Page Contents

What happened in November. Historical events that happened on every day

November 1-4

November 1

  • 365 – The Alemanni cross the Rhine and invade Gaul. Emperor Valentinian I moves to Paris to command the army and defend the Gallic cities.
  • 996 – Emperor Otto III issues a deed to Gottschalk, Bishop of Freising, which is the oldest known document using the name Ostarrîchi (Austria in Old High German).
  • 1009 – Berber forces led by Sulayman ibn al-Hakam defeat the Umayyad caliph Muhammad II of Córdoba in the battle of Alcolea.
  • 1141 – Empress Matilda’s reign as ‘Lady of the English’ ends with Stephen of Blois regaining the title of ‘King of England’.
  • 1179 – Philip II is crowned as ‘King of France’.
  • 1214 – The port city of Sinope surrenders to the Seljuq Turks.
  • 1348 – The anti-royalist Union of Valencia attacks the Jews of Murviedro on the pretext that they are serfs of the King of Valencia and thus “royalists”.
  • 1503 – Pope Julius II is elected.
  • 1512 – The ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, painted by Michelangelo, is exhibited to the public for the first time.
  • 1520 – The Strait of Magellan, the passage immediately south of mainland South America connecting the Pacific and the Atlantic Oceans, is first discovered and navigated by European explorer Ferdinand Magellan during the first recorded circumnavigation voyage.
  • 1555 – French Huguenots establish the France Antarctique colony in present-day Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
  • 1570 – The All Saints’ Flood devastates the Dutch coast.
  • 1604 – William Shakespeare’s tragedy Othello is performed for the first time, at Whitehall Palace in London.
  • 1611 – Shakespeare’s play The Tempest is performed for the first time, at Whitehall Palace in London.
  • 1612 – During the Time of Troubles, Polish troops are expelled from Moscow’s Kitay-gorod by Russian troops under the command of Dmitry Pozharsky (22 October O.S.).
  • 1683 – The British Crown colony of New York is subdivided into 12 counties.
  • 1688 – William III of Orange sets out a second time from Hellevoetsluis in the Netherlands to seize the crowns of England, Scotland and Ireland from King James II of England during the Glorious Revolution.
  • 1755 – In Portugal, Lisbon is totally devastated by a massive earthquake and tsunami, killing between 60,000 and 90,000 people.
  • 1765 – The British Parliament enacts the Stamp Act on the Thirteen Colonies in order to help pay for British military operations in North America.
  • 1790 – Edmund Burke publishes Reflections on the Revolution in France, in which he predicts that the French Revolution will end in a disaster.
  • 1800 – John Adams becomes the first President of the United States to live in the Executive Mansion (later renamed the White House).
  • 1805 – Napoleon Bonaparte invades Austria during the War of the Third Coalition.
  • 1814 – Congress of Vienna opens to re-draw the European political map after the defeat of France in the Napoleonic Wars.
  • 1848 – In Boston, Massachusetts, the first medical school for women, Boston Female Medical School (which later merged with the Boston University School of Medicine), opens.
  • 1861 – American Civil War: U.S. President Abraham Lincoln appoints George B. McClellan as the commander of the Union Army, replacing General Winfield Scott.
  • 1870 – In the United States, the Weather Bureau (later renamed the National Weather Service) makes its first official meteorological forecast.
  • 1884 – The Gaelic Athletic Association is set up in Hayes’s Hotel in Thurles, County Tipperary.
  • 1893 – The Battle of Bembezi took place and was the most decisive battle won by the British in the First Matabele War of 1893.
  • 1894 – Nicholas II becomes the new (and last) Tsar of Russia after his father, Alexander III, dies.
  • 1894 – Buffalo Bill, 15 of his Indians, and Annie Oakley were filmed by Thomas Edison in his Black Maria Studio in West Orange, New Jersey.
  • 1896 – A picture showing the bare breasts of a woman appears in National Geographic magazine for the first time.
  • 1897 – The first Library of Congress building opens its doors to the public; the library had previously been housed in the Congressional Reading Room in the U.S. Capitol.
  • 1901 – Sigma Phi Epsilon, the largest national male collegiate fraternity, is established at Richmond College, in Richmond, Virginia.
  • 1911 – World’s first combat aerial bombing mission takes place in Libya during the Italo-Turkish War. Second Lieutenant Giulio Gavotti of Italy drops several small bombs.
  • 1914 – World War I: The first British Royal Navy defeat of the war with Germany, the Battle of Coronel, is fought off of the western coast of Chile, in the Pacific, with the loss of HMS Good Hope and HMS Monmouth.
  • 1914 – World War I: The Australian Imperial Force (AIF) departed by ship in a single convoy from Albany, Western Australia bound for Egypt.
  • 1916 – In Russia, Pavel Milyukov delivers in the State Duma the famous “stupidity or treason” speech, precipitating the downfall of the government of Boris Stürmer.
  • 1918 – Malbone Street Wreck: The worst rapid transit accident in US history occurs under the intersection of Malbone Street and Flatbush Avenue, Brooklyn, New York City, with at least 102 deaths.
  • 1918 – Western Ukraine separates from Austria-Hungary.
  • 1920 – American fishing schooner Esperanto defeats the Canadian fishing schooner Delawana in the First International Fishing Schooner Championship Races in Halifax, Nova Scotia.
  • 1922 – Abolition of the Ottoman sultanate: The last sultan of the Ottoman Empire, Mehmed VI, abdicates.
  • 1928 – The Law on the Adoption and Implementation of the Turkish Alphabet, replaces the Arabic alphabet with the Latin alphabet.
  • 1937 – Stalinists execute Pastor Paul Hamberg and seven members of Azerbaijan’s Lutheran community.
  • 1938 – Seabiscuit defeats War Admiral in an upset victory during a match race deemed “the match of the century” in horse racing.
  • 1941 – American photographer Ansel Adams takes a picture of a moonrise over the town of Hernandez, New Mexico that would become one of the most famous images in the history of photography.
  • 1942 – World War II: Matanikau Offensive begins during the Guadalcanal Campaign and ends three days later with an American victory.
  • 1943 – World War II: The 3rd Marine Division, United States Marines, landing on Bougainville in the Solomon Islands, secures a beachhead, leading that night to a naval clash at the Battle of Empress Augusta Bay.
  • 1944 – World War II: Units of the British Army land at Walcheren.
  • 1945 – The official North Korean newspaper, Rodong Sinmun, is first published under the name Chongro.
  • 1948 – Six thousand people die when a Chinese merchant ship explodes and sinks off southern Manchuria.
  • 1948 – Athenagoras I, Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople, is enthroned.
  • 1950 – Puerto Rican nationalists Griselio Torresola and Oscar Collazo attempt to assassinate US President Harry S. Truman at Blair House.
  • 1950 – Pope Pius XII claims papal infallibility when he formally defines the dogma of the Assumption of Mary.
  • 1951 – Operation Buster–Jangle: Six thousand five hundred American soldiers are exposed to ‘Desert Rock’ atomic explosions for training purposes in Nevada. Participation is not voluntary.
  • 1952 – Nuclear weapons testing: The United States successfully detonates Ivy Mike, the first thermonuclear device, at the Eniwetok atoll. The explosion had a yield of ten megatons TNT equivalent.
  • 1954 – The Front de Libération Nationale fires the first shots of the Algerian War of Independence.
  • 1955 – The Vietnam War begins.
  • 1955 – The bombing of United Airlines Flight 629 occurs near Longmont, Colorado, killing all 39 passengers and five crew members aboard the Douglas DC-6B airliner.
  • 1956 – The Indian states Kerala, Andhra Pradesh, and Mysore are formally created under the States Reorganisation Act; Kanyakumari district is joined to Tamil Nadu from Kerala.
  • 1956 – Hungarian Revolution: Imre Nagy announces Hungary’s neutrality and withdrawal from the Warsaw Pact. Soviet troops begin to re-enter Hungary, contrary to assurances by the Soviet government. János Kádár and Ferenc Münnich secretly defect to the Soviets.
  • 1956 – The Springhill mining disaster in Springhill, Nova Scotia kills 39 miners; 88 are rescued.
  • 1957 – The Mackinac Bridge, the world’s longest suspension bridge between anchorages at the time, opens to traffic connecting Michigan’s upper and lower peninsulas.
  • 1960 – While campaigning for President of the United States, John F. Kennedy announces his idea of the Peace Corps.
  • 1963 – The Arecibo Observatory in Arecibo, Puerto Rico, with the largest radio telescope ever constructed, officially opens.
  • 1963 – The 1963 South Vietnamese coup begins.
  • 1968 – The Motion Picture Association of America’s film rating system is officially introduced, originating with the ratings G, M, R, and X.
  • 1970 – Club Cinq-Sept fire in Saint-Laurent-du-Pont, France kills 146 young people.
  • 1973 – Watergate scandal: Leon Jaworski is appointed as the new Watergate Special Prosecutor.
  • 1973 – The Indian state of Mysore is renamed as Karnataka to represent all the regions within Karunadu.
  • 1979 – In Bolivia, Colonel Alberto Natusch executes a bloody coup d’état against the constitutional government of Wálter Guevara.
  • 1979 – Griselda Álvarez becomes the first female governor of a state of Mexico
  • 1981 – Antigua and Barbuda gains independence from the United Kingdom.
  • 1982 – Honda becomes the first Asian automobile company to produce cars in the United States with the opening of its factory in Marysville, Ohio; a Honda Accord is the first car produced there.
  • 1984 – After the assassination of Indira Gandhi, Prime Minister of India on 31 October 1984, by two of her Sikh bodyguards, anti-Sikh riots erupt.
  • 1987 – British Rail Class 43 (HST) hits the record speed of 238 km/h for rail vehicles with on-board fuel to generate electricity for traction motors.
  • 1993 – The Maastricht Treaty takes effect, formally establishing the European Union.
  • 2000 – The Republic of Serbia and Montenegro joins the United Nations.
  • 2012 – A fuel tank truck crashes and explodes in the Saudi Arabian capital Riyadh, killing 26 people and injuring 135.

