On This Day
What Happened on November 12 in History
8 events that happened on November 12, oldest first. Every entry is written in our own words and links to its source.
The Early 1900s and the World Wars
1936
The San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge opened to traffic.
The bridge across San Francisco Bay opened six months before the Golden Gate Bridge, after about three years of construction.
Source: blog.bayareametro.gov
The Cold War
1979
President Jimmy Carter halted American imports of Iranian oil during the Tehran hostage crisis.
Militants had seized the U.S. Embassy in Tehran eight days earlier. Carter announced the ban from the White House and signed a proclamation the same day, while urging Americans to save energy.
Source: presidency.ucsb.edu; history.com
1980
Voyager 1 made its closest approach to Saturn, returning detailed views of the planet, its rings and moons.
The spacecraft passed about 78,000 miles above the cloud tops after a close flyby of the moon Titan. It found new moons and intricate ring structures before heading out of the solar system.
Source: science.nasa.gov; nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov
1981
Space shuttle Columbia launched on STS-2, the first time a crewed spacecraft returned to orbit.
Joe Engle and Richard Truly lifted off from Kennedy Space Center a week after a scrub. A failed fuel cell cut the planned five-day flight to about two days, but the mission showed the shuttle could be flown again.
Source: nasa.gov
1982
Yuri Andropov became leader of the Soviet Communist Party, two days after Leonid Brezhnev died.
A longtime party official who had been Soviet ambassador to Hungary during the 1956 uprising, Andropov led the party as general secretary until his death in February 1984.
Source: history.com; history.state.gov
The Modern Era
1995
Space shuttle Atlantis launched on STS-74 to deliver a docking module to the Russian space station Mir.
It was the second shuttle mission to dock with Mir. The crew attached a Russian-built docking module that made later shuttle visits to the station easier.
Source: nasa.gov
2001
American Airlines Flight 587 crashed into a Queens neighborhood minutes after takeoff from JFK Airport.
The jet, bound for the Dominican Republic, went down two months after the September 11 attacks, and 265 people died. Investigators ruled out terrorism and blamed the pilots' reaction to wake turbulence from a plane ahead.
Source: history.com
2014
The Philae lander touched down on comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, the first landing on a comet.
Released by the European Rosetta spacecraft, Philae bounced after its anchoring system failed and settled at a different spot on the comet's surface.
Source: science.nasa.gov