TODAY IN HISTORY

 

One World Trade Center officially opens in New York City, on the site of the Twin Towers

One World Trade Center officially opens in Manhattan on November 3, 2014. The new tower, along with the rest of the World Trade Center complex, replaced the Twin Towers and surrounding complex, which were destroyed by terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001.

As the city and the nation reeled from the attacks, which set into motion the series of U.S-led military operations dubbed the War on Terror, it was decided that the Twin Towers should be replaced by new office buildings, parks, a museum, and a memorial to those who died. In 2002, after cleanup and recovery efforts had concluded, the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation announced a competition to find the chief architect of the new structure. Daniel Libeskind, a Polish-American architect then in charge of a studio in Berlin, won and became the site’s master planner. In reality, however, a number of people and entities, including then-Governor George Pataki, leaseholder Larry Silverstein, and the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, wrestled over what would happen to the space commonly referred to as “Ground Zero.”

The initial plans for the site were steeped in post-9/11 patriotic sentiment. Libeskind designed an asymmetrical tower that evoked the Statue of Liberty and stood at the same height as the original World Trade Center, topped with a spire rising to 1,776 feet. Pataki dubbed it the “Freedom Tower,” a name which became commonplace but had largely faded from use by the time One World Trade Center opened.

In 2004, Silverstein’s preferred architect, David Childs, officially took over, with Libeskind staying on as the planner of the site. Childs’ “final” design, a symmetrical and more traditional tower that tapers into an octagon at its midway point and then back into a rectangular prism, was unveiled in 2005. The New York Police Department requested further alterations, most notably a windowless, solid concrete base. Meant to protect against truck bombs and other potential attacks, the base has was criticized as “a grotesque attempt to hide [the building’s] underlying paranoia” by New York Times architecture critic Nicolai Ourousoff.

Though its cornerstone was laid in 2004, construction on One World Trade did not begin until the summer of 2006. The slow pace of construction—the tower “topped off” in August 2012 and the spire was not installed until May 2013—was a frequent source of consternation for the building’s developers and the city. At the same time, it allowed space for the tower to become more than a reminder of what had been lost. As architecture critic Kurt Andersen put it, “The fact that it’s taken more than a decade to finish, I think —the gradualism—makes that sense of emblematic rebirth more acute and irresistible.”

Prior to the opening, media conglomerate Condé Nast announced that it would move its New York headquarters from Times Square to One World Trade Center, occupying floors 20 through 44. Its location and the legacy of the original World Trade Center made the tower a natural choice for many financial institutions, but the building’s developers made an effort to bring in a diverse group of tenants, including media and tech companies. Known for its floor-to-ceiling, 360 degree views of Manhattan, Long Island, New Jersey and New York Harbor, One World Trade is now one of the most notable features of the Manhattan skyline, a tribute to the buildings that preceded it but a 21st century New York phenomenon in its own right.

AMERICAN REVOLUTION

1777

George Washington learns of effort to discredit him

General George Washington is informed that a conspiracy is afoot to discredit him with Congress and have him replaced by General Horatio Gates. Thomas Conway, who would be made inspector general of the United States less than two months later on December 14, led the effort; as such, it became known as the Conway Cabal. 

ART, LITERATURE, AND FILM HISTORY

1962

The Crystals earn a #1 hit with “He’s A Rebel”

In an incident familiar to all fans of pop music scandals, a great hue and cry was raised in the press and in the music industry when the late 1980s dance sensation Milli Vanilli was exposed as mere lip-sync artists. Suddenly exposed as illegitimate, the duo that had earned a #1 hit with “Baby Don’t Forget My Number” (1989) was immediately stripped of its Grammy Award for Best New Artist. But fans of pop music hypocrisy know that the music industry’s definitions of “legitimate” and “illegitimate” have always been flexible, and that Milli Vanilli was hardly the first chart-topping act with a scandalous secret. Another such act scored a #1 hit on November 3, 1962, in fact, when their name appeared at the top the Billboard Hot 100 alongside the song “He’s A Rebel”—a record on which the credited artists, the Crystals, had not sung a single note.

LATIN AMERICA

1903

Panama declares independence from Colombia

With the support of the U.S. government, Panama issues a declaration of independence from Colombia. The revolution was engineered by a Panamanian faction backed by the Panama Canal Company, a French-U.S. corporation that hoped to connect the Atlantic and Pacific oceans with a waterway across the Isthmus of Panama. 

