A day of remembrance — All Souls' Day and Día de Muertos honor the dead. US clocks fell back on November 2 in 2025; in 2026 they change on November 1.
Next: Monday, November 2, 2026.
A Christian day of prayer for the faithful departed, All Souls' Day follows All Saints' Day and closes the three days of Allhallowtide. Its November 2 date goes back to Odilo, abbot of the Benedictine abbey of Cluny, who around 998 directed his monasteries to commemorate the dead on the day after All Saints. Catholics mark it with requiem Masses and prayers for souls in purgatory, and in many countries families visit and decorate graves.
In Mexico, Día de Muertos is celebrated mainly on November 1 and 2, with November 1 often dedicated to children who have died and November 2 to adults. Families build ofrendas (altars) with photographs, cempasúchil marigolds, candles, pan de muerto and the favorite foods of the people they remember, and many spend the night in decorated cemeteries. UNESCO inscribed Mexico's indigenous festivity dedicated to the dead on its intangible cultural heritage list in 2008.
In the United States, Daylight Saving Time ends at 2:00 a.m. on the first Sunday of November, so it lands on November 2 only in some years — including 2025, and next in 2031. In 2026 clocks fall back on Sunday, November 1, and in 2027 on November 7. The current schedule took effect in 2007 under the Energy Policy Act of 2005; Hawaii and most of Arizona do not observe DST at all.
The Expedition 1 crew — American astronaut Bill Shepherd and Russian cosmonauts Yuri Gidzenko and Sergei Krikalev — docked with the International Space Station on November 2, 2000. Their arrival began a continuous human presence aboard the station that has lasted ever since.
Howard Hughes piloted his giant H-4 Hercules flying boat — nicknamed the "Spruce Goose," though built mostly of birch — on its only flight, over the harbor at Long Beach, California. The aircraft rose about 70 feet and flew roughly a mile. It remains the largest flying boat ever built, and its 320-foot wingspan was the widest of any aircraft to fly until the Stratolaunch carrier first flew in 2019.
The BBC opened its television service from Alexandra Palace in north London, which it describes as the world's first regular "high-definition" television service — high-definition by the standards of the day, at 240 and 405 lines. Only a few hundred homes in the London area had sets at first. The service was suspended during the Second World War and resumed in 1946.
British Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour wrote to Lord Rothschild declaring the government's support for "the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people," while stating that nothing should prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities there. The Balfour Declaration became one of the most consequential and contested documents in the modern history of the Middle East.
President Benjamin Harrison signed the proclamations admitting North Dakota and South Dakota as the 39th and 40th states. Harrison reportedly shuffled the papers and covered all but the signature lines so no one would know which state was admitted first. North Dakota is conventionally listed as the 39th state because it comes first alphabetically.