Sixty Years and Two Last Chances

On Nov. 18, 2013, NASA's MAVEN Spacecraft Rocketed Toward Mars to Solve the Mystery of the Vanishing Atmosphere A single Atlas V launch from Florida set out to answer how a planet that once may have had rivers and lakes ended up cold, dry and nearly airless. On the afternoon of Nov. 18, 2013, an Atlas V rocket climbed off the pad at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida carrying a spacecraft with an unusual assignment. Most Mars missions had gone to look at the ground. MAVEN, short for Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN, was built to look up, at the thin, tattered air that is all that remains of whatever Mars once had. The Missing Sky   Orbiters and rovers had already turned up channels, minerals and ancient lakebeds that pointed to a wetter, warmer Mars in the distant past. Water that flows on the surface needs a thicker atmosphere than the one the planet has now, so the obvious question was where that atmosphere went. MAVEN was NASA's attempt to measure the answer rather than guess at it. The spacecraft lifted off at 1:28 p.m. Eastern time aboard an Atlas V 401, on the first day of its launch period. Its plan was to settle into a looping orbit around Mars and sample the planet's upper atmosphere directly, while tracking the solar wind and ultraviolet light that strip gas away into space. Its instruments were designed to watch that process in action instead of inferring it from rocks. It was a small, focused mission built around a single big question, and its mission team knew that the answer might reveal as much about Earth's own long-term fate as about its neighbor's. It would be a ten-month trip before anyone could begin to find out. The trip ended on Sept. 21, 2014, when MAVEN fired its engines and slipped into orbit around Mars. It arrived just three days before India's Mars Orbiter Mission, which had left Earth two weeks before MAVEN, on Nov. 5, 2013. The two missions had set out in the same narrow launch window and finished the journey nearly together. Once MAVEN began its science work, it confirmed that the solar wind was a major force in eroding the Martian atmosphere, and NASA reported in 2015 that the loss was far greater during solar storms. The spacecraft that was built to look at what Mars had lost became, in effect, a witness to the loss still happening. Mars is not simply a planet that once had air. It is a planet whose air is, even now, still leaving.  

■  The Pop Edition November 18: Steamboat Willie Debuts, Breaking Dawn Opens A cartoon mouse whistled his way into sound-film history in 1928, Twilight split its finale in two in 2011, and Owen Wilson turns 58. Here is the full accounting of November 18. Mickey Mouse at the wheel in Steamboat Willie, the 1928 cartoon that premiered in New York. November 18 is a day with two very different kinds of staying power. In 1928, a short cartoon with a whistling mouse opened on Broadway and set the template for an entire studio. In 2011, a vampire romance began the first half of its last chapter. Add a Wes Anderson regular, a Metallica guitarist and a few film openings that still get rewatched, and this date has plenty to offer. THE MOMENT: Steamboat Willie   The mask in this story is really a mouse. On November 18, 1928, Steamboat Willie premiered at the Colony Theatre in New York, and it was not the first Mickey Mouse cartoon Walt Disney had made. Plane Crazy and The Gallopin’ Gaucho were finished earlier, but they were silent, and neither found a distributor. Willie was the one that audiences saw first, and the reason was sound. Disney had watched The Jazz Singer change the business and decided his mouse needed a soundtrack that matched the action. The short was synchronized to music and effects using Pat Powers’ Cinephone system. Pots, pans and a goat’s tail all became instruments, and the gags were timed to the beat. Disney himself supplied the few squeaks and whistles Mickey makes. New York critics noticed, and Disney had a character to build a studio around. Mickey later got his own voice, and the November 18 premiere is now treated as his birthday. The original short entered the US public domain on January 1, 2024, 95 years after it opened, which gave this old cartoon a second round of attention.   Born On This Day Owen Wilson BORN 1968 · TURNS 58 Wilson began as a screenwriter, co-writing Bottle Rocket with Wes Anderson and later earning an Oscar nomination for co-writing The Royal Tenenbaums. He became a comedy lead in Zoolander and Wedding Crashers, voiced Lightning McQueen in the Cars films, and played Mobius in the Marvel series Loki. Kirk Hammett BORN 1962 · TURNS 64 Hammett played in Exodus before joining Metallica in 1983, replacing Dave Mustaine. His lead work shaped albums from Ride the Lightning to the Black Album, and he went into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame with the band in 2009. Chloë Sevigny BORN 1974 · TURNS 52 Sevigny went from downtown New York fashion fixture to film debut in Kids in 1995. She earned an Oscar nomination for Boys Don’t Cry and later won a Golden Globe for the HBO drama Big Love. Delroy Lindo BORN 1952 · TURNS 74 Lindo built a long stage and screen career with Spike Lee, appearing in Malcolm X and Clockers and later leading Da 5 Bloods. He has stayed busy, with a role in the 2025 film Sinners.   OPENING WEEKEND: The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – Part 1 The fourth Twilight film opened in US theaters on Friday, November 18, 2011, and it was the first of two movies built from a single book. Bill Condon, who had won an Oscar for writing Gods and Monsters, directed both halves, and the two parts were shot back to back rather than separately. Splitting the final novel was a strategy the Harry Potter series had already used with Deathly Hallows, which came out the same month. Fans of Breaking Dawn got the wedding, the honeymoon and a dangerous pregnancy in Part 1, with the finale held for the following year. It opened to roughly $138 million in the US and Canada, and reviews were harsher than the grosses. Fifteen years on, the series has had a second life online and in streaming, and this installment is remembered for its wedding and some spirited fan debate.   Meanwhile… 1928On November 18, 1928, Steamboat Willie premiered at New York’s Colony Theatre, and Mickey Mouse’s birthday has been counted from that date ever since. 1963Bell System began commercial service of push-button Touch-Tone telephones on November 18, 1963, ending the rotary dial’s monopoly over how people called. 1985Bill Watterson’s Calvin and Hobbes debuted in newspapers on November 18, 1985, and ran for ten years. 2005Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire opened in the US on November 18, 2005, the first film in the series rated PG-13. 2005The Johnny Cash biopic Walk the Line also opened on November 18, 2005, with Joaquin Phoenix and Reese Witherspoon doing their own singing. 2016Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them opened in the US on November 18, 2016, ten years ago, launching a new series set in the Harry Potter world. From a mouse at a ship’s wheel to a vampire wedding, November 18 has a way of turning small bets into long franchises. Tomorrow brings another date and another stack of premieres, birthdays and oddities worth a second look. Come back then, and bring a friend who loves this stuff.

