November 4 in History

A water boy's donkey stumbled on a stone step in the Valley of the Kings on November 4, 1922, and within days Howard Carter was staring at a sealed doorway bearing the cartouche of an obscure pharaoh dead for over 3,300 years. The discovery of Tutankhamun's tomb, designated KV62, was the culmination of a search that had consumed Carter for over a decade and had nearly been abandoned by his financial backer, the Earl of Carnarvon, who had told Carter that the 1922 season would be his last. Carter had been methodically excavating a triangular area between the tombs of Ramesses II, Merenptah, and Ramesses VI that other archaeologists had dismissed as thoroughly explored. When the first step appeared, he ordered the stairway cleared, revealing a descending passage leading to a sealed doorway. He cabled Carnarvon in England, waited three weeks for his patron to arrive, and on November 26, breached the inner doorway. Asked if he could see anything, Carter reportedly replied, "Yes, wonderful things." The tomb's survival was a miracle of obscurity. Tutankhamun ruled for only about ten years and died around age 19 in approximately 1323 BCE. His reign was later deliberately erased from official records by successors who wanted to distance the dynasty from the religious upheavals of his father Akhenaten's rule. The debris from the construction of Ramesses VI's tomb above had buried and concealed the entrance. The burial chamber contained four gilded shrines nested inside one another, a stone sarcophagus, three coffins, and the famous golden death mask weighing 24 pounds. The full cataloging of over 5,000 objects took Carter a decade to complete. The discovery ignited a global fascination with ancient Egypt that generated an "Egyptomania" in fashion, architecture, and popular culture throughout the 1920s. Carnarvon's death from an infected mosquito bite five months later spawned the enduring legend of the "Curse of the Pharaohs."

Soviet tanks rolled into Budapest before dawn on November 4, 1956, and within days the most serious challenge to Communist rule in Eastern Europe was crushed. Seventeen Soviet divisions, roughly 150,000 troops and 2,500 tanks, attacked a city whose defenders included factory workers with Molotov cocktails, students with captured rifles, and Hungarian army units that had defected to the revolution. The uprising had begun twelve days earlier as a student demonstration that exploded into a nationwide revolt. On October 23, a crowd of 200,000 gathered at Parliament demanding political reform. When State Security Police opened fire on protesters at Radio Budapest, the revolution ignited. Workers' councils seized factories, political prisoners were freed, and secret police officers were hunted through the streets. Imre Nagy, the reform-minded Communist installed as prime minister during the initial unrest, moved further than Moscow could tolerate. He announced Hungary's withdrawal from the Warsaw Pact and declared neutrality. Soviet leaders, initially divided on how to respond, concluded that allowing one satellite state to leave the alliance would trigger a chain reaction. The decision to invade was finalized on October 31. The Hungarian resistance fought fiercely but hopelessly. Armed civilians ambushed Soviet columns in narrow Budapest streets, knocking out tanks with improvised explosives. Organized combat lasted until November 10, though sporadic resistance continued for weeks. Over 2,500 Hungarians were killed, and roughly 200,000 fled the country in the largest refugee crisis in Cold War Europe. The Western powers, distracted by the simultaneous Suez Crisis, offered verbal condemnation and nothing more. The crushing of Hungary demonstrated that the Soviet Union would use overwhelming military force to maintain its empire, a lesson that deterred similar uprisings for more than three decades.

