit attitude control. The mission's success helped validate hardware and procedures used months later for John Glenn's historic orbital flight, part of NASA's methodical, unglamorous groundwork behind the early Space Race.

RJR Nabisco's CEO announced a bid to take the tobacco and food conglomerate private at $75 a share, a move meant to enrich management but which instead triggered a bidding war with the leveraged-buyout firm Kohlberg Kravis Roberts. The ensuing contest, eventually won by KKR for roughly $25 billion, became the largest takeover in history at the time and a symbol of Wall Street excess later chronicled in the book and film 'Barbarians at the Gate.'

Nirvana taped its MTV Unplugged set at Sony Music Studios in Manhattan on November 18, 1993, on a stage decorated with candles and lilies. DGC Records released the album on November 1, 1994, nearly seven months after Cobain's suicide. Breaking with Unplugged tradition, the band played mainly lesser-known songs and covers, including David Bowie's 'The Man Who Sold the World' and a closing Lead Belly cover, 'Where Did You Sleep Last Night'.

After a 17-minute rain delay before the top of the 10th inning, the Cubs scored twice and held on to win 8-7, capturing their first World Series title since 1908. The victory ended one of the longest championship droughts in American sports, tied to the folklore of the 'Curse of the Billy Goat,' and set off jubilant celebrations across Chicago that drew an estimated five million people to a victory parade days later.