November 18: Courage, Creativity, and Catastrophe When courage inspires greatness and belief reveals its double edge November 18 captures the full spectrum of the human story—bravery in the face of tyranny, creativity that reshaped imagination, and tragedy born of blind devotion. From the legendary shot of William Tell to the joyful debut of Mickey Mouse and the haunting lessons of Jonestown, this day reminds us that courage and belief can inspire greatness—or lead to ruin. The Legend of William Tell According to legend, on November 18, 1307, Swiss hero William Tell performed one of history's most daring feats—shooting an apple off his son's head with a crossbow. The story takes place in Altdorf, where Tell defied the cruel Austrian bailiff Albrecht Gessler, who demanded submission to imperial rule. Refusing to bow, Tell was forced into a test of loyalty so cruel it bordered on execution. With steady hands and unshakable courage, he loosed his arrow—and split the apple clean in two, sparing his son's life. Though its historical accuracy remains debated, the tale of William Tell endures as a symbol of defiance and national pride. It became a rallying cry for Swiss independence and inspired generations to resist oppression. Beyond myth, the story reflects a universal truth: that one act of courage, even in the face of fear, can echo far beyond its moment in time.   William Tell's legendary shot becomes a timeless symbol of courage and defiance against tyranny. The Mouse That Changed the World More than six centuries later, on November 18, 1928, another arrow of destiny was released—not from a bow, but from the imagination of Walt Disney. That day, the animated short Steamboat Willie premiered in New York City, introducing audiences to a plucky new character named Mickey Mouse. With synchronized sound, expressive animation, and mischievous charm, Mickey became an instant sensation and changed the course of entertainment history. Mickey's debut was more than a cartoon; it was the birth of an empire. The cheerful mouse became a global icon, embodying optimism and creativity during some of America's darkest times, including the Great Depression. Steamboat Willie not only launched Disney's career but also helped usher in the golden age of animation. Nearly a century later, Mickey remains a timeless symbol of imagination's power to bring joy to the world. Mickey Mouse makes his debut, launching an entertainment empire and capturing hearts worldwide. ❦ The Tragedy of Jonestown On November 18, 1978, a far darker chapter was written deep in the Guyanese jungle. What began as a utopian vision ended in horror when over 900 members of the People's Temple died in what became known as the Jonestown Massacre. Led by the charismatic but increasingly paranoid Jim Jones, the group had fled the United States to escape scrutiny, seeking refuge in a commune meant to embody equality and peace. But beneath its surface, Jonestown became a prison of control, fear, and manipulation. When U.S. Congressman Leo Ryan arrived to investigate reports of abuse, violence erupted. Soon after, Jones ordered his followers to drink poison-laced punch, resulting in one of the largest mass deaths in modern history. The tragedy of Jonestown exposed the terrifying consequences of blind faith and unchecked authority. Its echoes continue to serve as a chilling reminder of how easily devotion can turn to destruction when reason is silenced.   The tragic aftermath of Jonestown stands as a stark warning about blind devotion and unchecked power.

On Nov. 17, 2003, Arnold Schwarzenegger Was Sworn In as Governor of California, Completing a Recall Election Unlike Any the State Had Seen Six weeks after voters threw out Gray Davis, the action star took the oath in Sacramento and began the job he had campaigned for. On Nov. 17, 2003, Arnold Schwarzenegger stood on the steps of the California State Capitol and took the oath of office as the state's 38th governor. It was the finish of one of the strangest campaigns in American political history, a sprint that went from a late-night talk show announcement to the governor's office in barely three months. The Recall Governor   The path to that day began on Oct. 7, 2003, when California voters recalled Democratic Gov. Gray Davis, who had won re-election less than a year earlier. Davis became only the second governor in American history to be removed by recall, after North Dakota's Lynn Frazier in 1921. The ballot had two parts: whether to remove Davis, and who should replace him. The replacement field was enormous, packed with politicians, entertainers and private citizens. Schwarzenegger had announced his candidacy on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno in August, choosing a late-night couch over a press conference. When the votes were counted, a majority had voted to recall Davis, and Schwarzenegger won the replacement contest with a plurality of the vote. The man best known for playing a machine in The Terminator had beaten the entire political establishment of the nation's largest state, and he had done it by running against the idea of the establishment itself. The swearing-in took place outdoors in Sacramento, where Schwarzenegger took the oath from California Chief Justice Ronald George and became governor of a state grappling with a serious budget crisis. He moved quickly on his signature campaign promise, signing an executive order to roll back an increase in the state's vehicle license fee. It was a fitting first act for a candidate who had promised to clean house. His time in office would be defined by deals with the same legislators he had once vowed to overpower, and by the compromises that governing demands. A man who built a career on playing someone who needed no negotiation spent seven years learning how much of California politics runs on exactly that.  