November 2

  • 619 – A qaghan of the Western Turkic Khaganate is assassinated in a Chinese palace by Eastern Turkic rivals after the approval of Tang emperor Gaozu.
  • 1410 – The Peace of Bicêtre suspends hostilities in the Armagnac–Burgundian Civil War.
  • 1675 – Plymouth Colony governor Josiah Winslow leads a colonial militia against the Narragansett during King Philip’s War.
  • 1795 – The French Directory, a five-man revolutionary government, is created.
  • 1868 – Time zone: New Zealand officially adopts a standard time to be observed nationally.
  • 1889 – North Dakota and South Dakota are admitted as the 39th and 40th U.S. states.
  • 1899 – The Boers begin their 118-day siege of British-held Ladysmith during the Second Boer War.
  • 1912 – Bulgaria defeats the Ottoman Empire in the Battle of Lule Burgas, the bloodiest battle of the First Balkan War, which opens her way to Constantinople.
  • 1914 – World War I: The Russian Empire declares war on the Ottoman Empire and the Dardanelles are subsequently closed.
  • 1917 – The Balfour Declaration proclaims British support for the “establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people” with the clear understanding “that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities”.
  • 1917 – The Military Revolutionary Committee of the Petrograd Soviet, in charge of preparation and carrying out the Russian Revolution, holds its first meeting.
  • 1920 – In the United States, KDKA of Pittsburgh starts broadcasting as the first commercial radio station. The first broadcast is the result of the 1920 United States presidential election.
  • 1936 – The British Broadcasting Corporation initiates the BBC Television Service, the world’s first regular, “high-definition” (then defined as at least 200 lines) service. Renamed BBC1 in 1964, the channel still runs to this day.
  • 1940 – World War II: First day of Battle of Elaia–Kalamas between the Greeks and the Italians.
  • 1947 – In California, designer Howard Hughes performs the maiden (and only) flight of the Hughes H-4 Hercules (also known as the “Spruce Goose”), the largest fixed-wing aircraft ever built.
  • 1949 – The Dutch–Indonesian Round Table Conference ends with the Netherlands agreeing to transfer sovereignty of the Dutch East Indies to the United States of Indonesia.
  • 1951 – Six thousand British troops arrive in Suez after the Egyptian government abrogates the Anglo-Egyptian treaty of 1936.
  • 1951 – Canada in the Korean War: A platoon of The Royal Canadian Regiment defends a vital area against a full battalion of Chinese troops in the Battle of the Song-gok Spur. The engagement lasts into the early hours the next day.
  • 1956 – Hungarian Revolution: Imre Nagy requests UN aid for Hungary. Nikita Khrushchev meets with leaders of other Communist countries to seek their advice on the situation in Hungary, selecting János Kádár as the country’s next leader on the advice of Josip Broz Tito.
  • 1956 – Suez Crisis: Israel occupies the Gaza Strip.
  • 1959 – Quiz show scandals: Twenty-One game show contestant Charles Van Doren admits to a Congressional committee that he had been given questions and answers in advance.
  • 1959 – The first section of the M1 motorway, the first inter-urban motorway in the United Kingdom, is opened between the present junctions 5 and 18, along with the M10 motorway and M45 motorway.
  • 1960 – Penguin Books is found not guilty of obscenity in the trial R v Penguin Books Ltd, the Lady Chatterley’s Lover case.
  • 1963 – South Vietnamese President Ngô Đình Diệm is assassinated following a military coup.
  • 1964 – King Saud of Saudi Arabia is deposed by a family coup, and replaced by his half-brother Faisal.
  • 1965 – Norman Morrison, a 31-year-old Quaker, sets himself on fire in front of the river entrance to the Pentagon to protest the use of napalm in the Vietnam war.
  • 1966 – The Cuban Adjustment Act comes into force, allowing 123,000 Cubans the opportunity to apply for permanent residence in the United States.
  • 1967 – Vietnam War: US President Lyndon B. Johnson and “The Wise Men” conclude that the American people should be given more optimistic reports on the progress of the war.
  • 1983 – U.S. President Ronald Reagan signs a bill creating Martin Luther King, Jr. Day.
  • 1984 – Capital punishment: Velma Barfield becomes the first woman executed in the United States since 1962.
  • 1986 – U.S. hostage David Jacobsen is released in Beirut after 17 months in captivity.
  • 1988 – The Morris worm, the first Internet-distributed computer worm to gain significant mainstream media attention, is launched from MIT.
  • 1990 – British Satellite Broadcasting and Sky Television plc merge to form BSkyB as a result of massive losses.
  • 1999 – Xerox murders: In the worst mass murder in the history of Hawaii, a gunman shoots at eight people in his workplace, killing seven.
  • 2016 – The Chicago Cubs defeat the Cleveland Indians in the World Series, ending the longest Major League Baseball championship drought at 108 years.
  • 2018 – The Milwaukee Streetcar begins service in Milwaukee.

