November 15 brings together three kinds of beginnings: a military campaign, an artistic life, and a business venture. In 1864, Union General William Tecumseh Sherman set out from Atlanta on his March to the Sea, a devastating campaign toward Savannah designed to damage Confederate infrastructure and morale. Its place in the Civil War reflects a widening strategy of total war, in which breaking the South’s capacity and resolve became part of the effort to defeat the Confederacy. A very different beginning arrived in 1887 with the birth of Georgia O’Keeffe, whose enlarged flower paintings and New Mexico landscapes made her one of the defining figures of American modernism.
In 1969, Dave Thomas opened the first Wendy’s Old Fashioned Hamburgers in Columbus, Ohio, launching a business that would grow into one of the world’s most successful fast-food chains. Set beside Sherman’s campaign and O’Keeffe’s work, that opening shows how a calendar can hold events operating on vastly different scales: a wartime strategy, an artistic vision, and a familiar everyday institution. The list spans more than a century, moving from the Civil War era through modern art to the growth of a national restaurant chain. In mid-November, as autumn turns toward winter across much of the United States, these varied stories offer a reminder that history’s beginnings can take many forms—and leave very different kinds of marks.