A day of scientific breakthrough and political milestones — from the discovery of X-rays to elections that reshaped the nation.
Next: Sunday, November 8, 2026.
On November 8, 1895, German physicist Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen, experimenting with a cathode-ray tube in his laboratory at the University of Würzburg, noticed a fluorescent screen glowing nearby even though the tube was covered. He had found a new kind of penetrating radiation, which he called "X" rays because their nature was unknown. Within weeks he had made an X-ray image of his wife's hand, and in 1901 he received the first Nobel Prize in Physics.
World Radiography Day is marked each year on November 8, the anniversary of Röntgen's discovery. It is promoted by the International Society of Radiographers and Radiological Technologists (ISRRT) and national societies to raise awareness of medical imaging and of the radiographers who perform it. The International Day of Radiology is held on the same date.
U.S. Election Day has fallen on November 8 in several recent cycles: Donald Trump won the 2016 presidential election on November 8, 2016, and the 2022 midterms were held on November 8, 2022. Because Election Day is the Tuesday after the first Monday in November, it moves each year — it is November 3 in 2026 and November 7 in 2028, and returns to November 8 in 2033 for off-year state and local races.
Typhoon Haiyan, known in the Philippines as Yolanda, made landfall in the central Philippines as one of the most intense tropical cyclones ever recorded, with one-minute sustained winds estimated at about 195 mph. A storm surge devastated the city of Tacloban on Leyte. At least 6,300 people were killed and millions were displaced, making it one of the deadliest typhoons in Philippine history.
John F. Kennedy narrowly defeated Vice President Richard Nixon, winning the popular vote by about 113,000 votes out of more than 68 million cast. At 43 he became the youngest person ever elected president and the first Roman Catholic to win the office. The campaign had featured the first televised general-election presidential debates. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas in November 1963.
On the evening of November 8, Adolf Hitler and armed Nazi stormtroopers burst into the Bürgerbräukeller, a Munich beer hall, and proclaimed a "national revolution." The coup collapsed the next day when Bavarian police fired on the marchers near the Odeonsplatz, leaving 16 Nazis and four police officers dead. Hitler was sentenced to five years for treason but served only about nine months, during which he dictated much of "Mein Kampf."
President Benjamin Harrison proclaimed Montana the 41st U.S. state, just six days after admitting North and South Dakota, with Helena as its capital. Montana's admission was part of a wave of western statehood that also brought in Washington later that month and Idaho and Wyoming in 1890.