November 10 is a birthday the United States Marine Corps celebrates every year, and the rest of the date lives up to it: a martyr in the Netherlands, a famous meeting in Africa, a diamond sent through the mail, and a ship lost on Lake Superior. Here is the tour, the way our November 10 comic tells it.
The birthday of the Marines
On November 10, 1775, the Continental Congress authorized two battalions of Marines. That decision, made in the first year of the Revolution, is why the Marine Corps counts November 10 as its birthday to this day. The hero story on our November 10 page is that beginning: before there was a United States, there were Marines.
Faith under pressure
Two panels on this page are about Christians who would not bend. In 1571, Anna Hendriks, an Anabaptist woman in Amsterdam, was condemned for her beliefs and held fast. And in 1943, in Lübeck, Germany, four clergymen, one Lutheran pastor and three Catholic priests, were executed together for standing against the Nazi regime, and went to their deaths encouraging one another.
Stories like these are why we make these pages. Kids should grow up knowing that faithfulness has a cost, and that ordinary believers have paid it gladly.
A day that kept going
The rest of the date reaches from the Siege of Zara and the Battle of Varna in the centuries of the crusades, through the strange Festival of Reason in revolutionary France and the Osage Treaty, to the Wilmington coup of 1898, a sober page in American history. In 1871 came the meeting of Stanley and Livingstone in Africa, traditionally dated to November 10. In 1958, the Hope Diamond, one of the most famous jewels in the world, traveled to the Smithsonian the ordinary way: by registered mail. In 1975, the Edmund Fitzgerald went down in a storm on Lake Superior with all hands. And in 1983, Microsoft announced a thing called Windows.
Born and died on November 10
The page closes with its born and died entries, and the born list starts with a giant: Martin Luther, born on November 10, 1483. If your family wants his story, we told it here: Martin Luther: The Monk Who Pointed the Church Back to the Bible. Also born on this date: Lott Cary, born enslaved in Virginia, who bought his freedom and sailed as a missionary to Liberia; Granville Sharp, who fought the slave trade in England; and Leo the Great.
Get the comic
Our one-page comic, This Day in History: November 10, tells the whole date in panels, with the first Marines as the hero story: This Day in History: November 10 Comic for Kids. Comics Club members can download it from the library here: November 10 comic (PDF). And the previous date in our series is here: On This Day in History: November 8, with its comic here: This Day in History: November 8 Comic for Kids.
Which November 10 story would your family start with: the first Marines, the martyrs, or the diamond that went through the mail?