A 26-year-old Englishwoman with no university degree sat in a Tanzanian forest on November 4, 1960, and watched a chimpanzee strip leaves from a twig, insert it into a termite mound, and extract insects to eat. Jane Goodall had just witnessed something the scientific establishment considered impossible: a non-human animal deliberately manufacturing a tool. When she telegrammed her mentor Louis Leakey, he famously replied, "Now we must redefine tool, redefine man, or accept chimpanzees as humans." Goodall had arrived at the Gombe Stream Reserve on the shores of Lake Tanganyika four months earlier, sent by Leakey, the renowned paleoanthropologist who believed long-term observation of great apes could illuminate early human behavior. The establishment was skeptical of her qualifications. She had worked as a secretary and waitress, and she committed what primatologists considered cardinal sins: naming her subjects rather than numbering them and describing their emotional states in human terms. The chimpanzee she observed was one she named David Greybeard, a male who became her primary subject and the first chimp to lose his fear of her presence. Over subsequent weeks, she observed David and others not merely using found objects as tools but modifying materials to create them, selecting specific stems and adjusting their length and flexibility for the task. The discovery forced a reassessment of what separated humans from other animals. Tool use had been considered the defining characteristic of the genus Homo since Benjamin Franklin described humans as "tool-making animals." Goodall's observation obliterated that boundary and opened a field of research into animal cognition that continues to expand. Her subsequent 60-year study at Gombe remains the longest continuous field study of any animal species, documenting warfare between chimpanzee groups and complex social hierarchies that blurred the line between human and animal with every passing decade.

A social worker in Temple City, California, noticed a small, hunched figure shuffling behind a nearly blind woman who had come to apply for disability benefits on November 4, 1970. The figure turned out to be a 13-year-old girl who weighed 59 pounds, could not chew solid food, and had almost no language. Genie, the pseudonym later assigned by researchers, had spent most of her life confined to a single room, strapped to a potty chair by day and caged in a crib at night, by a father who believed she was mentally disabled. Clark Wiley had isolated the family in their Arcadia home after his mother's death in a hit-and-run accident left him deeply paranoid. He beat Genie if she made any sound, barked and growled at her like a dog, and forbade family members from speaking to her. Her brother, forced to communicate in canine growls, smuggled her occasional food. The day her mother finally escaped with Genie to seek help, Clark Wiley shot himself. Genie's case electrified the scientific community because it presented a natural experiment in the "critical period" hypothesis of language acquisition. Linguist Noam Chomsky and others had theorized that humans must be exposed to language before puberty to develop normal linguistic ability. Genie became the subject of intensive research at UCLA's Children's Hospital, studied by linguist Susan Curtiss, psychologist David Rigler, and a team of specialists. Genie learned individual words and short phrases but never acquired normal grammar, providing evidence that supported the critical period theory. The research generated bitter disputes among the scientists, accusations that Genie's therapeutic needs were subordinated to academic ambition, and a lawsuit by her mother. After funding ended, Genie passed through foster homes where she was abused and regressed. She reportedly lives in an adult care facility in Southern California, her case a haunting illustration of what deprivation destroys in a developing mind.

Several hundred Iranian university students scaled the walls of the American embassy compound in Tehran on November 4, 1979, overwhelmed the Marine guards, and seized 66 hostages in what they announced would be a brief occupation lasting "a few days." The crisis lasted 444 days, destroyed a presidency, reshaped American foreign policy, and defined the relationship between the United States and Iran for decades. The students called themselves Muslim Students Following the Line of the Imam and acted without explicit authorization from Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who had led the Islamic Revolution that overthrew Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi nine months earlier. Their stated demand was the return of the Shah, admitted to New York for cancer treatment, to face trial in Iran. When Khomeini endorsed the takeover, what began as a student protest became state policy. The embassy staff had shredded classified documents as the compound was breached, but the students painstakingly reassembled many of them, using the contents to accuse the United States of espionage. Thirteen hostages, mostly women and African Americans, were released within weeks. Six diplomats who escaped to the Canadian ambassador's residence were smuggled out in a CIA operation later dramatized in the film Argo. President Jimmy Carter's attempts to resolve the crisis defined his final year. Diplomatic negotiations stalled repeatedly. A military rescue attempt, Operation Eagle Claw, ended catastrophically in the Iranian desert on April 24, 1980, when a helicopter collided with a transport plane, killing eight servicemen. The debacle deepened public frustration and contributed heavily to Carter's defeat by Ronald Reagan. The hostages were released minutes after Reagan's inauguration on January 20, 1981, a final humiliation timed for maximum effect.