November

November

November 1, 1957
The westbound side of the Hampton Roads Bridge-Tunnel opens to traffic.

November 1, 1976
The Hampton Roads Bridge-Tunnel is completed when the eastbound side opens to traffic. 

November 3, 1970
The sixth—and current—constitution of Virginia is ratified by the voting public. The constitution includes new provisions for environmental protection and state compliance with the federal Voting Rights Act of 1965. Its bill of rights is amended to prohibit governmental discrimination on the basis of religious conviction, race, color, sex, or national origin.

November 5, 1912
Woodrow Wilson, a Staunton native, captures 6.2 million votes—41 percent of the popular vote—to win the U.S. presidential election.

November 5, 1958
The NASA Space Task Group, which managed the United States’s human spaceflight programs, is created and based at Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia. 

November 5, 2013
Terry McAuliffe wins the Virginia gubernatorial election. 

November 5, 2019
Democrats win control of the Virginia General Assembly for the first time since 1993. 

November 7, 1775
Deposed royal governor, Lord Dunmore, declares Virginia to be in a state of insurrection and offers freedom to male slaves and indentured servants of rebelling colonists if they serve in the British Army.

November 7, 1805
The members of the Lewis and Clark expedition, after an arduous eighteen-month, 4,000-mile trek, reach their ultimate objective. "Great joy in camp, we are in view of the ocean," wrote Meriwether Lewis, "this great Pacific Ocean which we have been so long anxious to see." Lewis and his co-commander, William Clark, are both Virginians.

November 7, 1989
L. Douglas Wilder is elected governor in a narrow victory over the Republican candidate, Marshal Coleman. Wilder, a Richmond native, becomes the first African American in U.S. history to be elected a state governor.

November 7, 2017
Danica Roem is elected to the Virginia House of Delegates, 13th District. Danica is the first openly transgender person to be elected to the Virginia General Assembly. In January 2018, she became the first to both be elected and serve while openly transgender in any United States state legislature.

November 8, 1961
Imperial Airlines Flight 201/8 crashes while trying to land at Richmond, Virginia, killing 77. 

November 8, 1788
The General Assembly elects Richard Henry Lee of Westmoreland County and William Grayson of Prince William, both antifederalists, to serve as Virginia’s first two senators in the new U.S. Senate. 

November 9, 1833
Sally Louisa Tompkins, a hospital administrator during the Civil War, is born in Mathews County. Tompkins was the only woman commissioned a Confederate military officer.

November 11, 1839
Virginia Military Institute (VMI) becomes the nation's first state-supported military school, mustering twenty-three young Virginians into the first Corps of Cadets in Lexington.

November 14, 1915
Booker T. Washington, born a slave in Virginia before gaining fame for championing humanitarian efforts for African Americans, dies in Tuskegee, Alabama. A student and instructor at Hampton Institute, Washington established Tuskegee Institute, a school for African Americans, in 1881.

November 18, 1618
King James I issues the Great Charter of 1618, which includes authorization for the establishment of a general assembly in the colony, the first representative legislative body in the Americas.

November 21, 1934 
Legendary jazz singer Ella Fitzgerald, native of Newport News, won the amateur night contest at Harlem's Apollo Theater at age 17. This launched her meteoric rise to international acclaim as the "First Lady of Jazz." 

November 21, 1945
After suffering her fourth heart attack, Ellen Glasgow dies in her sleep in the Richmond house where she was born. Glasgow won the Pulitzer Prize for literature in 1942 for In This Our Life.

November 25, 1781
In London, British prime minister Lord North receives word of the American victory the previous month at Yorktown, Virginia. Upon receiving the momentous news, he is said to have remarked, "Oh God! It is all over."

November 25, 1949
Richmond's electric streetcar system makes its final run, giving way to the motorized bus. The Richmond system, the nation's oldest, began operation in February 1888.

November 30, 1784
The Continental Congress, meeting in Trenton, New Jersey, elects Richard Henry Lee of Westmoreland County as president.