November 1 in History

On the morning of 1 November 1755, All Saints' Day, a massive earthquake struck off the coast of Portugal and devastated Lisbon, then one of Europe's wealthiest ports and the capital of a vast overseas empire. The quake was followed by a tsunami and a firestorm that finished what the shaking began. Estimates of the dead vary widely, with figures of 30,000 to 60,000 or more in Lisbon alone, and the disaster became one of the most discussed catastrophes of the eighteenth century, forcing Europeans to reconsider how they thought about nature, God and human suffering.

The Algerian War of Independence was a brutal conflict between France and Algerian nationalists that began in 1954 and ended with Algerian independence in 1962. It ended more than a century of French rule, helped bring down a French republic, and became a defining episode of decolonization, with consequences that still shape relations between the two countries.

The Vietnam War was a long and devastating conflict in Southeast Asia that pitted communist North Vietnam and its allies against South Vietnam and its main backer, the United States. Conventionally dated from 1955, though its roots and its end stretch well beyond that year, it became one of the defining episodes of the Cold War, costing millions of lives and reshaping American politics, military thinking, and public attitudes toward foreign intervention.