November 3

  • 1429 – Armagnac–Burgundian Civil War: Joan of Arc liberates Saint-Pierre-le-Moûtier.
  • 1501 – Catherine of Aragon (later Henry VIII’s first wife) meets Arthur Tudor, Henry VIII’s older brother – they would later marry.
  • 1576 – Eighty Years’ War: In Flanders, Spain captures Antwerp (after three days the city is nearly destroyed).
  • 1677 – The future Mary II of England marries William, Prince of Orange; they later jointly reign as William and Mary.
  • 1737 – The Teatro di San Carlo, the oldest working opera house in Europe, is inaugurated in Naples, Italy.
  • 1780 – The Rebellion of Túpac Amaru II against Spanish rule in the Viceroyalty of Peru begins.
  • 1783 – Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s Symphony No. 36 is performed for the first time in Linz, Austria.
  • 1791 – The Western Confederacy of American Indians wins a major victory over the United States in the Battle of the Wabash.
  • 1798 – Beginning of the Russo-Ottoman siege of Corfu.
  • 1839 – Newport Rising: The last large-scale armed rebellion against authority in mainland Britain.
  • 1847 – Sir James Young Simpson, a Scottish physician, discovers the anaesthetic properties of chloroform.
  • 1852 – Camillo Benso, Count of Cavour, becomes the prime minister of Piedmont-Sardinia, which soon expands to become Italy.
  • 1864 – American Civil War: Confederate troops bombard a Union supply base and destroy millions of dollars in material at the Battle of Johnsonville.
  • 1868 – Camagüey, Cuba, revolts against Spain during the Ten Years’ War.
  • 1890 – City and South London Railway: London’s first deep-level tube railway opens between King William Street and Stockwell.
  • 1918 – World War I: The Armistice of Villa Giusti between Italy and Austria-Hungary is implemented.
  • 1921 – The Saalschutz Abteilung (hall defense detachment) of the Nazi Party is renamed the Sturmabteilung (storm detachment) after a large riot in Munich.
  • 1921 – Japanese Prime Minister Hara Takashi is assassinated in Tokyo.
  • 1922 – In Egypt, British archaeologist Howard Carter and his men find the entrance to Tutankhamun’s tomb in the Valley of the Kings.
  • 1924 – Nellie Tayloe Ross of Wyoming becomes the first female elected as governor in the United States.
  • 1939 – World War II: U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt orders the United States Customs Service to implement the Neutrality Act of 1939, allowing cash-and-carry purchases of weapons by belligerents.
  • 1942 – World War II: Disobeying a direct order by Adolf Hitler, General Field Marshal Erwin Rommel begins a retreat of his forces after a costly defeat during the Second Battle of El Alamein. The retreat would ultimately last five months.
  • 1944 – World War II: The 7th Macedonian Liberation Brigade liberates Bitola for the Allies.
  • 1952 – The United States government establishes the National Security Agency, or NSA.
  • 1956 – Soviet troops enter Hungary to end the Hungarian revolution against the Soviet Union that started on October 23. Thousands are killed, more are wounded, and nearly a quarter million leave the country.
  • 1960 – At the Kasakela Chimpanzee Community in Tanzania, Dr. Jane Goodall observes chimpanzees creating tools, the first-ever observation in non-human animals.
  • 1962 – The United States concludes Operation Fishbowl, its final above-ground nuclear weapons testing series, in anticipation of the 1963 Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty.
  • 1966 – The Arno River floods Florence, Italy, to a maximum depth of 6.7 m (22 ft), leaving thousands homeless and destroying millions of masterpieces of art and rare books. Also Venice was submerged on the same day at its record all-time acqua alta of 194 cm (76 in).
  • 1970 – Vietnam War: The United States turns over control of the air base at Bình Thủy in the Mekong Delta to South Vietnam.
  • 1970 – Salvador Allende takes office as President of Chile, the first Marxist to become president of a Latin American country through open elections.
  • 1973 – The Netherlands experiences the first Car-Free Sunday caused by the 1973 oil crisis. Highways are used only by cyclists and roller skaters.
  • 1979 – Iran hostage crisis: A group of Iranian college students overruns the U.S. embassy in Tehran and takes 90 hostages.
  • 1980 – Ronald Reagan is elected the 40th President of The United States, defeating incumbent Jimmy Carter.
  • 1993 – China Airlines Flight 605, a brand-new 747-400, overruns the runway at Kai Tak Airport.
  • 1995 – Israel-Palestinian conflict: Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin is assassinated by an extremist Israeli.
  • 2002 – Chinese authorities arrest cyber-dissident He Depu for signing a pro-democracy letter to the 16th Communist Party Congress.
  • 2008 – Barack Obama becomes the first person of biracial or African-American descent to be elected President of the United States.
  • 2010 – Aero Caribbean Flight 883 crashes into Guasimal, Sancti Spíritus. All 68 passengers and crew are killed.
  • 2010 – Qantas Flight 32, an Airbus A380, suffers an uncontained engine failure over Indonesia shortly after taking off from Singapore, crippling the jet. The crew manage to safely return to Singapore, saving all 469 passengers and crew.
  • 2015 – A cargo plane crashes shortly after takeoff from Juba International Airport in Juba, South Sudan, killing at least 37 people.
  • 2015 – A building collapses in the Pakistani city of Lahore resulting in at least 45 deaths, and at least 100 injured.