■  The Pop Edition November 17: Casino Royale Opens, PS3 Launches Daniel Craig's first Bond film and Sony's PlayStation 3 both reached Americans 20 years ago today. Plus Martin Scorsese turns 84, and the Heidi Game, the computer mouse and more. Daniel Craig as James Bond in Casino Royale, which opened in US theaters in 2006. November 17, 2006 was a big Friday for people who spend their free time in front of screens. A rebooted James Bond walked into American theaters, and a few miles of electronics-store sidewalk filled up with people waiting for a $499 game console. Twenty years later, both still mark a turning point. Today also brings a director's birthday, a famous TV cutaway, and the patent for a gadget that sits under your hand. OPENING WEEKEND: Casino Royale Casino Royale opened in US theaters on Friday, November 17, 2006, 20 years ago today. It was Daniel Craig's first turn as James Bond, and the story it adapted was Ian Fleming's first Bond novel, published in 1953.The film reset the series to the start of Bond's career. It had him earn his 00 status in a black-and-white pre-title sequence, then chase a bomb-maker across a Madagascar construction site. Eva Green played Vesper Lynd, and Mads Mikkelsen played Le Chiffre, a villain who weeps blood and plays poker for a living. Chris Cornell, the Soundgarden singer, performed the theme, “You Know My Name.”The film had opened in the UK three days earlier, on November 14. Before release, Craig's casting had drawn public grumbling, including a campaign against the blond actor taking the role. Reviews were strong, and the film is often named among the best of the series. It set the tone for the Craig era: a Bond who bled, got beaten up, and fell in love.  Born On This DayMartin ScorseseBORN 1942 · TURNS 84The New York native broke out with Mean Streets in 1973 and made Taxi Driver in 1976. He has since made Raging Bull, Goodfellas, The Departed and Killers of the Flower Moon. The Departed won him his Best Director Oscar in 2007. He is also a tireless film preservationist.Danny DeVitoBORN 1944 · TURNS 82He broke through as Louie De Palma on Taxi, then moved to film with Romancing the Stone and Twins. He directed Throw Momma from the Train and War of the Roses, and has played Frank Reynolds on It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia since 2005.Lorne MichaelsBORN 1944 · TURNS 82The Toronto-born producer created Saturday Night Live in 1975 and has run it for most of its history. He also produced Wayne's World and Mean Girls, and an unusual number of comedy careers owe their start to his casting.RuPaulBORN 1960 · TURNS 66RuPaul Charles had a 1993 hit with “Supermodel (You Better Work)”. In 2009 he launched RuPaul's Drag Race, which grew into a multi-Emmy-winning franchise and brought drag to mainstream television.Rachel McAdamsBORN 1978 · TURNS 48The Ontario-born actor had a breakout 2004 with Mean Girls and The Notebook. She later earned an Oscar nomination for Spotlight and starred in Wedding Crashers, Game Night and Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret.   PRESS START: PlayStation 3Sony's PlayStation 3 launched in North America on November 17, 2006, 20 years ago today. It arrived in two models, a 20GB version at $499 and a 60GB version at $599. The price was the headline, and it came with a Blu-ray drive inside every unit.The console had reached Japan on November 11. The US launch drew long lines outside stores, and supply was tight. The PS3 was built around the Cell processor, a chip that developers found hard to program for. Nintendo's Wii, much cheaper and aimed at casual players, went on sale in the US two days later, on November 19.The PS3 had a rough start against the Xbox 360, which had launched a year earlier, but it recovered. The Blu-ray bet helped Sony's format beat HD DVD, and exclusives such as Uncharted and The Last of Us built a reputation that outlasted the launch-day sticker shock.   Meanwhile…1968On November 17, 1968, NBC cut away from the Jets-Raiders game at 7 p.m. ET to start the movie Heidi, with the Jets leading 32–29. Viewers missed the Raiders scoring two touchdowns in the last minute to win 43–32. The game became known as the Heidi Game.1970Douglas Engelbart received the US patent for the computer mouse on November 17, 1970. He described it as an “X-Y position indicator,” and the prototype was a wooden shell with two wheels.2000Rugrats in Paris: The Movie opened in US theaters on November 17, 2000, sending the babies to France and introducing Kimi Finster.2006Happy Feet, George Miller's dancing-penguin musical voiced by Elijah Wood and Robin Williams, opened the same day as Casino Royale. It later won the Oscar for Best Animated Feature.2017Justice League opened in US theaters on November 17, 2017. Zack Snyder left late in production after a family tragedy, and Joss Whedon completed the film.2023The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes opened on November 17, 2023, with Tom Blyth as a young Coriolanus Snow and Rachel Zegler as Lucy Gray Baird. A spy who bleeds, a console that cost as much as a decent laptop, and a game that vanished from TV in the final minute: November 17 has plenty of firsts and one famous interruption. Tomorrow brings another date and another stack of pop culture to dig through.

Nov. 16, 2020: Moderna Announces That Its mRNA COVID-19 Vaccine Was 94.5% Effective in Its Phase 3 Trial A Monday-morning press release put a number on the hope that a new kind of vaccine could end the worst pandemic in a century. On Monday, Nov. 16, 2020, a Cambridge, Massachusetts, biotech company that had never brought a product to market announced results that would change the pandemic's trajectory. Moderna said an early look at its Phase 3 trial showed its COVID-19 vaccine candidate, mRNA-1273, was 94.5% effective at preventing symptomatic disease. The figure arrived as case counts climbed across the United States and Europe. The Interim Analysis   The trial, run with the National Institutes of Health, had enrolled about 30,000 volunteers across the United States. An independent data safety monitoring board conducted the first interim analysis once 95 participants had developed confirmed symptomatic COVID-19. Of those cases, 90 were in the placebo group and only five were in the group that received the vaccine. The board also counted 11 severe cases, and all 11 were in the placebo group. Moderna said the vaccine could be stored at standard refrigerator temperatures, 36 to 46 degrees Fahrenheit, for 30 days, and at minus 4 degrees for six months, a practical edge for distribution. The company's design work had begun in January 2020, shortly after the virus's genetic sequence was published. A technology long considered promising but unproven had gone from a computer file to a late-stage trial in under a year, which is a pace that vaccine development had never come close to matching. The announcement came one week after Pfizer and BioNTech had reported that their own mRNA vaccine was more than 90% effective, so Moderna's result served as confirmation as much as surprise. Two different companies, using the same underlying idea, had arrived at results far above the 50% efficacy that regulators had set as a minimum bar. Moderna cautioned that the data were preliminary and still needed review by regulators. That review came quickly. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration granted emergency use authorization to the vaccine on Dec. 18, 2020. For a company that had spent a decade as a scientific curiosity, a single Monday press release had been enough to turn years of skepticism about messenger RNA into one of the most closely watched medical results of the century.  

