November 7 brings together three sharply different stories of discovery, revolution, and conflict. In 1867, Marie Curie was born; her pioneering work on radioactivity would make her the first woman to win a Nobel Prize and the only person to receive Nobel Prizes in two different scientific fields. Fifty years later, in 1917, Lenin and the Bolsheviks seized power in Russia, overthrowing the Provisional Government and setting the country on a path toward a communist state and, eventually, the Soviet Union. One date thus marks both a scientific life that expanded knowledge and a political rupture that reshaped a nation.
The day’s other entry, the 1985 siege of Colombia’s Palace of Justice, carries a more tragic weight. Members of the M-19 guerrilla group seized the building in Bogotá, and the ensuing military siege left more than 100 people dead, including 11 Supreme Court justices. Across these events, institutions are central: laboratories, governments, and courts can become places where history changes course, for very different reasons and at very different costs. November’s calendar offers a striking mix of remembrance and upheaval; here, the same date spans a life’s beginning, a revolution’s start, and a deadly confrontation over power.