November 4

  • 1429 – Armagnac–Burgundian Civil War: Joan of Arc liberates Saint-Pierre-le-Moûtier.
  • 1501 – Catherine of Aragon (later Henry VIII’s first wife) meets Arthur Tudor, Henry VIII’s older brother – they would later marry.
  • 1576 – Eighty Years’ War: In Flanders, Spain captures Antwerp (after three days the city is nearly destroyed).
  • 1677 – The future Mary II of England marries William, Prince of Orange; they later jointly reign as William and Mary.
  • 1737 – The Teatro di San Carlo, the oldest working opera house in Europe, is inaugurated in Naples, Italy.
  • 1780 – The Rebellion of Túpac Amaru II against Spanish rule in the Viceroyalty of Peru begins.
  • 1783 – Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s Symphony No. 36 is performed for the first time in Linz, Austria.
  • 1791 – The Western Confederacy of American Indians wins a major victory over the United States in the Battle of the Wabash.
  • 1798 – Beginning of the Russo-Ottoman siege of Corfu.
  • 1839 – Newport Rising: The last large-scale armed rebellion against authority in mainland Britain.
  • 1847 – Sir James Young Simpson, a Scottish physician, discovers the anaesthetic properties of chloroform.
  • 1852 – Camillo Benso, Count of Cavour, becomes the prime minister of Piedmont-Sardinia, which soon expands to become Italy.
  • 1864 – American Civil War: Confederate troops bombard a Union supply base and destroy millions of dollars in material at the Battle of Johnsonville.
  • 1868 – Camagüey, Cuba, revolts against Spain during the Ten Years’ War.
  • 1890 – City and South London Railway: London’s first deep-level tube railway opens between King William Street and Stockwell.
  • 1918 – World War I: The Armistice of Villa Giusti between Italy and Austria-Hungary is implemented.
  • 1921 – The Saalschutz Abteilung (hall defense detachment) of the Nazi Party is renamed the Sturmabteilung (storm detachment) after a large riot in Munich.
  • 1921 – Japanese Prime Minister Hara Takashi is assassinated in Tokyo.
  • 1922 – In Egypt, British archaeologist Howard Carter and his men find the entrance to Tutankhamun’s tomb in the Valley of the Kings.
  • 1924 – Nellie Tayloe Ross of Wyoming becomes the first female elected as governor in the United States.
  • 1939 – World War II: U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt orders the United States Customs Service to implement the Neutrality Act of 1939, allowing cash-and-carry purchases of weapons by belligerents.
  • 1942 – World War II: Disobeying a direct order by Adolf Hitler, General Field Marshal Erwin Rommel begins a retreat of his forces after a costly defeat during the Second Battle of El Alamein. The retreat would ultimately last five months.
  • 1944 – World War II: The 7th Macedonian Liberation Brigade liberates Bitola for the Allies.
  • 1952 – The United States government establishes the National Security Agency, or NSA.
  • 1956 – Soviet troops enter Hungary to end the Hungarian revolution against the Soviet Union that started on October 23. Thousands are killed, more are wounded, and nearly a quarter million leave the country.
  • 1960 – At the Kasakela Chimpanzee Community in Tanzania, Dr. Jane Goodall observes chimpanzees creating tools, the first-ever observation in non-human animals.
  • 1962 – The United States concludes Operation Fishbowl, its final above-ground nuclear weapons testing series, in anticipation of the 1963 Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty.
  • 1966 – The Arno River floods Florence, Italy, to a maximum depth of 6.7 m (22 ft), leaving thousands homeless and destroying millions of masterpieces of art and rare books. Also Venice was submerged on the same day at its record all-time acqua alta of 194 cm (76 in).
  • 1970 – Vietnam War: The United States turns over control of the air base at Bình Thủy in the Mekong Delta to South Vietnam.
  • 1970 – Salvador Allende takes office as President of Chile, the first Marxist to become president of a Latin American country through open elections.
  • 1973 – The Netherlands experiences the first Car-Free Sunday caused by the 1973 oil crisis. Highways are used only by cyclists and roller skaters.
  • 1979 – Iran hostage crisis: A group of Iranian college students overruns the U.S. embassy in Tehran and takes 90 hostages.
  • 1980 – Ronald Reagan is elected the 40th President of The United States, defeating incumbent Jimmy Carter.
  • 1993 – China Airlines Flight 605, a brand-new 747-400, overruns the runway at Kai Tak Airport.
  • 1995 – Israel-Palestinian conflict: Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin is assassinated by an extremist Israeli.
  • 2002 – Chinese authorities arrest cyber-dissident He Depu for signing a pro-democracy letter to the 16th Communist Party Congress.
  • 2008 – Barack Obama becomes the first person of biracial or African-American descent to be elected President of the United States.
  • 2010 – Aero Caribbean Flight 883 crashes into Guasimal, Sancti Spíritus. All 68 passengers and crew are killed.
  • 2010 – Qantas Flight 32, an Airbus A380, suffers an uncontained engine failure over Indonesia shortly after taking off from Singapore, crippling the jet. The crew manage to safely return to Singapore, saving all 469 passengers and crew.
  • 2015 – A cargo plane crashes shortly after takeoff from Juba International Airport in Juba, South Sudan, killing at least 37 people.
  • 2015 – A building collapses in the Pakistani city of Lahore resulting in at least 45 deaths, and at least 100 injured.