■  The Pop Edition November 16: Harry Potter Opens, Half-Life 2 Ships Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone opened 25 years ago today, Half-Life 2 reached players in 2004, and Maggie Gyllenhaal turns 49. The full November 16 pop culture rundown. Daniel Radcliffe as Harry Potter, whose first film opened in US theaters on November 16, 2001. November 16 delivers a round anniversary and a crowded shelf behind it. Twenty-five years ago, a boy wizard made his big-screen debut and rewrote the opening-weekend record book. Twenty-two years ago, a first-person shooter arrived with a Steam login attached. Add a Broadway classic, three more films from later Novembers, and an actress who has worked on both sides of the camera. OPENING WEEKEND: Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone When Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone opened in the US on Friday, November 16, 2001, it took in about $90.3 million over the weekend, the biggest opening weekend in history at that point. It played in roughly 3,600 theaters, and the same weekend brought the film to the UK under its original title, Philosopher's Stone.The record mattered because the film was a bet on a book series still being written. J.K. Rowling had published four novels by then, and Warner Bros. had cast three unknown children, Daniel Radcliffe, Rupert Grint and Emma Watson, to carry what became a decade-long franchise. Chris Columbus directed, and Rowling insisted on a British cast, which gave the adult roles to Maggie Smith, Alan Rickman and Richard Harris.Critics were polite rather than ecstatic, with many noting how closely it followed the book. Audiences did not care. It finished 2001 as the highest-grossing film of the year worldwide and set the template of one film per book that Hollywood chased for years. Seven sequels followed, ending in 2011.ANNIVERSARY: 25 YEARS · OPENING WEEKEND: ABOUT $90.3 MILLION  Born On This DayMaggie GyllenhaalBORN 1977 · TURNS 49Gyllenhaal broke through in the 2002 film Secretary, then took over the role of Rachel Dawes in The Dark Knight (2008). She earned an Oscar nomination for Crazy Heart and later moved behind the camera, directing The Lost Daughter, which earned her an Oscar nomination for adapted screenplay.Pete DavidsonBORN 1993 · TURNS 33Davidson joined Saturday Night Live in 2014 as one of its youngest cast members and stayed for eight seasons. He moved into film with The King of Staten Island (2020), a semi-autobiographical comedy he co-wrote with Judd Apatow.Lisa BonetBORN 1967 · TURNS 59Bonet became a household name as Denise Huxtable on The Cosby Show, then carried the character into the spinoff A Different World. She followed with the 1987 film Angel Heart and later roles in High Fidelity and Lenny Kravitz-era indie projects, and in Aquaman, as Atlanna's counterpart in the franchise's Atlantis court.Diana KrallBORN 1964 · TURNS 62The Canadian jazz pianist and singer reached a wide audience with her 1999 album When I Look in Your Eyes, which won a Grammy for best jazz vocal album. She has since won several more Grammys and built a career on standards.   PRESS START: Half-Life 2When Half-Life 2 launched on November 16, 2004, Valve required players to install it through Steam, its online platform, even if they had bought a boxed copy at a store. Steam was barely a year old, and many players grumbled about being forced to log in to a single-player game.The grumbling faded quickly. The game picked up the story of physicist Gordon Freeman six years after the original, sending him through a city under occupation. It ran on Valve's new Source engine, with a physics system that let players hurl objects with the gravity gun and a facial animation system that gave characters like Alyx Vance real expressions. It collected a long list of game of the year awards.The lasting effect was Steam itself. Required for one of the year's biggest games, it started its climb toward becoming the dominant store for PC gaming, and the sequel's cliffhanger ending became one of gaming's longest-running waits for a follow-up.   Meanwhile…1959The Sound of Music opened on Broadway on November 16, 1959, at the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre, with Mary Martin as Maria.2007Beowulf, Robert Zemeckis's motion-capture retelling with Angelina Jolie and Ray Winstone, opened in US theaters on November 16, 2007.2012The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – Part 2, the final film in the series, opened in US theaters on November 16, 2012.2018On November 16, 2018, Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald, the second film in the Wizarding World prequel series, opened in US theaters.2018Steve McQueen's heist thriller Widows, with Viola Davis, also opened in US theaters on November 16, 2018.2018The family comedy Instant Family, with Mark Wahlberg and Rose Byrne, opened the same day, November 16, 2018. That's November 16: a wizard's record-setting debut, a game that made a launcher mandatory, and a birthday list that runs from Gotham to jazz clubs. Come back tomorrow for the next date, or browse the archive at This Day in History.

Nov. 15, 2001: The Night Before Harry Potter Cast Its Spell on Hollywood Before a single ticket was torn, the eve of a young wizard's film debut had already become an event. Nov. 15, 2001, was a Thursday, and a good deal of the movie business was holding its breath. The following day, Warner Bros. would release the first Harry Potter film in North America, a bet on a book series that had already conquered bookstores. The Eve of Magic   Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone was directed by Chris Columbus and adapted from J.K. Rowling's 1997 novel. Daniel Radcliffe, Rupert Grint and Emma Watson, then largely unknown young actors, carried the leads, supported by a cast of veteran British performers. Rowling's books had sold in enormous numbers, which meant the studio faced an unusual problem: an audience that already knew the story and would notice every change. Previews and press coverage in the days before release treated the film less as a product launch than as a cultural checkpoint, a test of whether a beloved page-turner could survive the leap to the screen. Theaters prepared for crowds, and many schedules were filled with early and late showings. The film's marketing leaned on how familiar the story already was. For a studio, that is the rare luxury of a built-in audience, and also the rare terror of one that cannot be fooled. The test was passed in spectacular fashion. When the film opened on Nov. 16, it earned roughly $90 million over its opening weekend in the United States and Canada, a record at the time, according to box-office tracking reports. It went on to become one of the highest-grossing films of 2001 worldwide, and it launched a series of eight films that ran for a decade. The irony is that a story about a boy discovering he was special had, for the studio, a similar arc: an overlooked bet on a children's book turned into the foundation of a franchise. The anxious eve of Nov. 15 was brief, and the lines on Nov. 16 settled the question.  

