Spruce Goose Flies: Hughes' Giant Takes Flight
Howard Hughes piloted the massive H-4 Hercules, known as the Spruce Goose, through a single 2.6-mile flight over Long Beach Bay in California. This lone sortie cemented the aircraft's legacy as the largest fixed-wing plane ever constructed, even though its experimental design never entered commercial service.
November 2, 1947
79 years ago
Key Figures & Places
What Else Happened on November 2
A foreign ruler was murdered inside a Chinese imperial palace — and the emperor signed off on it. Tong Yabghu Qaghan, powerful leader of the Western Turkic Khag…
The Peace of Bicêtre brought a temporary halt to the Armagnac-Burgundian Civil War, allowing France to focus on external threats and laying the groundwork for f…
The Armagnac and Burgundian factions signed the Peace of Bicetre, temporarily halting the civil war that had consumed France while England circled. The truce ba…
The water didn't recede. It swallowed entire villages whole. The All Saints' Flood of 1570 — named for the feast day it struck — sent walls of North Sea water c…
In 1675, Plymouth Colony governor Josiah Winslow led a colonial militia against the Narragansett during King Philip's War, a conflict that was one of the bloodi…
Hundreds of Narragansett people — mostly women, children, and elderly — were sheltering inside the Great Swamp Fort when the colonial forces arrived. Not warrio…
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