November 5-9

November 5

  • 1138 – Lý Anh Tông is enthroned as emperor of Vietnam at the age of two, beginning a 37-year reign.
  • 1499 – Publication of the Catholicon, written in 1464 by Jehan Lagadeuc in Tréguier; this is the first Breton dictionary as well as the first French dictionary.
  • 1556 – Second Battle of Panipat: Fought between the forces of Hem Chandra Vikramaditya, the Hindu king at Delhi and forces of Muslim Emperor Akbar.
  • 1605 – Gunpowder Plot: Guy Fawkes is arrested.
  • 1688 – William III of England lands with a Dutch fleet at Brixham.
  • 1757 – Seven Years’ War: Frederick the Great defeats the allied armies of France and the Holy Roman Empire at the Battle of Rossbach.
  • 1768 – Treaty of Fort Stanwix, the purpose of which is to adjust the boundary line between Indian lands and white settlements set forth in the Royal Proclamation of 1763 in the Thirteen Colonies.
  • 1780 – French-American forces under Colonel LaBalme are defeated by Miami Chief Little Turtle.
  • 1811 – Salvadoran priest José Matías Delgado, rings the bells of La Merced church in San Salvador, calling for insurrection and launching the 1811 Independence Movement.
  • 1828 – Greek War of Independence: The French Morea expedition to recapture Morea (now the Peloponnese) ends when the last Ottoman forces depart the peninsula.
  • 1831 – Nat Turner, American slave leader, is tried, convicted, and sentenced to death in Virginia.
  • 1862 – American Civil War: Abraham Lincoln removes George B. McClellan as commander of the Army of the Potomac.
  • 1862 – American Indian Wars: In Minnesota, 303 Dakota warriors are found guilty of rape and murder of whites and are sentenced to hang. 38 are ultimately executed and the others reprieved.
  • 1872 – Women’s suffrage in the United States: In defiance of the law, suffragist Susan B. Anthony votes for the first time, and is later fined $100.
  • 1895 – George B. Selden is granted the first U.S. patent for an automobile.
  • 1898 – Negrese nationalists revolt against Spanish rule and establish the short-lived Republic of Negros.
  • 1911 – After declaring war on the Ottoman Empire on September 29, 1911, Italy annexes Tripoli and Cyrenaica.
  • 1912 – Woodrow Wilson is elected the 28th President of the United States, defeating incumbent William Howard Taft.
  • 1913 – King Otto of Bavaria is deposed by his cousin, Prince Regent Ludwig, who assumes the title Ludwig III.
  • 1914 – World War I: France and the British Empire declare war on the Ottoman Empire.
  • 1916 – The Kingdom of Poland is proclaimed by the Act of 5th November of the emperors of Germany and Austria-Hungary.
  • 1916 – The Everett massacre takes place in Everett, Washington as political differences lead to a shoot-out between the Industrial Workers of the World organizers and local police.
  • 1917 – October Revolution: Lenin calls for the October Revolution.
  • 1917 – Tikhon is elected the Patriarch of Moscow and of the Russian Orthodox Church.
  • 1925 – Secret agent Sidney Reilly, the first “super-spy” of the 20th century, is executed by the OGPU, the secret police of the Soviet Union.
  • 1940 – World War II: The British armed merchant cruiser, HMS Jervis Bay, is sunk by the German pocket battleship Admiral Scheer.
  • 1940 – Franklin D. Roosevelt is the first and only President of the United States to be elected to a third term.
  • 1943 – World War II: Bombing of the Vatican.
  • 1950 – Korean War: British and Australian forces from the 27th British Commonwealth Brigade successfully halted the advancing Chinese 117th Division during the Battle of Pakchon.
  • 1955 – After being destroyed in World War II, the rebuilt Vienna State Opera reopens with a performance of Beethoven’s Fidelio.
  • 1956 – Suez Crisis: British and French paratroopers land in Egypt after a week-long bombing campaign.
  • 1968 – Richard Nixon is elected as 37th President of the United States.
  • 1970 – The Military Assistance Command, Vietnam reports the lowest weekly American soldier death toll in five years (24).
  • 1983 – Byford Dolphin diving bell accident kills five and leaves one severely injured.
  • 1986 – USS Rentz, USS Reeves and USS Oldendorf visit Qingdao (Tsing Tao) China – the first US Naval visit to China since 1949.
  • 1990 – Rabbi Meir Kahane, founder of the far-right Kach movement, is shot dead after a speech at a New York City hotel.
  • 1995 – André Dallaire attempts to assassinate Prime Minister Jean Chrétien of Canada. He is thwarted when the Prime Minister’s wife locks the door.
  • 1996 – Pakistani President Farooq Leghari dismisses the government of Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto and dissolves the National Assembly of Pakistan.
  • 2006 – Saddam Hussein, former president of Iraq, and his co-defendants Barzan Ibrahim al-Tikriti and Awad Hamed al-Bandar, are sentenced to death in the al-Dujail trial for their roles in the 1982 massacre of 148 Shi’a Muslims.
  • 2007 – China’s first lunar satellite, Chang’e 1, goes into orbit around the Moon.
  • 2007 – Android mobile operating system is unveiled by Google.
  • 2009 – U.S. Army Major Nidal Malik Hasan murders 13 and wounds 32 at Fort Hood, Texas in the deadliest mass shooting at a U.S. military installation.
  • 2013 – India launches the Mars Orbiter Mission, its first interplanetary probe.
  • 2015 – An iron ore tailings dam bursts in the Brazilian state of Minas Gerais flooding a valley, causing mudslides in the nearby village of Bento Rodrigues and causing at least 17 deaths and two missing.
  • 2017 – Devin Patrick Kelley kills 26 and injured 20 in a church in Sutherland Springs, Texas.