SPACE EXPLORATION

1957

Soviet Union launches a dog into space

The Soviet Union launches the first animal into space—a dog name Laika—aboard the Sputnik 2 spacecraft. Laika, part Siberian husky, lived as a stray on the Moscow streets before being enlisted into the Soviet space program. Laika survived for a few hours as a passenger in the USSR’s second artificial Earth satellite, kept alive by a sophisticated life-support system. Electrodes attached to her body provided scientists on the ground with important information about the biological effects of space travel. She died from overheating and panic.

1970S

1979

Communists and Klansmen clash in Greensboro

Five members of the Communist Workers Party, participating in a “Death to the Klan” rally in Greensboro, North Carolina, are shot to death by a group of Klansmen and neo-Nazis. Several others were wounded in what became known as the Greensboro massacre.  

US POLITICS

1964

D.C. residents cast first presidential votes

On November 3, 1964, residents of the District of Columbia cast their ballots in a presidential election for the first time. The passage of the 23rd Amendment in 1961 gave citizens of the nation’s capital the right to vote for a commander in chief and vice president. 

VIETNAM WAR

1969

President Nixon calls on the “silent majority”

President Richard Nixon goes on television and radio to call for national solidarity on the Vietnam War effort and to gather support for his policies; his call for support is an attempt to blunt the renewed strength of the antiwar movement. 

SPORTS

1998

Former wrestler Jesse “The Body” Ventura is elected governor of Minnesota

On November 3, 1998, former professional wrestler Jesse “The Body” Ventura is elected governor of Minnesota with 37 percent of the vote. His opponents, seasoned politicians Hubert Humphrey III (son of Lyndon Johnson’s vice-president and the attorney general of Minnesota) and St. Paul mayor Norm Coleman, spent a total of $4.3 million on their campaigns. Ventura, the Reform-Party candidate, spent $250,000—money he raised by selling $22 t-shirts and accepting $50 donations from his supporters. His only political experience had been his years as mayor of Brooklyn Park, a suburb of Minneapolis, but his laid-back, straight-talking, libertarian approach to politics resonated with many Minnesotans—especially young men who had never voted before. “I voted for Jesse because he was the most honest,” one young constituent told a reporter for Newsweek. “If he doesn’t know something, he says he doesn’t know.”

US POLITICS

1948

Newspaper mistakenly declares “Dewey Defeats Truman”

On November 3, 1948, the Chicago Tribune jumps the gun and mistakenly declares New York Governor Thomas Dewey the winner of the previous days' presidential race against incumbent Harry S. Truman in a front-page headline: “Dewey Defeats Truman.” 

CRIME

1883

Black Bart makes his last stagecoach robbery

Authorities almost catch the California bandit and infamous stagecoach robber called Black Bart; he manages to make a quick getaway, but drops an incriminating clue that eventually sends him to prison. Black Bart was born Charles E. Boles, probably in the state of New York around 1830. As a young man, he abandoned his family for the gold fields of California, but he failed to strike it rich as a miner and turned to a life of crime.

ART, LITERATURE, AND FILM HISTORY

1844

William Makepeace Thackeray completes his novel “Barry Lyndon”

On November 3, 1844, William Makepeace Thackeray completes The Luck of Barry Lyndon: A Romance of the Last Century, which is published in Fraser’s Magazine. Thackeray was born in Calcutta in 1811. As a young man, he attended Cambridge but left without a degree.

US POLITICS

1964

Lyndon B. Johnson defeats Barry Goldwater for presidency

In one of the most crushing victories in the history of U.S. presidential elections, incumbent Lyndon Baines Johnson defeats Republican challenger Barry Goldwater, Sr. With over 60 percent of the popular vote, Johnson turned back the conservative senator from Arizona to secure his first full term in office after succeeding to the presidency after the assassination of John F. Kennedy in November 1963. 

WORLD WAR I

1918

Central Powers face rebellion on the home front

As the First World War draws to a close, angry rebels in both Germany and Austria-Hungary revolt on November 3, 1918, raising the red banner of the revolutionary socialist Communist Party and threatening to follow the Russian example in bringing down their imperialist governments.