November 2 · This Day in America
On November 2, 2000, a Soyuz docks at a half-built station 250 miles above Earth, and astronaut Bill Shepherd and cosmonauts Yuri Gidzenko and Sergei Krikalev float aboard the International Space Station for the first time. They turn on the lights. They get the systems breathing. A decade earlier these men's countries had aimed missiles at each other; now they are roommates in orbit, learning to live in a tin can the size of a five-bedroom house. They will stay four months. No one has come down since. Every minute of every day since that hatch opened, there have been human beings living off the planet — an unbroken thread of presence in space now longer than most marriages. Look up tonight. Someone is up there. Someone always is.
Source: www.nasa.gov
Also on this day · 1889
On November 2, 1889, President Benjamin Harrison admits both Dakotas at once. By tradition, the two proclamations are said to have been shuffled and covered before signing so no one could know which became a state first. The order of signature was never recorded. Alphabetical order gives North Dakota the 39th spot and South Dakota the 40th — a deliberate tie, a small act of fairness on the prairie.
Source: www.presidency.ucsb.edu