October 11, 2008: The Tampa Bay Rays Push the Red Sox to the Brink in a Worst-to-First Miracle Season

A December 21 Story: Why This Date Needs a Verified Event Before Publication The sourcing step for this date could not be completed to the verification standard, so no story is presented here. This Day in History requires every hard fact to be confirmed by at least two independent sources, one of them primary. I could not complete that verification for a qualifying December 21 event from 2001 to the present in this session, so I am not presenting an unverified story as fact. Verification First   Rather than invent details, names, scores, or quotes, this entry is held. The standard is clear: if a hard fact cannot be confirmed, the story is dropped and another is chosen. A fabricated narrative dressed as history would break the one promise the newsletter makes, which is that the story is true. The previous send covered a Dec. 20 event, and the topic rotation rule would also require a different topic for this date, so the editorial team should select a December 21 candidate in any topic other than Sports after confirming its sourcing. Once an event is chosen and checked against primary records and contemporaneous named-reporter coverage, this page can be regenerated with a full narrative. Until then, the most honest history lesson available is the simplest one: a good story is worth waiting for, and a verified one is worth even more.  

Dec. 20, 2009: A Night That Changed a Sport A look back at a December night that gave fans a story worth retelling. Every December 20 carries its own quiet history. This edition of This Day in History revisits a moment from the recent past that shaped the way fans remember the season. The Moment   Editor's note: this draft could not be completed to the publication standard. The Shared Guidance requires every hard fact to be confirmed against at least two independent sources, one of them primary, and no sourcing tools were available to confirm a qualifying event for December 20 in this session. Rather than invent names, scores, or quotes, no specific event is asserted here. Please supply a verified event for December 20, or allow a researched pick, before this page is published. Once a qualifying event for December 20 between 2001 and the present is confirmed, with two independent sources and at least one primary source, this paragraph can be rewritten as a finished narrative. It should end on a resonant beat and avoid any invented dialogue. Until then, this placeholder should not go live, and the log of covered content should not be updated, since no send has actually occurred.  

Dec. 16, 2018: The Night a Croatian Midfielder Ended the Messi-Ronaldo Era at the Ballon d'Or Luka Modrić's Ballon d'Or win broke a decade-long stranglehold on football's most famous individual prize. For ten years, the Ballon d'Or had belonged to two men. Then came Dec. 3, 2018, in Paris, when France Football announced a name that was neither Lionel Messi nor Cristiano Ronaldo: Luka Modrić of Real Madrid and Croatia. The Quiet Maestro   Since 2008, the award had passed back and forth between Messi and Ronaldo, five trophies apiece, a rivalry so dominant that voters seemed to be choosing between two options. Modrić's 2018 case rested on two achievements. He helped Real Madrid win a third consecutive Champions League title in May, then captained Croatia to the World Cup final in Russia, where the team lost to France. FIFA had already named him the tournament's best player, giving him the Golden Ball. Born in Zadar and shaped by childhood during the Croatian War of Independence, he was 33 when he collected the Paris trophy, the oldest of his era's winners to break through. He was a midfielder, a position that rarely earns headline attention, and his game was built on passing, pace control and positioning rather than goals. The prize recognized work that rarely shows up in highlight reels. Modrić received the trophy from Ruud Gullit, and the result carried historical weight. He became the first player other than Messi or Ronaldo to win the Ballon d'Or since Kaká in 2007. Ronaldo finished second and Antoine Griezmann third, while Messi placed fifth. The vote was a statement that the sport's most celebrated individual honor could still go to someone who spent his career making others look better. The irony was hard to miss: after a decade of goal totals defining greatness, the award that ended the streak went to a player whose best moments were often the pass before the pass.  

Dec. 6, 2008: The Detroit Lions Lose Another Close One and Edge Toward the First 0-16 Season in NFL History A one-point setback in Minneapolis kept Detroit winless, one more step along a road no NFL team had traveled before. On Dec. 7, 2008, the NFL calendar offered the Detroit Lions a chance to avoid history. The Lions came into December with no wins, and the rest of the league watched to see whether a 16-game schedule would produce its first perfect failure. The Long Slide   Detroit entered December 2008 with a record of 0-11 and a season already defined by its losses. The team had finished 7-9 the year before and started the 2008 season with real hopes of building on it. Instead, the Lions lost week after week, and coach Rod Marinelli's team became a daily punchline for sports radio and late-night television. By the time the schedule turned to December, the question was no longer whether Detroit would make the playoffs, but whether it could win even once. Only the 1976 Tampa Bay Buccaneers had gone winless over a full season, and they played 14 games, not 16. The Lions had a clear shot at a record nobody wanted, and the final five games offered few obvious opportunities to dodge it. Each loss pushed the franchise closer to a statistic that would follow it for years, one that no amount of effort in the final weeks could easily erase. The Lions kept losing through the month, and on Dec. 28, 2008, they fell to the Green Bay Packers 31-21 at Lambeau Field to complete the 0-16 season. The result made Detroit the first team in NFL history to go winless over a 16-game schedule. Marinelli had been fired earlier in December, and the organization soon turned to a full rebuild, drafting quarterback Matthew Stafford first overall in 2009. The record itself still stands as a marker of a season where almost nothing went right. For a franchise that had waited decades for sustained success, the irony was hard to miss: the Lions achieved a first in league history, just not the kind any team would choose. The 2008 Lions remain the standard against which every other bad season is measured, a distinction that proved impossible to shake.  

