On Nov 2:

1947 - Howard Hughes proved the airworthiness of the Spruce Goose, but the aircraft never flew again. It was designed to take 700 men to war, but the war ended before the plane was completed.

The Hughes H-4 Hercules (registration NX37602) is a one-off heavy transport aircraft designed and built by the Hughes Aircraft company, making its first and only flight in 1947. Built from wood due to wartime raw material restrictions, it was nicknamed the "Spruce Goose" by its critics, who accused Howard Hughes of misusing government funding to build the aircraft. The Hercules is the largest flying boat ever built, and has the largest wingspan and height of any aircraft in history. It survives, in good condition, at the Evergreen Aviation Museum.

Due to wartime restrictions on the availability of metals, the H-4 was built almost entirely of laminated birch, not spruce as its nickname suggests. The Duramold process, a form of composite technology, was used in the laminated wood construction. The aircraft was considered a technological tour de force. It married a soon-to-be outdated technology, flying boats, to a massive airframe that required some truly ingenious engineering innovations to function. Ultimately, however, the project was an expensive, humiliating failure and with the end of the war, the project was cancelled.

On 2 November 1947, after a series of taxi tests with Hughes at the controls with co-pilot Dave Grant and a crew of two flight engineers, accompanied by nine invited guests from the press corps, the Hercules lifted off from the waters off Long Beach, remaining airborne 70 feet (21 m) off the water at a speed of 135 mph (217 km/h or 117 knots) for just under a mile (1.6 km). At this altitude, the aircraft was still experiencing ground effect and some critics believe it lacked the power necessary to climb above ground effect.

1995 : Yitzhak Rabin assassinated
http://history.com/tdih.do?action=tdihVideoCategory&id=5495

November 6, 1941

Stalin celebrates the Revolution's anniversary
On this day in 1941, the 24th anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution, Joseph Stalin, premier and dictator of the USSR, delivers a speech to a rally of Moscow Party workers.

The rally was held underground, in the marbled halls of the Mayakovsky train station. There, Stalin encouraged the assembled Communist Party workers with the promise that if the Germans "want a war of extermination, they shall have one." The very next day, standing atop Lenin's Mausoleum in Red Square, Stalin took the salute of his troops and encouraged them to defend "holy Russia"--even as German tanks, previously mired in mud, began to roll over now--frozen ground in their advance toward the Soviet capital.

But Stalin would have more than just his military to rely on. As the Red Army marched down Gorky Street, President Franklin Roosevelt officially extended the scope of the Lend-Lease Act to include the Soviet Union. The USSR would now be eligible for an influx of American arms-including British weaponry manufactured in the United States. What had begun as a military aid program for Great Britain was growing to include other allies in their fight against fascism-even fascism's left-wing mirror image, Bolshevik Russia.

On Nov 7:

1940 - In Tacoma, Washington, the middle section of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge ("Galloping Gertie") collapses in a windstorm, a mere four months after the bridge's completion.

The wind-induced collapse occurred on November 7, 1940 at 11:00 AM(Pacific time), due partially to a physical phenomenon known as mechanical resonance.

From the account of Leonard Coatsworth, a driver who narrowly managed to escape the bridge before the collapse:

“Just as I drove past the towers, the bridge began to sway violently from side to side. Before I realized it, the tilt became so violent that I lost control of the car... I jammed on the brakes and got out, only to be thrown onto my face against the curb... Around me I could hear concrete cracking... The car itself began to slide from side to side of the roadway.

On hands and knees most of the time, I crawled 500 yards [450 m] or more to the towers... My breath was coming in gasps; my knees were raw and bleeding, my hands bruised and swollen from gripping the concrete curb... Toward the last, I risked rising to my feet and running a few yards at a time... Safely back at the toll plaza, I saw the bridge in its final collapse and saw my car plunge into the Narrows.”

No human life was lost in the collapse of the bridge, though Coatsworth's cocker spaniel named "Tubby" was lost along with his car in the collapse.

November 7 1885:

Canada's transcontinental railway completed.