November 6

  • 355 – Roman emperor Constantius II promotes his cousin Julian to the rank of Caesar, entrusting him with the government of the Prefecture of the Gauls.
  • 447 – A powerful earthquake destroys large portions of the Walls of Constantinople, including 57 towers.
  • 963 – Synod of Rome: Emperor Otto I calls a council at St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome. Pope John XII is deposed on charges of an armed rebellion against Otto.
  • 1217 – The Charter of the Forest is sealed at St Paul’s Cathedral, London by King Henry III, acting under the regency of William Marshall, 1st Earl of Pembroke which re-establishes for free men rights of access to the royal forest that had been eroded by William the Conqueror and his heirs.
  • 1528 – Shipwrecked Spanish conquistador Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca becomes the first known European to set foot in the area that would become Texas.
  • 1789 – Pope Pius VI appoints Father John Carroll as the first Catholic bishop in the United States.
  • 1792 – Battle of Jemappes in the French Revolutionary Wars.
  • 1844 – The first Constitution of the Dominican Republic is adopted.
  • 1856 – Scenes of Clerical Life, the first work of fiction by the author later known as George Eliot, is submitted for publication.
  • 1860 – Abraham Lincoln is elected as the 16th President of United States.
  • 1861 – American Civil War: Jefferson Davis is elected president of the Confederate States of America.
  • 1865 – American Civil War: CSS Shenandoah is the last Confederate combat unit to surrender after circumnavigating the globe on a cruise on which it sank or captured 37 unarmed merchant vessels.
  • 1869 – In New Brunswick, New Jersey, Rutgers College defeats Princeton University (then known as the College of New Jersey), 6–4, in the first official intercollegiate American football game.
  • 1913 – Mohandas Gandhi is arrested while leading a march of Indian miners in South Africa.
  • 1917 – World War I: Battle of Passchendaele ends: After three months of fierce fighting, Canadian forces take Passchendaele in Belgium.
  • 1917 – October Revolution: Troops loyal to the Russian Directorate clash with Bolshevik Red Guards over the control of several bridges in Petrograd.
  • 1918 – The Provisional People’s Government of the Republic of Poland is established.
  • 1928 – Herbert Hoover is elected the 31st President of the United States.
  • 1934 – Memphis, Tennessee becomes the first major city to join the Tennessee Valley Authority.
  • 1935 – Edwin Armstrong presents his paper “A Method of Reducing Disturbances in Radio Signaling by a System of Frequency Modulation” to the New York section of the Institute of Radio Engineers.
  • 1939 – World War II: Sonderaktion Krakau takes place.
  • 1941 – World War II: During the Battle of Moscow, Joseph Stalin addresses the Soviet people for only the second time.
  • 1942 – World War II: Carlson’s patrol during the Guadalcanal Campaign begins.
  • 1942 – World War II: First flight of the Heinkel He 219.
  • 1943 – World War II: The Soviet Red Army recaptures Kiev. Before withdrawing, the Germans destroy most of the city’s ancient buildings.
  • 1944 – Plutonium is first produced at the Hanford Atomic Facility and subsequently used in the Fat Man atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki, Japan.
  • 1945 – Concerned that her cover was about to be blown, Elizabeth Bentley turns herself in to the FBI and confesses she had been spying for the Soviet Union.
  • 1947 – Meet the Press, the longest running television program in history, makes its debut.
  • 1948 – Deputy commander-in-chief of the Eastern China Field Army General Su Yu launches a massive offensive toward Xuzhou, defended by seven different armies under the General Suppression Headquarters of Xuzhou Garrison, the Huaihai Campaign. The largest operational campaign of the Chinese Civil War begins.
  • 1956 – Dwight D. Eisenhower is reelected President of the United States.
  • 1962 – The United Nations General Assembly passes a resolution condemning South Africa’s apartheid policies and calls for all UN member states to cease military and economic relations with the nation.
  • 1963 – Following the November 1 coup and execution of President Ngo Dinh Diem, coup leader General Dương Văn Minh takes over leadership of South Vietnam.
  • 1965 – Cuba and the United States formally agree to begin an airlift for Cubans who want to go to the United States. By 1971, 250,000 Cubans had made use of this program.
  • 1971 – The United States Atomic Energy Commission tests the largest U.S. underground hydrogen bomb, code-named Cannikin, on Amchitka Island in the Aleutians.
  • 1977 – The Kelly Barnes Dam, located above Toccoa Falls Bible College near Toccoa, Georgia, fails, killing 39.
  • 1984 – Ronald Reagan is reelected President of the United States.
  • 1985 – In Colombia, leftist guerrillas of the 19th of April Movement seize control of the Palace of Justice in Bogotá, eventually killing 115 people, 11 of them Supreme Court justices.
  • 1986 – Sumburgh disaster: A British International Helicopters Boeing 234LR Chinook crashes 21⁄2 miles east of Sumburgh Airport killing 45 people. It is the deadliest civilian helicopter crash on record.
  • 1995 – Cleveland Browns relocation controversy: Art Modell announces that he signed a deal that would relocate the Cleveland Browns to Baltimore, which had been without an NFL team since 1983, when the Baltimore Colts moved to Indianapolis.
  • 1998 – The Electric Tilt Train enters service in Queensland, Australia and becomes one of the fastest trains in the country and the fastest narrow gauge train in service.
  • 1999 – Australians vote to keep the Head of the Commonwealth as their head of state in the Australian republic referendum.
  • 2002 – Jiang Lijun is detained by Chinese police for signing the Open Letter to the 16th National Congress of the Communist Party of China. He is later formally arrested and convicted for “inciting subversion of the state power”.
  • 2004 – An express train collides with a stationary car near the village of Ufton Nervet, England, killing seven and injuring 150.
  • 2012 – Barack Obama is reelected President of the United States; Tammy Baldwin becomes the first openly gay politician to be elected to the United States Senate.
  • 2013 – Several small bombs explode outside a provincial office of the Communist Party of China.

