9. November

The Florentines drove out Piero de’ Medici for yielding to Charles VIII, and the Dominican prior of San Marco became the voice of the new republic. A Great Council of more than three thousand citizens needed a hall; it became the Hall of the Five Hundred in the Palazzo Vecchio.

Yoshinobu told his retainers at Nijō Castle, and the next day petitioned the court, that he was handing government back to the emperor. He hoped to lead the council of lords that would follow; Satsuma and Chōshū meant to leave him no place in it. Japanese calendar: Keiō 3, 10th month, 14th day

Relativity was still too contested for the committee, which had held back the 1921 prize a year. It went to him “for his services to Theoretical Physics, and especially for his discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect”. He was at sea on the way to Japan, and at the ceremony on 10 December…

The 27-year-old who ran the record department of his family’s NEMS store, 200 metres away, went down to see what the fuss was about. He had never managed anyone; on 24 January 1962 the four signed with him anyway.

Their first match had been halted without a result after 48 games and five months. In a new match Garry Kasparov beat Anatoly Karpov 13–11 to become the youngest undisputed world champion.

Set up that year by the World Meteorological Organization and UNEP to assess the science for governments, not to do research of its own. Its first chair was the Swedish meteorologist Bert Bolin.

The Berlin WallBerlin Wall

About 155 kilometres of concrete, wire and death strip closed West Berlin off from East Germany, which called it the “Anti-Fascist Protection Rampart.” At least 140 people were killed at the Wall, by the count of Berlin’s Wall Memorial and the Centre for Contemporary History in Potsdam.

At an evening press conference, the East Berlin party chief Günter Schabowski read out new travel rules and, asked when they began, said “immediately”. Crowds gathered at the crossings, and at Bornholmer Straße the guards gave way first. The catalogue’s 1989 timeline tells the year the Wall came…

Politburo spokesman Günter Schabowski briefed the press live on East German television for an hour. Just before it, Krenz had handed him a note on a new travel rule meant to take effect the next morning; nobody told him that part.

Asked about travel, Schabowski read out the note: East Germans could apply to travel abroad without preconditions, and cross at any border point. When would it take effect? He shuffled his papers: “As far as I know… immediately, without delay.”

The evening news on ARD, which most East Germans watched, led with the headline. The wire agencies had moved it within minutes of the press conference. That is what sent people to the crossings: Schabowski’s words had been oblique, the headline was not.

Thousands gathered at the crossing in Prenzlauer Berg, chanting “Open the gate!” The officer in charge of passport control, the Stasi lieutenant colonel Harald Jäger, phoned his superiors again and again and got no orders.

On orders to let the loudest leave, Jäger’s men waved some through and stamped over their passport photos. They did not know it, but they had been expelled and could not return.

Hanns Joachim Friedrichs opened the late news on ARD saying the gates were open. When he said it, they were still shut: the report itself sent a new wave of people to the crossings.

Afraid of a stampede, Jäger ordered his men to open the barrier and stop checking. The crowd surged over the Bösebrücke into the West, the first crossing in the Wall to open.

Around midnight the guards at Checkpoint Charlie, Invalidenstraße, Sonnenallee and the rest gave way too. By morning people were standing on the Wall at the Brandenburg Gate and chipping at it with hammers.

Nine MCs from Staten Island and Brooklyn, a producer, RZA, who built grimy beats out of soul records and kung fu film dialogue, and a contract with Loud Records that let each member sign a solo deal with any other label. Within three years the group’s members had solo records on four of them.

Sigurd Hofmann's team at GSI made element 110 on 9 November 1994, from nickel fused with lead, and element 111 on 8 December. They were named after the city of Darmstadt and after Wilhelm Röntgen, who discovered X-rays.

A first look at the phase 3 trial showed the vaccine more than 90 per cent effective. The final analysis found 8 cases of COVID-19 among vaccinated volunteers and 162 among those given a placebo: 95 per cent.