3rd November, 1957: Soviets launch Sputnik II with the dog Laika. she became the first living being to orbit the Earth.
5th November – Remembered as Guy Fawkes Day in Britain, for the anniversary of the failed ‘Gunpowder Plot’ to blow up the Houses of Parliament and King James I in 1605. Guy Fawkes was later tried for treason and hanged.
15th November, 1875 – Adivasi freedom fighter and religious leader Birsa Munda was born in Ulihatu in district Khunti, Jharkhand. His anti-colonial struggle caused nightmares for the British.
24 November, 1859- Charles Darwin published his book ‘On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life’. His theory of random variations contradicting Biblical world-view further established dialectical materialism.
28th November, 1820 – Friedrich Engels was born on this day. Engels, as Lenin wrote, was the finest scholar and teacher of the modern proletariat in the whole world, after his friend Marx. He co-authored ‘The Communist Manifesto’ along with Karl Marx in the year 1848. After Marx’s death he published volumes 2 and 3 of Capital. His other works are The Origin of the Family, state, and Private Property, Dialectics of Nature, and Socialism: Utopian and Scientific.
29th November – The International Day of Solidarity traditionally provides an opportunity for the international community to focus its attention to the question of liberation of Palestine. This assumes special significance in the backdrop of the all-out genocide on Palestine by the apartheid state of Israel.