November 7

  • 335 – Athanasius is banished to Trier, on charge that he prevented a grain fleet from sailing to Constantinople.
  • 680 – The Sixth Ecumenical Council commences in Constantinople.
  • 921 – Treaty of Bonn: The Frankish kings Charles the Simple and Henry the Fowler sign a peace treaty or ‘pact of friendship’ (amicitia), to recognize their borders along the Rhine.
  • 1426 – Lam Sơn uprising: Lam Sơn rebels emerge victorious against the Ming army in the Battle of Tốt Động – Chúc Động taking place in Đông Quan, in now Hanoi.
  • 1492 – The Ensisheim meteorite, the oldest meteorite with a known date of impact, strikes the Earth around noon in a wheat field outside the village of Ensisheim, Alsace, France.
  • 1619 – Elizabeth Stuart is crowned Queen of Bohemia.
  • 1665 – The London Gazette, the oldest surviving journal, is first published.
  • 1775 – John Murray, the Royal Governor of the Colony of Virginia, starts the first mass emancipation of slaves in North America by issuing Lord Dunmore’s Offer of Emancipation, which offers freedom to slaves who abandoned their colonial masters to fight with Murray and the British.
  • 1786 – The oldest musical organization in the United States is founded as the Stoughton Musical Society.
  • 1811 – Tecumseh’s War: The Battle of Tippecanoe is fought near present-day Battle Ground, Indiana, United States.
  • 1837 – In Alton, Illinois, abolitionist printer Elijah P. Lovejoy is shot dead by a mob while attempting to protect his printing shop from being destroyed a third time.
  • 1861 – American Civil War: Battle of Belmont: In Belmont, Missouri, Union forces led by General Ulysses S. Grant overrun a Confederate camp but are forced to retreat when Confederate reinforcements arrive.
  • 1861 – The first Melbourne Cup horse race is held in Melbourne, Australia.
  • 1874 – A cartoon by Thomas Nast in Harper’s Weekly, is considered the first important use of an elephant as a symbol for the United States Republican Party.
  • 1885 – The completion of Canada’s first transcontinental railway is symbolized by the Last Spike ceremony at Craigellachie, British Columbia.
  • 1893 – Women’s suffrage: Women in the U.S. state of Colorado are granted the right to vote, the second state to do so.
  • 1900 – Second Boer War: Battle of Leliefontein, a battle during which the Royal Canadian Dragoons win three Victoria Crosses.
  • 1900 – The People’s Party is founded in Cuba.
  • 1907 – Jesús García saves the entire town of Nacozari de García by driving a burning train full of dynamite six kilometers (3.7 miles) away before it can explode.
  • 1908 – Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid are reportedly killed in San Vicente Canton, Bolivia.
  • 1910 – The first air freight shipment (from Dayton, Ohio, to Columbus, Ohio) is undertaken by the Wright brothers and department store owner Max Moorehouse.
  • 1912 – The Deutsche Opernhaus (now Deutsche Oper Berlin) opens in the Berlin neighborhood of Charlottenburg, with a production of Beethoven’s Fidelio.
  • 1913 – The first day of the Great Lakes Storm of 1913, a massive blizzard that ultimately killed 250 and caused over $5 million (about $118,098,000 in 2013 dollars) damage. Winds reach hurricane force on this date.
  • 1914 – The first issue of The New Republic is published.
  • 1914 – The German colony of Kiaochow Bay and its centre at Tsingtao are captured by Japanese forces.
  • 1916 – Jeannette Rankin is the first woman elected to the United States Congress.
  • 1916 – Boston Elevated Railway Company’s streetcar No. 393 smashes through the warning gates of the open Summer Street drawbridge in Boston, Massachusetts, plunging into the frigid waters of Fort Point Channel, killing 46 people.
  • 1917 – The Gregorian calendar date of the October Revolution, which gets its name from the Julian calendar date of 25 October. On this date in 1917, the Bolsheviks storm the Winter Palace.
  • 1917 – World War I: Third Battle of Gaza ends: British forces capture Gaza from the Ottoman Empire.
  • 1918 – The 1918 influenza epidemic spreads to Western Samoa, killing 7,542 (about 20% of the population) by the end of the year.
  • 1918 – Kurt Eisner overthrows the Wittelsbach dynasty in the Kingdom of Bavaria.
  • 1919 – The first Palmer Raid is conducted on the second anniversary of the Russian Revolution. Over 10,000 suspected communists and anarchists are arrested in 23 U.S. cities.
  • 1920 – Patriarch Tikhon of Moscow issues a decree that leads to the formation of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia.
  • 1929 – In New York City, the Museum of Modern Art opens to the public.
  • 1931 – The Chinese Soviet Republic is proclaimed on the anniversary of the October Revolution.
  • 1933 – Fiorello H. La Guardia is elected the 99th mayor of New York City.
  • 1940 – In Tacoma, Washington, the original Tacoma Narrows Bridge collapses in a windstorm, a mere four months after the bridge’s completion.
  • 1941 – World War II: Soviet hospital ship Armenia is sunk by German planes while evacuating refugees and wounded military and staff of several Crimean hospitals. It is estimated that over 5,000 people died in the sinking.
  • 1944 – Soviet spy Richard Sorge, a half-Russian, half-German World War I veteran, is hanged by his Japanese captors along with 34 of his ring.
  • 1944 – Franklin D. Roosevelt elected for a record fourth term as President of the United States of America.
  • 1949 – The first oil was taken in Oil Rocks (Neft Daşları), oldest offshore oil platform.
  • 1954 – In the US, Armistice Day becomes Veterans Day.
  • 1956 – Suez Crisis: The United Nations General Assembly adopts a resolution calling for the United Kingdom, France and Israel to immediately withdraw their troops from Egypt.
  • 1956 – Hungarian Revolution: János Kádár returns to Budapest in a Soviet armored convoy, officially taking office as the next Hungarian leader. By this point, most armed resistance has been defeated.
  • 1957 – Cold War: The Gaither Report calls for more American missiles and fallout shelters.
  • 1967 – Carl B. Stokes is elected as Mayor of Cleveland, Ohio, becoming the first African American mayor of a major American city.
  • 1967 – US President Lyndon B. Johnson signs the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967, establishing the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
  • 1972 – US President Richard Nixon is re-elected President.
  • 1973 – The United States Congress overrides President Richard M. Nixon’s veto of the War Powers Resolution, which limits presidential power to wage war without congressional approval.
  • 1975 – In Bangladesh, a joint force of people and soldiers takes part in an uprising led by Colonel Abu Taher that ousts and kills Brigadier Khaled Mosharraf, freeing the then house-arrested army chief and future president Maj-Gen. Ziaur Rahman.
  • 1983 – United States Senate bombing: A bomb explodes inside the United States Capitol. No one is injured, but an estimated $250,000 in damage is caused.
  • 1987 – In Tunisia, president Habib Bourguiba is overthrown and replaced by Prime Minister Zine El Abidine Ben Ali.
  • 1989 – Douglas Wilder wins the governor’s seat in Virginia, becoming the first elected African American governor in the United States.
  • 1989 – David Dinkins becomes the first African American to be elected Mayor of New York City.
  • 1989 – East German Prime Minister Willi Stoph, along with his entire cabinet, is forced to resign after huge anti-government protests.
  • 1990 – Mary Robinson becomes the first woman to be elected President of the Republic of Ireland.
  • 1991 – Magic Johnson announces that he is HIV-positive and retires from the NBA.
  • 1994 – WXYC, the student radio station of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, provides the world’s first internet radio broadcast.
  • 1996 – NASA launches the Mars Global Surveyor.
  • 2000 – Controversial US presidential election that is later resolved in the Bush v. Gore Supreme Court Case, electing George W. Bush the 43rd President of the United States.
  • 2000 – The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration discovers one of the country’s largest LSD labs inside a converted military missile silo in Wamego, Kansas.
  • 2004 – Iraq War: The interim government of Iraq calls for a 60-day “state of emergency” as U.S. forces storm the insurgent stronghold of Fallujah.
  • 2007 – Jokela school shooting in Tuusula, Finland, resulting in the death of nine people.
  • 2012 – An earthquake off the Pacific coast of Guatemala kills at least 52 people.
  • 2017 – Shamshad TV is attacked by armed gunmen and suicide bombers. A security guard was killed and 20 people were wounded. ISIS claims responsibility for the attack.