■  The Pop Edition November 15: Space Jam Opens, Xbox Launches Space Jam hit theaters 30 years ago today, Microsoft's first Xbox arrived 25 years ago with Halo in tow, and Shailene Woodley turns 35. Here is the full accounting of November 15. Michael Jordan and the Looney Tunes team up in Space Jam, which opened in 1996. November 15 is a good day for anyone who grew up with a screen in the house. In 1996, a basketball legend shared a court with cartoon rabbits. In 2001, a black-and-green console landed in American living rooms. Add a Harry Potter sequel, a PlayStation launch and a boxing match that tested Netflix's servers, and the date has range. Here is what happened, and who was born, on November 15. OPENING WEEKEND: Space Jam   Space Jam opened in US theaters on Friday, November 15, 1996, exactly 30 years ago. Its original 1996 website, a maze of planet-themed pages and tiny images, is still online at the same address, left untouched by Warner Bros. for three decades and treated as a time capsule of the early web. The film grew out of Nike commercials that paired Michael Jordan with Bugs Bunny. Director Joe Pytka, who had made those ads, brought the same live-action-meets-animation approach to a feature. The plot has aliens trying to enslave Looney Tunes characters for an amusement park, and Jordan getting drafted into a basketball game to save them. Bill Murray appears as himself, and Lola Bunny made her debut here. Critics were mixed at the time. Audiences were not: the film earned more than $230 million worldwide. Its soundtrack and the Monstars became fixtures of late-90s childhoods, and a sequel with LeBron James followed in 2021. The 1996 site, meanwhile, has outlived most of the web it was built for.   Born On This Day Shailene Woodley BORN 1991 · TURNS 35 Woodley started as a child actor and became known as the lead of the TV series The Secret Life of the American Teenager. She earned a Golden Globe nomination for The Descendants (2011), then led the Divergent films and The Fault in Our Stars (2014). She later starred in HBO's Big Little Lies. Sam Waterston BORN 1940 · TURNS 86 A stage veteran, Waterston earned an Oscar nomination for The Killing Fields (1984). He became a household face as prosecutor Jack McCoy on Law & Order, then co-starred with Jane Fonda in Netflix's Grace and Frankie. Beverly D'Angelo BORN 1951 · TURNS 75 D'Angelo played Patsy Cline in Coal Miner's Daughter (1980), singing in the role. She is best known as Ellen Griswold across the National Lampoon's Vacation films, a part she returned to for decades. Jonny Lee Miller BORN 1972 · TURNS 54 Miller broke out as Sick Boy in Trainspotting (1996) and as a young hacker in Hackers (1995). Years later he played a modern Sherlock Holmes in the CBS series Elementary, which ran for seven seasons.   PRESS START: The Xbox Launches Microsoft's original Xbox went on sale in North America on November 15, 2001, 25 years ago, at $299. Its launch lineup included Halo: Combat Evolved, a shooter from Bungie, the studio Microsoft had bought in 2000 after Halo began life as a Mac game. Microsoft was an outsider in a market held by Sony and Nintendo, and the Xbox arrived as a big, heavy box that looked more like a PC than a toy. It had a built-in hard drive and an Ethernet port, features that pointed toward what came next. Halo gave it a reason to exist, and the console's online service, Xbox Live, followed in 2002. Halo went on to anchor a franchise that spawned sequels, novels and a television series, and Xbox is still a major name in games a quarter century later.   Meanwhile… 2024Jake Paul beat Mike Tyson by unanimous decision on November 15 at AT&T Stadium in Texas, in a fight streamed live on Netflix. 2019Ford v Ferrari and Charlie's Angels both opened in US theaters on November 15, one a racing drama with Matt Damon and Christian Bale, the other a franchise reboot. 2013On November 15, 2013, Sony's PlayStation 4 went on sale in North America, a week ahead of Microsoft's Xbox One. 2002Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets opened in US theaters on November 15, a year after the first film. 1971Intel announced the 4004 microprocessor in an ad on November 15, 1971, an early commercial chip that put a computer's central processing on a single piece of silicon. That is November 15: a cartoon rabbit, a green console and a very long boxing broadcast. Tomorrow brings another date and another stack of pop culture. For more, visit This Day in History.

On Nov. 14, 2021, Australia Chased Down New Zealand in Dubai to Win Its First Men's T20 World Cup A team that had never won the sport's shortest world title finally did it, with a run chase that ended with overs to spare. For all its cricketing pedigree, Australia had never won the men's T20 World Cup. Five titles at the 50-over version of the game sat in its trophy cabinet, but the shortest format had stayed out of reach since the tournament began in 2007. On Nov. 14, 2021, under the lights at Dubai International Stadium, that changed against a New Zealand side that had knocked out England in the semifinal. The Chase   New Zealand batted first and leaned on captain Kane Williamson, who made 85 off 48 balls and lifted his side to 172 for 4. It was a competitive total on a Dubai surface where chasing teams had been winning all tournament, and Australia had a recent history of being on the wrong side of big finals. The openers did not give it long to worry. David Warner, whose form had been questioned earlier in the year after he lost his place in his Indian Premier League team, set the early pace. When he fell, Mitchell Marsh walked in and played with the freedom of a man with nothing to protect. He finished unbeaten on 77 off 50 balls, and the innings was the kind of controlled violence that makes a target of 173 look like a formality in hindsight. The man who had made the headlines for his struggles became the one who set the chase alight. Glenn Maxwell was at the crease with Marsh at the end, and Australia reached 173 for 2 with seven balls to spare, an eight-wicket win. Marsh was named player of the match, and Warner took player of the tournament, a reversal for a batter who had spent months fending off questions about his place. It was also a quiet vindication of Australia's approach: the team had entered the event without the favorite's tag, then simply played its best cricket when it mattered. For a country that had long measured greatness in the long formats, the shortest game finally gave it a trophy that nobody could say was missing. Williamson's 85 turned out to be the finest losing innings of the night.  

