Some dates on the calendar are quiet. November 8 is not one of them. A discovery that let doctors see inside the human body, a meeting in Mexico that changed two worlds, plots and battles and elections: this date kept busy across five centuries. Here is the tour, the way our November 8 comic tells it.
The night the bones showed through
On November 8, 1895, Wilhelm Röntgen was experimenting in his laboratory in Germany when he noticed something no one had ever seen: a glow from a screen across the room, caused by rays passing through solid things. When he placed his hand in their path, he could see the bones inside it. He called them X-rays, because X stood for the unknown.
It is hard to overstate what that night started. Within a short time, doctors were using X-rays to find broken bones, bullets, and swallowed objects, and the way medicine sees the body has never gone back. The hero story on our November 8 page is Röntgen's discovery, and it is the kind of story kids remember: one careful man, one strange glow, and a whole new way of seeing.
A day that kept going
The rest of the date refuses to sit still. In 1519, Cortés met Moctezuma in Mexico, a meeting that changed the course of two worlds. In 1520 came the Stockholm Bloodbath, and in 1576 the Pacification of Ghent. In 1620, armies met at White Mountain, and in 1745 the Jacobites were on the march.
The 1800s brought Montana statehood in 1889. The 1900s were heavier still: the Beer Hall Putsch in 1923, Georg Elser's lone attempt on Hitler's life in 1939, and Operation Torch, the Allied landings in North Africa, in 1942. In 1957 the date carried both the Grapple X test and the loss of Pan Am Flight 7. In 1965 came Operation Hump in Vietnam. In 1977, archaeologists opened the Vergina tomb in Greece. And in 1987, the Enniskillen bombing darkened Remembrance Sunday in Northern Ireland.
Joyful and sober sit side by side on this page, and we think that is honest. History is not all celebration, and kids are old enough to learn that some dates carry grief as well as wonder.
Election day, over and over
November 8 also keeps landing on American elections. The comic carries a whole strip of elections held on this date across the years, which makes it a fine page to pull out in an election season: the same calendar square, generation after generation of voters.
Born and died on November 8
The page closes with its born and died entries, including William Wirt, Doc Holliday, and a name that ties this date to the one three days before it: Robert Catesby, the man behind the Gunpowder Plot, died on November 8, 1605, three days after Guy Fawkes was caught beneath Parliament. If your family read our November 5 post, this is the rest of that story: On This Day in History: November 5
Get the comic
Our one-page comic, This Day in History: November 8, tells the whole date in panels, with Röntgen's discovery as the hero story: This Day in History: November 8 Comic for Kids. Comics Club members can download it from the library here: November 8 comic (PDF). And if you missed the date just before it in the story, the November 5 comic is here: This Day in History Printable Comic: November 5.
Which November 8 story would your family want to dig into first?