November 10 · This Day in America
There is barely a navy. There is hardly a country. Still, on this day in Philadelphia, the Second Continental Congress resolves "that two Battalions of Marines be raised" to serve as soldiers who fight from the decks of ships at sea. The recruiting, by tradition, runs out of a tavern. It is an act of pure nerve: a fledgling Congress, in open rebellion against the most powerful navy on Earth, declaring it will meet that navy on the water. Those first Marines would soon land at Nassau and seize a British fort. Two and a half centuries later, the institution born by a single sentence in 1775 has not stopped answering the call. Every Marine still counts their birthday from this room, this day, this audacious paragraph.
Source: www.usmcu.edu
Also on this day · 1975
She is the biggest ship on the Great Lakes, loaded with iron ore, racing a November gale across Lake Superior. Seventy-mile winds, waves near 20 feet. Her last radio words are calm: "We are holding our own." Then nothing. She breaks apart in deep water near Whitefish Point and takes every one of her 29 men with her. No bodies are recovered. A song would carry their names so the lake could not keep them entirely.
Source: vlab.noaa.gov