■  The Pop Edition November 14: Ali Fights in the Astrodome, Quantum Opens Muhammad Ali's Astrodome night turns 60, Daniel Craig's second Bond film opened in 2008, and Blink-182 drummer Travis Barker turns 51. Here is everything November 14 left in pop culture. Muhammad Ali towers over Cleveland Williams in the ring at the Houston Astrodome, November 14, 1966. November 14 is a date for big rooms. In 1966, a record crowd packed the brand-new Houston Astrodome to watch the heavyweight champion work at the top of his craft. In 2008, a Bond sequel with a famously strange title opened across the US. And a drummer who has spent three decades making stadiums shake celebrates another birthday. Here's the full accounting, starting with the Astrodome. THE MOMENT: Ali vs. Williams at the Astrodome   On November 14, 1966, Muhammad Ali stopped Cleveland Williams in the third round at the Houston Astrodome, 60 years ago today. The announced crowd of 35,460 set the record for the largest indoor boxing attendance, in a stadium so new that it was still being called the Eighth Wonder of the World. Williams, nicknamed “The Big Cat,” was a hard-punching contender with a fearsome reputation. Ali made him look slow. He circled, jabbed, and put Williams on the canvas more than once before the referee waved it off in round three. Ali was at his quickest here: the footwork and the dancing had not yet been slowed by the layoff that was coming. The setting mattered as much as the fight. Boxing was moving from smoky arenas into the kind of domed spectacle usually reserved for baseball and football, and a Texas crowd turned out in numbers that proved the heavyweight title could fill a ballpark. Fans and writers still point to this fight when they argue about Ali's best performance in the ring. 35,460 FANS · THIRD-ROUND STOPPAGE · HOUSTON ASTRODOME · NOV. 14, 1966   Born On This Day Travis Barker BORN 1975 · TURNS 51 The drummer who joined Blink-182 in 1998 and powered the 1999 album Enema of the State, with its hit “All the Small Things.” He built a second career in side projects such as Transplants and +44, and in collaborations across rap and pop-punk. He rejoined the band for its 2022 reunion. Josh Duhamel BORN 1972 · TURNS 54 Born in Minot, North Dakota, he started on the soap All My Children before NBC's Las Vegas (2003–08) made him a lead. The Transformers films followed in 2007, and he has worked steadily in romantic comedies and action ever since. Yanni BORN 1954 · TURNS 72 The Greek-born keyboardist and composer became a public television staple with Live at the Acropolis in 1993. He followed it with concerts at the Taj Mahal and the Forbidden City, turning instrumental music into a stadium-sized touring business. D.B. Sweeney BORN 1961 · TURNS 65 He played baseball legend Shoeless Joe Jackson twice in two years, in Eight Men Out (1988) and Field of Dreams (1989), and later turned up in Memphis Belle and Lonesome Dove. Television work and a long run of character roles have kept him busy since. Boosie Badazz BORN 1982 · TURNS 44 The Baton Rouge rapper first broke through on the Southern rap scene and reached a wider audience with 2007's “Wipe Me Down,” a collaboration with Foxx and Webbie. He has released mixtapes and albums steadily since.   OPENING WEEKEND: Quantum of Solace Quantum of Solace opened in US theaters on Friday, November 14, 2008, and its title came from a Ian Fleming short story with almost no action in it. It's a quiet tale of a dinner-party anecdote about a marriage, published in the 1960 collection For Your Eyes Only. The film borrowed the name and nothing else. It was Daniel Craig's second turn as Bond and the first direct sequel in the series, picking up within an hour of Casino Royale's ending. Marc Forster directed, and the production was finished in the shadow of the 2007–08 writers' strike, with Craig reportedly doing script rewrites himself. At 106 minutes, it's the shortest Bond film in the series. Audiences showed up: the film's US opening weekend was about $67.5 million, a record for the franchise at the time. Critics were split, and the quick-cut action style and the title drew debate for years. Even so, it set up Skyfall four years later, which went on to become the biggest Bond hit of all.   Meanwhile… 1840Claude Monet was born on November 14, 1840, in Paris. His painting Impression, Sunrise gave the Impressionist movement its name. 1900Composer Aaron Copland was born in Brooklyn. He later wrote Appalachian Spring and won an Oscar for scoring The Heiress. 1907Astrid Lindgren, the Swedish author who created Pippi Longstocking, was born on this date. 1922The BBC began daily radio broadcasts from London on November 14, 1922, the start of what became one of the world's biggest broadcasters. 1948Charles, the future King Charles III, was born at Buckingham Palace. He turns 78 today. 2014Dumb and Dumber To reached US theaters on November 14, 2014, 20 years after the original, with Jim Carrey and Jeff Daniels back as Lloyd and Harry. A record crowd in Houston, a Bond sequel with a borrowed title, and a drummer who still keeps the beat: that's November 14. Come back tomorrow afternoon for another date's worth of pop culture history, and tell a friend who likes knowing exactly which day things happened.

Nov. 13, 2014: The Day After a Comet Landing, Philae's Race Against a Dying Battery Begins A day after a bouncing touchdown on Comet 67P, the little lander in a shadowed spot had hours to do its science. Landing on a comet was the easy headline. By Nov. 13, 2014, the European Space Agency's Philae lander sat tilted somewhere on Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, far from its intended site, and the mission team in Darmstadt, Germany was racing to get as much science out of it as possible. Borrowed Time   Philae had touched down on Nov. 12 after a ten-year ride aboard the Rosetta spacecraft. The harpoons meant to anchor it to the surface did not fire, and the lander bounced before settling in a spot partly shadowed by a cliff or crater wall. That left its solar panels with far less sunlight than planned. The mission's backup plan was simple: use the primary battery to complete as many experiments as possible before it ran out. Controllers sequenced the instruments in order of priority, and Philae returned its first-ever data from a comet's surface, including measurements from instruments built to analyze the surface and the comet's makeup. The comet was not a quiet place to work. Every command had to fit into windows when Rosetta was overhead to relay the signal. The lander's fate was written in its orbit, in a way, by geometry and light rather than by anything the team could adjust. As the battery ran low, the team made a last-ditch attempt to shift the lander's position, hoping to catch more sunlight. Philae then went silent as its power ran out, entering a kind of hibernation. The mission had delivered the first sampling and surface analysis attempts ever made on a comet. Then, in June 2015, the lander briefly woke and phoned home as the comet neared the Sun, before falling quiet again for good. Its resting place was only pinpointed in 2016, when Rosetta photographed it wedged in a dark crevice. A machine designed to anchor itself had spent its brief life unanchored, and its best discoveries came from the shadows it never meant to land in.  

