November 6 in History

Rutgers beat Princeton 6-4 on November 6, 1869, in what is recognized as the first intercollegiate football game. The rules resembled soccer more than modern American football: 25 players per side, no carrying the ball, and goals scored by kicking through posts. The field was about 120 yards long. Rutgers students removed a gate from a fence to use as goalposts. Princeton used teamwork and 'dribbling' passes; Rutgers relied on a larger, more physical squad. The game drew about 100 spectators. Princeton won the rematch a week later. A proposed third game was canceled when faculty intervened, worried the students were neglecting their studies. The sport evolved rapidly: Walter Camp introduced the line of scrimmage and downs system in the 1880s, transforming a rugby-like game into the distinctly American sport played today.

Scientists at the Hanford Site in Washington state produced the first significant quantities of plutonium-239 on November 6, 1944, using a graphite-moderated nuclear reactor designed by Enrico Fermi. The B Reactor, the world's first full-scale production reactor, had been built in just 11 months by 50,000 construction workers who were told nothing about its purpose. Plutonium produced at Hanford was shipped to Los Alamos, where it was fashioned into the core of the Fat Man bomb dropped on Nagasaki on August 9, 1945. The Hanford reactors ultimately produced plutonium for most of America's Cold War nuclear arsenal. The site also generated 56 million gallons of radioactive waste that contaminated the Columbia River and surrounding groundwater. Cleanup, begun in 1989, has cost over $60 billion and is expected to continue until 2060.

The United Nations General Assembly passed Resolution 1761 on November 6, 1962, condemning South Africa's apartheid policies and calling on member states to break diplomatic and economic ties. The vote was 67 to 16 with 23 abstentions. Western powers, including the United States, Britain, and France, initially voted against or abstained from sanctions, protecting their economic interests in South African mining and trade. The resolution established a Special Committee against Apartheid that lobbied for 32 years. International isolation deepened through the 1970s and 1980s as sports boycotts, cultural sanctions, and eventually mandatory economic sanctions under the 1986 Comprehensive Anti-Apartheid Act put increasing pressure on Pretoria. Nelson Mandela was released in 1990, and apartheid was formally dismantled by 1994.

Abraham Lincoln won the presidency on November 6, 1860, without appearing on the ballot in ten Southern states. He received 39.8% of the popular vote in a four-way race against Stephen Douglas, John Breckinridge, and John Bell. Lincoln carried every free state and won 180 electoral votes, 28 more than needed. The reaction in the South was immediate: South Carolina called a secession convention before the month was out. By the time Lincoln was inaugurated on March 4, 1861, seven states had left the Union. Lincoln had campaigned against the expansion of slavery into new territories, not its abolition where it existed. But Southern leaders saw his election as an existential threat to the slave economy. The Civil War began 39 days after his inauguration, killing 750,000 Americans over four years.

Mohandas Gandhi was arrested in South Africa on November 6, 1913, while leading a march of Indian miners protesting the three-pound annual tax on indentured laborers and the government's refusal to recognize non-Christian marriages. Gandhi had already spent 20 years in South Africa developing the philosophy of satyagraha, 'truth-force,' a method of nonviolent resistance that combined civil disobedience with a willingness to accept suffering. His arrest during the miners' march drew international attention and forced the South African government to negotiate. The Indian Relief Act of 1914 abolished the tax and recognized Indian marriages. Gandhi returned to India the following year and applied the same techniques against the British Empire. The tools he forged in South Africa would eventually dismantle the Raj.

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky died on November 6, 1893, nine days after conducting the premiere of his Sixth Symphony — the Pathétique — in St. Petersburg. He was 53. The officially given cause was cholera, from drinking unboiled water during an outbreak. The theory that he was forced to commit suicide by a court of honor at the St. Petersburg School of Jurisprudence — to cover up a relationship with a male member of the aristocracy — has circulated since 1978 and remains unproven. Whatever the cause, the Pathétique's final movement, an Adagio lamentoso that fades into silence, sounds in retrospect like a farewell. He'd had a lifetime of suppressed misery about his sexuality under Russia's laws and his own tortured conscience. The symphony ends, and then it's very quiet.