NOVEMBER 03
New York City Marathon
New York City Marathon, the nation’s largest, attracting nearly 50,000 participants. Surveys find the proportion of women completing marathons nationwide has climbed since 1990, from 25 percent to 42 percent last year.
NOVEMBER 06
Pushkar Camel Fair
First day of India’s centuries-old Pushkar Camel Fair, reputedly Asia’s largest dromedary swap meet, which attracts an estimated 300,000 people and up to 20,000 camels, cattle, and horses.
NOVEMBER 29
Black Friday
Though Black Friday is touted as the nation’s top shopping day, a recent analysis of millions of tweets by New York’s Houghton College found “more people talking about thankfulness than shopping during the Thanksgiving season, but more people talking about shopping than Jesus during the Christmas season.”
DECEMBER 05
Wrangler National Finals Rodeo
Opening of Wrangler National Finals Rodeo in Las Vegas. According to a University of Nevada, Las Vegas, study, fans at this “Super Bowl of rodeo” are older, earn less, and spend more on gambling than their peers at Sin City’s comparably sized NASCAR races.
DECEMBER 16
Boston Tea Party
240th anniversary of the Boston Tea Party. One in four Obama supporters considers the modern Tea Party a bigger terrorist threat than radical Muslims, says a June Rasmussen poll.
DECEMBER 31
California’s Prison Overcrowding
Supreme Court-mandated date for California to relieve prison overcrowding by releasing nearly 10,000 inmates. The state has been gradually reducing its inmate population since 2006—part of the reason America’s total number of prisoners has finally begun falling in recent years, after decades of steady growth.