■  The Pop Edition November 13: Fantasia Premieres, 2012 Opens Disney's Fantasia premiered in New York 86 years ago with a sound system built just for it, and 2012 opened 17 years ago. Plus Whoopi Goldberg turns 71 and more. Mickey Mouse as the Sorcerer's Apprentice, the best-remembered segment of Disney's Fantasia, which premiered in 1940. November 13 is a date about ambition. In 1940, Walt Disney opened a feature-length cartoon set to classical music and had a new sound system built so audiences could hear it properly. In 2009, a studio spent a very large budget on the end of the world and sold plenty of tickets. Today also brings the birthdays of a Hollywood trophy-case regular, a late-night host and a Scottish action star. Here is the full accounting. THE MOMENT: Fantasia Premieres   On November 13, 1940, Disney's Fantasia premiered at the Broadway Theatre in New York. The notable part was the sound. Disney's engineers had developed Fantasound, an early multichannel system that placed sound around the auditorium, and the film was shown with it in roadshow engagements, with reserved seats and a higher ticket price than a regular movie. The film itself was eight pieces of classical music animated by Disney's studio, with Leopold Stokowski conducting the Philadelphia Orchestra and critic Deems Taylor introducing each segment. The most famous piece was The Sorcerer's Apprentice, which starred Mickey Mouse, who was at that point looking for a way back to the spotlight. The reception was mixed. Some critics were thrilled, while others thought it pretentious. The expensive sound equipment could be installed in only a few theaters, and with World War II cutting off much of the European market, the film did not make its money back on its first release. It found its audience through later reissues, and Mickey's blue wizard hat became one of Disney's most recognizable images. A sequel, Fantasia 2000, followed 59 years later. Premiere: Nov. 13, 1940 · Broadway Theatre, New York · 86 years ago   Born On This Day Whoopi GoldbergBORN 1955 · TURNS 71Born Caryn Elaine Johnson in New York City, she moved from stand-up and a one-woman Broadway show to an Oscar-nominated performance in The Color Purple (1985). She won the Best Supporting Actress Oscar for Ghost, and with a Grammy, an Emmy and a Tony she completed the EGOT. Since 2007 she has been a co-host of The View. Jimmy KimmelBORN 1967 · TURNS 59He came up through radio and Comedy Central's The Man Show before launching Jimmy Kimmel Live! on ABC in 2003. He has also hosted the Oscars four times. Gerard ButlerBORN 1969 · TURNS 57Born in Paisley, Scotland, he trained as a lawyer before turning to acting. He played the Phantom in the 2004 film of The Phantom of the Opera, then Leonidas in 300, and later voiced Stoick in the How to Train Your Dragon films. Steve ZahnBORN 1967 · TURNS 59A scene-stealing character actor since Reality Bites (1994) and That Thing You Do! (1996). He later appeared in Dallas Buyers Club and played Bad Ape in War for the Planet of the Apes.   OPENING WEEKEND: 2012 Roland Emmerich's 2012 opened in US theaters on Friday, November 13, 2009. The film took its premise from a Mayan calendar cycle that some people claimed would end on December 21, 2012, and it used that date to justify wiping out most of the planet in spectacular fashion. Emmerich had previously destroyed the planet in The Day After Tomorrow and Independence Day, and John Cusack led the cast as a struggling writer trying to get his family to safety. Critics were not kind, but audiences came anyway, and the film grossed more than $700 million worldwide. It is a good example of how a destruction spectacle could sell tickets based on its trailer alone. The real December 21, 2012 passed without incident, and the film became a punchline about doomsday predictions. It is still a reliable disaster-movie rewatch.   Meanwhile… 1850Robert Louis Stevenson, the author of Treasure Island and Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, was born in Edinburgh on November 13. 1938Jean Seberg, the star of Godard's Breathless, was born in Marshalltown, Iowa. She died in 1979. 1940On November 13, 1940, Disney's Fantasia premiered at the Broadway Theatre in New York, with Mickey Mouse as the Sorcerer's Apprentice. 1955Whoopi Goldberg was born Caryn Elaine Johnson in New York City. She later chose her stage name, and it stuck. 1967Jimmy Kimmel and Steve Zahn share both a birthday and a birth year. Both were born on November 13, 1967. 20092012 opened in US theaters on Friday, November 13, 2009, with John Cusack leading the cast. That is November 13: a cartoon that arrived early with its own sound system, a disaster movie that outlived its own prophecy, and a good set of birthdays. Come back tomorrow for another date from the archive at This Day in History.

