November 7 Birthday
On November 7, 1917 (October 25 by the Julian calendar then in use in Russia), Bolshevik forces seized the Winter Palace in Petrograd. Lenin announced: "We shall now proceed to construct the socialist order." The revolution was nearly bloodless — the palace was defended by a few cadets and a women's battalion. The real violence came later: the civil war that followed killed ten million people. The Bolsheviks nationalized industry, collectivized agriculture, and created a one-party state that would last seventy-four years. The revolution's promise was equality; its delivery was tyranny. Marie Curie, born this day in 1867 in Warsaw, was the first woman to win a Nobel Prize and the first person to win two. She discovered radium and polonium, coined the term "radioactivity," and pioneered the use of radiation in medicine. She died of aplastic anemia caused by her work. Her notebooks remain radioactive and are stored in lead-lined boxes. People born on November 7 fall under the zodiac sign of Scorpio. The birthstone is Topaz and the birth flower is Chrysanthemum. Historical events on November 7 include 1917: Bolshevik Revolution — Lenin's forces seize power in Petrograd, 1944: FDR elected to unprecedented fourth term as president, 1874: Thomas Nast cartoon uses elephant as symbol of Republican Party. Famous people born on November 7 include Marie Curie (1867), Albert Camus (1913), Joni Mitchell (1943).