On November 3, 1844, William Makepeace Thackeray completes The Luck of Barry Lyndon: A Romance of the Last Century, which is published in Fraser’s Magazine.

As the First World War draws to a close, angry rebels in both Germany and Austria-Hungary revolt on November 3, 1918, raising the red banner of the revolutionary socialist Communist Party and threatening to follow the Russian example in bringing down their imperialist governments.

The Soviet Union launches the first animal to orbit the earth into space—a dog nicknamed Laika—aboard the Sputnik 2 spacecraft.

On November 3, 1962, female vocal act the Crystals score a #1 hit on the Billboard Hot 100 with the song “He’s A Rebel”—a record on which the credited artists had not sung a single note.

On November 3, 1964, residents of the District of Columbia cast their ballots in a presidential election for the first time since 1800. The passage of the 23rd Amendment in 1961 gave citizens of the nation’s capital the right to vote for a commander in chief and vice president. They went on to help Democrat Lyndon Johnson defeat Republican Barry Goldwater in 1964, the next presidential election.

Five members of the Communist Workers Party, participating in a “Death to the Klan” rally in Greensboro, North Carolina, are shot to death by a group of Klansmen and neo-Nazis. Several others were wounded in what became known as the Greensboro massacre.

On November 3, 1982, a truck explodes in the Salang Tunnel in Afghanistan, killing an unknown number of people, including Soviet soldiers traveling to Kabul and Afghan civilians. Because the Soviet army limited the information released about the disaster, the full details of the tragedy may never be known. Casualty estimates range from the hundreds into the thousands.

On November 3, 1998, former professional wrestler Jesse “The Body” Ventura is elected governor of Minnesota with 37 percent of the vote. His opponents, seasoned politicians Hubert Humphrey III (son of Lyndon Johnson’s vice-president and the attorney general of Minnesota) and St. Paul mayor Norm Coleman, spent a total of $4.3 million on their campaigns. Ventura, the Reform-Party candidate, spent $250,000—money he raised by selling $22 t-shirts and accepting $50 donations from his supporters. His only political experience had been his years as mayor of Brooklyn Park, a suburb of Minneapolis, but his laid-back, straight-talking, libertarian approach to politics resonated with many Minnesotans—especially young men who had never voted before. “I voted for Jesse because he was the most honest,” one young constituent told a reporter for Newsweek. “If he doesn’t know something, he says he doesn’t know.”

In the early hours of November 3, 2016, the Chicago Cubs win their first World Series championship since 1908, beating the Cleveland Indians, 8-7, in a thrilling Game 7 delayed by rain. "Let It Reign," reads the headline in the next day's Chicago Tribune sports section. The win snaps the “Billy Goat Curse,” one of the more infamous sports curses, and baseball's longest World Series title drought.