November 13: Fantasia Premieres, Franklin Writes About Balloons, Augustine Is Born Three November 13ths defined by visionaries who saw further than everyone around them — an animator who believed cartoons could carry high art, a polymath who recognized a new frontier before it had a name, and a theologian who mapped the interior of the human soul with a precision that still holds Vision is the capacity to see what something could be before anyone else has decided what it is. Walt Disney saw it in a bag of mushrooms dancing to Tchaikovsky and a dinosaur dying to Stravinsky, and bet a studio's future on the idea that animation could do what no film had attempted. Benjamin Franklin saw it in a silk bag filled with hot air drifting over Paris, and immediately began calculating its scientific applications while the city around him was still simply staring upward in wonder. And in a provincial Roman city in fourth-century North Africa, a restless, brilliant, deeply contradictory man named Augustine saw, in his own tumultuous inner life, the raw material for a theology of the human condition that the Western world has been working with ever since. November 13 belongs to all three. The Sorcerer's Apprentice   On November 13, 1940, Walt Disney's Fantasia premiered at the Broadway Theatre in New York City in a special roadshow engagement with live orchestra and a new stereophonic sound system called Fantasound — the first commercial use of multi-channel audio in a film. The audience encountered eight animated sequences set to classical music: Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D Minor rendered as pure abstract color and form; Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker Suite performed by dancing mushrooms, flowers, and fairies; Dukas's The Sorcerer's Apprentice featuring Mickey Mouse as a hapless magician's understudy; and Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring reimagined as a visualization of Earth's formation and the age of dinosaurs. Disney had conceived the film as a "concert feature" — a new genre that would be continuously updated with new sequences as the repertoire expanded. He believed it would change the relationship between classical music and popular audiences permanently. It did not, at first, change anything except Disney's finances. Fantasia was an immediate commercial failure, losing money on its initial release and forcing Disney to abandon the roadshow format for a conventional theatrical run that stripped out the Fantasound system entirely. Critics were divided — some recognized its ambition, others found its interpretation of classical music presumptuous or its imagery kitsch. The concert feature sequels were never made. Disney himself was deeply wounded by its reception. But the film refused to disappear. Re-releases in the 1950s and 1960s — particularly at colleges, where it found a new audience who watched it in states of consciousness that Disney had not anticipated — rebuilt its reputation. It was added to the National Film Registry in 1990 and is now recognized as one of the most artistically ambitious films in the history of American cinema. The film that lost Disney's company money in 1940 has since grossed more than $76 million in domestic theatrical releases alone. The vision that seemed too strange to succeed turned out to be simply ahead of its time.   The Broadway Theatre in New York on the night of November 13, 1940 — where Fantasia's premiere introduced an audience to something the film industry had never attempted before. What Goes Up On November 13, 1783, Benjamin Franklin — seventy-seven years old, serving as American ambassador to France, already famous on two continents as a scientist, diplomat, writer, and founding father — sat down in Paris and wrote a letter to his friend Jean-Baptiste Le Roy describing the astonishing spectacle of balloon flight that had been electrifying the French capital for months. The Montgolfier brothers had demonstrated unmanned hot air balloon ascents that summer, and on November 21, just eight days after Franklin's letter, the first free flight carrying human passengers would take place over Paris. Franklin had watched the experiments closely and, characteristically, had moved past the spectacle to the implications. His letter catalogued potential scientific applications: measuring atmospheric conditions at altitude, studying wind patterns, making meteorological observations that were impossible from the ground. He saw, in a silk bag full of hot air, the beginning of systematic aerial science. The letter also contained an exchange that has become one of science history's most quoted anecdotes. When a bystander at one of the balloon demonstrations asked what the invention was good for, Franklin replied — or is reported to have replied, since the attribution is not certain — "What is the use of a newborn baby?" The response perfectly captured his intellectual method: the recognition that the value of a new technology is not immediately legible, and that the question of use should be deferred until the technology has had time to demonstrate what it can become. Franklin was right about balloons in ways that took decades to fully manifest — weather balloons became essential to meteorology, military observation balloons changed warfare, and the understanding of atmospheric dynamics that balloon flights enabled laid groundwork for everything that followed in aviation. The old man watching silk bags drift over Paris understood, as he usually did, what he was actually looking at. Paris in the autumn of 1783, gripped by balloon fever — where Benjamin Franklin watched the Montgolfier demonstrations and saw, immediately, more than spectacle. ❦ Thagaste, 354   On November 13, 354 AD, in the Roman African city of Thagaste — in what is now northeastern Algeria — a boy was born to a pagan father named Patricius and a devoutly Christian mother named Monica. His name was Aurelius Augustinus, and he would become Augustine of Hippo: bishop, theologian, philosopher, and one of the most consequential thinkers in the history of Western civilization. The life he lived before arriving at that position was, by his own account, marked by intellectual restlessness, moral inconsistency, and a decade-long adherence to the dualist Manichaean sect before his dramatic conversion to Christianity in a garden in Milan in 386 AD — a conversion he described, in his Confessions, as the culmination of a long struggle between his will and his desires that he could not resolve by himself. The Confessions Augustine wrote after his conversion is generally regarded as the first autobiography in the modern sense — a sustained, intimate account of an interior life, addressed directly to God but clearly also to the reader, tracing the psychological and spiritual arc of a self in the process of becoming. It introduced to Western literature and theology the concept of interiority — the idea that the self has an inner life as complex and as significant as its outward actions. His theological works — The City of God, his treatises on grace and free will, his elaboration of original sin — shaped Catholic doctrine for a thousand years and influenced Protestant theology through Calvin and Luther as directly as any ancient source. Augustine died in 430 AD as the Vandals besieged Hippo. He had spent his life trying to understand why human beings consistently fail to do what they know to be good — a question that has not become less relevant in the sixteen centuries since he first asked it.   Roman North Africa — the world into which Augustine was born on November 13, 354 AD, and whose Mediterranean intellectual culture shaped the thinker who would reshape Western Christianity.

On Nov. 12, 2014, a washing-machine-sized robot named Philae dropped onto a comet half a billion miles from home, and bounced After a ten-year chase across the solar system, the European Space Agency made the first soft landing on a comet, though the comet had other plans. Landing on a moving target about 2.5 miles wide, hundreds of millions of miles away, was never going to be tidy. On Nov. 12, 2014, the European Space Agency's Rosetta mission attempted it anyway, releasing its Philae lander toward Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko and then waiting for news that took nearly half an hour to cross the void. Seven Hours Down   Rosetta had launched in 2004 and spent a decade looping through the inner solar system before catching up with 67P in August 2014. On the morning of Nov. 12, it released Philae, a lander of roughly 100 kilograms, and the probe began a descent of about seven hours with no way to steer. Mission controllers in Darmstadt, Germany, could only watch and wait, since radio signals took more than 28 minutes to reach Earth. Touchdown came at about 15:34 UTC, and confirmation arrived shortly after 16:00. Control rooms erupted, and the landing was the first time a spacecraft had set down on a comet's surface. The celebration was brief, however. Philae's ice screws and harpoons, meant to anchor it in the weak gravity, had not done their job, and the data soon showed the lander had not stayed put. A machine built to cling to a comet had, for a few hours, merely brushed against one. Philae rebounded off the surface, drifted for roughly two hours, touched down again, hopped a second time, and finally settled at around 17:32 UTC, tilted in the shadow of a cliff where its solar panels received little sunlight. Even so, it ran its instruments and sent back data before its primary battery drained after about 64 hours. It briefly woke in June 2015 as the comet neared the Sun, then fell silent for good. Its location stayed a mystery until Rosetta's camera spotted it wedged in a dark crevice in September 2016, just before Rosetta itself was deliberately landed on the comet to end the mission. The lander that missed its mark had at least ended up somewhere worth looking.  

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