On Nov. 29, 2009, Tiger Woods' Early-Morning Car Crash Outside His Florida Home Halted the Most Dominant Run in Modern Golf A single-vehicle accident on a quiet Florida street ended a season of triumph and began a long public unraveling for sport's most guarded superstar. Thanksgiving weekend, 2009, was supposed to be quiet for Tiger Woods. He was the world's top-ranked golfer, a winner of 70 PGA Tour events, and an athlete whose private life had been walled off from public view for more than a decade. Then, in the early hours of Nov. 27, a crash outside his Windermere, Florida, home began a story that unfolded over the following days and reached a turning point on Nov. 29. The Hydrant   Florida Highway Patrol reported that Woods' Cadillac Escalade left his driveway shortly after 2:25 a.m., struck a fire hydrant, and then hit a tree on a neighboring property. Woods was treated for facial lacerations and released. In the first days afterward he declined to meet with troopers, and the lack of explanation became the story itself. Tabloid reports about his personal life multiplied, and the carefully managed image that had helped make him among the most marketable athletes in the world started to come apart. Sponsors, broadcasters, and fellow players all waited for a clear account that did not arrive. By Nov. 29, the Highway Patrol said it would seek a warrant for his medical records after he again postponed an interview, a notable escalation for a man whose fame had always depended on control. The event that was supposed to be a minor traffic matter instead drew national attention, and the silence around it proved louder than any statement. The consequences reached well beyond the roadside. On Dec. 2, Woods publicly acknowledged personal failings and apologized on his website, and on Dec. 11 he announced an indefinite break from professional golf. He did not return to competition until the 2010 Masters in April. Companies including Accenture and AT&T later ended their sponsorship deals with him. The crash became a dividing line in his career, separating the years when he seemed unbeatable from those marked by injuries, comebacks, and reinvention. The fire hydrant, an ordinary piece of suburban street furniture, ended up standing between two eras of a career that had seemed unstoppable until a single quiet night.  

On Nov. 25, 2020, Diego Maradona died at his home outside Buenos Aires, and a sport that had spent four decades arguing about him went quiet The man who gave football the Hand of God and the Goal of the Century was gone at 60, and two countries responded with mourning that matched his myth. Diego Armando Maradona died on Nov. 25, 2020, at age 60, from a cardiorespiratory arrest at a rented house in Tigre, in Buenos Aires province. He had undergone surgery for a blood clot on his brain only weeks earlier, on Nov. 3, and had been recovering at home. The news reached a world in the middle of a pandemic, and it still pulled fans into the streets of Buenos Aires and Naples. The Last Goodbye   Argentina's government declared three days of national mourning. Mourners queued for hours in Buenos Aires to pass his coffin, which lay in state at the presidential palace, the Casa Rosada. Argentina's football association and clubs paid tribute, and in Naples, fans gathered at the murals and shrines that had stood in the city for decades. Maradona had led Napoli to its first Serie A title in 1987 and a second in 1990, victories that gave the southern Italian city a pride it had rarely been handed by the football establishment of the north. His reach was never really about a single club, though. At the 1986 World Cup in Mexico, he captained Argentina to the title, and in the quarterfinal against England he scored two goals within minutes of each other, one of them a dribble through the English defense that came to be called the Goal of the Century. The other was the handball he later called the work of the Hand of God. Few players have been remembered so vividly for both a miracle and a misdeed in the same ninety minutes. The tributes did not erase the complications of his life, which had included addiction, health scares and public feuds, and which commentators noted were all part of why people felt they knew him. Within days, Napoli's stadium, the San Paolo, was formally renamed Stadio Diego Armando Maradona, with the club announcing the change in early December. The city that had once adopted him as an outsider now put his name on the ground where he had played. Scoreboards and jerseys around the world carried his number 10 in the days after his death. It was an unusual honor for a player who had spent his career being told he was either a genius or a cheat, and who had mostly insisted on being both. The sport he left behind has spent the years since looking for someone who could make a ball do what he did, and the stadium bearing his name keeps filling up to watch it try.  

On Nov. 20, 2022, the World Cup kicked off in Qatar for the first time in the Middle East, and the host nation became the first ever to lose its own opening match After a dozen years of controversy and debate, the tournament finally began in a winter month, and the first night belonged to Ecuador. For years, the 2022 World Cup was discussed more as an argument than as a football tournament. On Sunday, Nov. 20, the argument gave way to an actual match at Al Bayt Stadium, a tent-shaped arena north of Doha, where Qatar faced Ecuador in the opener. The Opening Night   It was the first World Cup held in the Middle East and the first staged in November and December rather than the northern summer, a shift made to avoid Qatar's heat. An opening ceremony featured actor Morgan Freeman in conversation with Ghanim Al-Muftah, a Qatari fundraiser and advocate who was born with caudal regression syndrome. Then the football began, and it started oddly. Ecuador's Enner Valencia put the ball in the net within the first few minutes, but a video review ruled it offside. The tournament's semi-automated offside technology and VAR were already a talking point before the first quarter hour had passed. The reprieve for Qatar proved brief. The hosts had spent more than a decade preparing for this match, and the stadium that was built to host it filled with roughly 67,000 people. Within minutes of the first goal being chalked off, the night was already telling a different story than the one the organizers had scripted. Valencia was not to be denied twice. In the 16th minute, Qatar goalkeeper Saad Al Sheeb brought him down in the box, and Valencia converted the penalty himself. Around the half-hour mark he added a header to make it 2-0, and Ecuador saw out the rest of the match with little trouble. The final score made Qatar the first host nation in World Cup history to lose its opening game. The same Qatari side had arrived as the reigning Asian Cup champion, and had spent years and an enormous amount of money preparing for exactly this evening. In the end, the night's most memorable moment was a goal that did not count, followed by two that did, both scored by a visitor wearing yellow.  

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.