AP US History This Day in American History November – Harper & Brothers in New York publishes Moby-Dick, by Herman Melville. The book flopped, and it was many years before the book was recognized as an American classic.

AP US History This Day in American History November – President Abraham Lincoln approves of General Ambrose Burnside's plan to capture the Confederate capital at Richmond, Virginia. This was an ill-fated move, as it led to the disastrous Battle of Fredericksburg in Virginia in December 1862, in which the Army of the Potomac was dealt one of its worst defeats at the hands of Confederate General Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia.

AP US History This Day in American History November Apollo 12, the second manned mission to the surface of the moon, is launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida, with astronauts Charles Conrad, Jr.; Richard F. Gordon, Jr.; and Alan L. Bean aboard. President Richard Nixon viewed the liftoff from Pad A at Cape Canaveral. He was the first president to attend the liftoff of a manned space flight.

AP US History This Day in American History November – A chartered jet carrying most of the Marshall University football team clips a stand of trees and crashes into a hillside just two miles from the Tri-State Airport in Kenova, West Virginia. The team was returning from that day’s game, a loss to East Carolina University. Thirty-seven Marshall football players were aboard the plane, along with the team’s coach, its doctors, the university athletic director and 25 team boosters--some of Huntington, West Virginia’s most prominent citizens--who had traveled to North Carolina to cheer on the Thundering Herd.