Hollow Leg History | What Happened on This Date, November 4?

Hollow Leg Podcast

1922

British archaeologist Howard Carter and his workmen discover a step leading to the tomb of King Tutankhamen in the Valley of the Kings in Egypt. After World War I, Carter began an intensive search for “King Tut’s Tomb,” finally finding steps to the burial room hidden in the debris near the entrance of the nearby tomb of King Ramses VI in the Valley of the Kings. On November 26, 1922, Carter and fellow archaeologist Lord Carnarvon entered the interior chambers of the tomb, finding them miraculously intact. Thus began a monumental excavation process in which Carter carefully explored the four-room tomb over several years, uncovering an incredible collection of several thousand objects. The most splendid architectural find was a stone sarcophagus containing three coffins nested within each other. Inside the final coffin, which was made out of solid gold, was the mummy of the boy-king Tutankhamen, preserved for more than 3,000 years. Most of these treasures are now housed in the Cairo Museum.

1956

A spontaneous national uprising that began 12 days before in Hungary is viciously crushed by Soviet tanks and troops on November 4, 1956. Thousands were killed and wounded and nearly a quarter-million Hungarians fled the country. The problems in Hungary began in October 1956, when thousands of protesters took to the streets demanding a more democratic political system and freedom from Soviet oppression. In response, Communist Party officials appointed Imre Nagy, a former premier who had been dismissed from the party for his criticisms of Stalinist policies, as the new premier. Nagy tried to restore peace and asked the Soviets to withdraw their troops. The Soviets did so, but Nagy then tried to push the Hungarian revolt forward by abolishing one-party rule. He also announced that Hungary was withdrawing from the Warsaw Pact (the Soviet bloc’s equivalent of NATO). Soviet tanks rolled into Budapest to crush, once and for all, the national uprising. Vicious street fighting broke out, but the Soviets’ great power ensured victory. At 5:20 a.m., Hungarian Prime Minister Imre Nagy announced the invasion to the nation in a grim, 35-second broadcast, declaring: “Our troops are fighting. The Government is in place.” Within hours, though, Nagy sought asylum at the Yugoslav Embassy in Budapest. He was captured shortly thereafter and executed two years later.

1995

Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin is fatally shot after attending a peace rally held in Tel Aviv’s Kings Square in Israel. Rabin later died in surgery. The 73-year-old prime minister was walking to his car when he was shot in the arm and the back by Yigal Amir, a 27-year-old Jewish law student who had connections to the far-right Jewish group Eyal. Israeli police arrested Amir at the scene of the shooting, and he later confessed to the assassination, explaining at his arraignment that he killed Rabin because the prime minister wanted “to give our country to the Arabs.” Born in Jerusalem, Rabin was a leader of the Arab-Israeli war of 1948 and served as chief-of-staff of Israel’s armed forces during the Six-Day War of 1967. After serving as Israel’s ambassador to the United States, Rabin entered the Labour Party and became prime minister in 1974. In 1977, Rabin resigned as prime minister over a scandal involving his holding of bank accounts in the United States in violation of Israeli law. In 1992, Rabin led the Labour Party to election victory and became Israel’s prime minister again. In 1993, he signed the historic Israeli-Palestinian Declaration of Principles with Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat and in 1994 concluded a formal peace agreement with the Palestinians.