Tacoma bridge falls into sound
The original span over the Tacoma Narrows failed in a 1940 windstorm four months after it opened to drivers.
By Andrew Kovalenko ·
Washington state’s first Tacoma Narrows Bridge collapsed into Puget Sound on November 7, 1940, during a windstorm. The structure had been open to traffic for only four months before it failed. Locals had nicknamed the suspension span “Galloping Gertie” prior to the event.
The 1940 collapse stands as the primary historical marker for the date. Other major events recorded on November 7 include the Battle of Tippecanoe in 1811. U.S. forces under Maj. Gen. William Henry Harrison defeated warriors from Tecumseh’s confederacy near present-day Lafayette, Indiana.
In 1916, Jeannette Rankin of Montana won a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives. She became the first woman elected to either chamber of Congress. Two years later, in 1917, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin led Bolshevik forces that overthrew the provisional government of Alexander Kerensky in Russia.
Franklin D. Roosevelt secured a fourth term as president in 1944, defeating Republican Thomas E. Dewey. In 1967, Carl Stokes won the mayoral race in Cleveland, Ohio. He was the first Black person elected to lead a major U.S. city.
President Richard Nixon defeated Democrat George McGovern in a 1972 landslide. In 1989, L. Douglas Wilder became the first elected Black governor in U.S. history after winning the Virginia race. That same year, David N. Dinkins was elected as New York City’s first Black mayor.
Basketball player Magic Johnson announced his retirement in 1991 after testing positive for HIV. NASA launched the Mars Global Surveyor from Cape Canaveral, Florida, in 1996. The mission marked the first successful U.S. flight to the red planet in about two decades. The orbiter operated until NASA lost contact in November 2006.
A Los Angeles jury convicted Conrad Murray of involuntary manslaughter in 2011. Murray was Jackson’s doctor and supplied the anesthetic linked to the pop star’s 2009 death. He served two years of a four-year sentence and was released in October 2013. Joe Biden clinched the 2020 presidential election over Donald Trump after winning Pennsylvania. Biden reached the 270 Electoral College votes needed for victory. Trump refused to concede.
