A date of discovery and democracy — from the first step into Tutankhamun's tomb to a string of U.S. presidential elections held on November 4.
Next: Wednesday, November 4, 2026.
On November 4, 1922, workers for British archaeologist Howard Carter uncovered the first of the steps leading down to the tomb of Tutankhamun in Egypt's Valley of the Kings. Carter and his patron Lord Carnarvon entered the antechamber later that month and found a royal burial that was largely intact despite ancient break-ins. Cataloguing its more than 5,000 objects — including the famous gold funerary mask, revealed in 1925 — took Carter about ten years.
U.S. Election Day — the Tuesday after the first Monday in November — moves around the calendar, but several landmark presidential elections fell on November 4: Grover Cleveland (1884), Dwight D. Eisenhower (1952), Ronald Reagan (1980) and Barack Obama (2008), the first African American elected president, all won their first terms on this date. Most recently, November 4, 2025 was Election Day for off-year state and local races. In 2026 the midterms fall on November 3; the next presidential election held on November 4 will be in 2036.
Russia's National Unity Day, a public holiday since 2005, commemorates the 1612 uprising led by the merchant Kuzma Minin and Prince Dmitry Pozharsky that drove Polish-Lithuanian forces out of Moscow during the Time of Troubles. The holiday took over the role of the Soviet-era November 7 Revolution Day as Russia's autumn day off. A monument to Minin and Pozharsky stands in Red Square in front of St. Basil's Cathedral.
Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was shot dead by Yigal Amir, an Israeli extremist opposed to the Oslo Accords, as he left a peace rally in Tel Aviv's Kings of Israel Square, now Rabin Square. Rabin had shared the 1994 Nobel Peace Prize with Shimon Peres and Yasser Arafat for the Oslo peace process. His killing shocked Israel and dealt a major blow to Israeli-Palestinian peace efforts.
Iranian students supporting the revolution seized the U.S. Embassy in Tehran and took 66 Americans hostage. Thirteen were released within weeks and one more in 1980; the remaining 52 were held for 444 days. They were freed on January 20, 1981, minutes after Ronald Reagan was sworn in as president. The crisis dominated Jimmy Carter's last year in office and shaped U.S.-Iran relations for decades.
Soviet tanks and troops moved into Budapest in force in the early hours of November 4 to crush the Hungarian Revolution, which had begun on October 23. Prime Minister Imre Nagy broadcast an appeal for help before taking refuge in the Yugoslav embassy; he was later tried and executed in 1958. Thousands of Hungarians were killed and around 200,000 fled the country.
Wyoming voters elected Nellie Tayloe Ross governor in a special election to succeed her late husband, William B. Ross. Miriam "Ma" Ferguson of Texas was elected the same day, but Ross was inaugurated first, on January 5, 1925, making her the first woman to serve as governor of a U.S. state. She later became the first woman to direct the U.S. Mint, serving from 1933 to 1953.