November 8

  • 960 – Battle of Andrassos: Byzantines under Leo Phokas the Younger score a crushing victory over the Hamdanid Emir of Aleppo, Sayf al-Dawla.
  • 1278 – Trần Thánh Tông, the second emperor of the Trần dynasty, decides to pass the throne to his crown prince Trần Khâm and take up the post of Retired Emperor.
  • 1291 – The Republic of Venice enacts a law confining most of Venice’s glassmaking industry to the “island of Murano”.
  • 1519 – Hernán Cortés enters Tenochtitlán and Aztec ruler Moctezuma welcomes him with a great celebration.
  • 1520 – Stockholm Bloodbath begins: A successful invasion of Sweden by Danish forces results in the execution of around 100 people mostly noblemen.
  • 1576 – Eighty Years’ War: Pacification of Ghent: The States General of the Netherlands meet and unite to oppose Spanish occupation.
  • 1602 – The Bodleian Library at the University of Oxford is opened to the public.
  • 1605 – Robert Catesby, ringleader of the Gunpowder Plotters, is killed.
  • 1614 – Japanese daimyō Dom Justo Takayama is exiled to the Philippines by shōgun Tokugawa Ieyasu for being Christian.
  • 1620 – The Battle of White Mountain takes place near Prague, ending in a decisive Catholic victory in only two hours.
  • 1644 – The Shunzhi Emperor, the third emperor of the Qing dynasty, is enthroned in Beijing after the collapse of the Ming dynasty as the first Qing emperor to rule over China.
  • 1745 – Charles Edward Stuart invades England with an army of ~5000 that would later participate in the Battle of Culloden.
  • 1837 – Mary Lyon founds Mount Holyoke Female Seminary, which later becomes Mount Holyoke College.
  • 1861 – American Civil War: The “Trent Affair”: The USS San Jacinto stops the British mail ship Trent and arrests two Confederate envoys, sparking a diplomatic crisis between the UK and US.
  • 1889 – Montana is admitted as the 41st U.S. state.
  • 1892 – The New Orleans general strike begins, uniting black and white American trade unionists in a successful four-day general strike action for the first time.
  • 1895 – While experimenting with electricity, Wilhelm Röntgen discovers the X-ray.
  • 1901 – Gospel riots: Bloody clashes take place in Athens following the translation of the Gospels into demotic Greek.
  • 1917 – The first Council of People’s Commissars is formed, including Vladimir Lenin, Leon Trotsky and Joseph Stalin.
  • 1923 – Beer Hall Putsch: In Munich, Adolf Hitler leads the Nazis in an unsuccessful attempt to overthrow the German government.
  • 1933 – Great Depression: New Deal: US President Franklin D. Roosevelt unveils the Civil Works Administration, an organization designed to create jobs for more than 4 million unemployed.
  • 1936 – Spanish Civil War: Francoist troops fail in their effort to capture Madrid, but begin the 3-year Siege of Madrid afterwards.
  • 1937 – The Nazi exhibition Der ewige Jude (“The Eternal Jew”) opens in Munich.
  • 1939 – Venlo Incident: Two British agents of SIS are captured by the Germans.
  • 1939 – In Munich, Adolf Hitler narrowly escapes the assassination attempt of Georg Elser while celebrating the 16th anniversary of the Beer Hall Putsch.
  • 1940 – Greco-Italian War: The Italian invasion of Greece fails as outnumbered Greek units repulse the Italians in the Battle of Elaia–Kalamas.
  • 1942 – World War II: French Resistance coup in Algiers, in which 400 civilian French patriots neutralize Vichyist XIXth Army Corps after 15 hours of fighting, and arrest several Vichyist generals, allowing the immediate success of Operation Torch in Algiers.
  • 1950 – Korean War: United States Air Force Lt. Russell J. Brown, while piloting an F-80 Shooting Star, shoots down two North Korean MiG-15s in the first jet aircraft-to-jet aircraft dogfight in history.
  • 1957 – Pan Am Flight 7 disappears between San Francisco and Honolulu. Wreckage and bodies are discovered a week later.
  • 1957 – Operation Grapple X, Round C1: The United Kingdom conducts its first successful hydrogen bomb test over Kiritimati in the Pacific.
  • 1965 – The British Indian Ocean Territory is created, consisting of Chagos Archipelago, Aldabra, Farquhar and Des Roches islands.
  • 1965 – The Murder (Abolition of Death Penalty) Act 1965 is given Royal Assent, formally abolishing the death penalty in the United Kingdom, except in cases of high treason, “piracy with violence” (piracy with intent to kill or cause grievous bodily harm), arson in royal dockyards and espionage, as well as other capital offences under military law. The death penalty would be abolished in all cases in 1998.
  • 1965 – The 173rd Airborne is ambushed by over 1,200 Viet Cong in Operation Hump during the Vietnam War, while the 1st Battalion, Royal Australian Regiment fight one of the first set-piece engagements of the war between Australian forces and the Viet Cong at the Battle of Gang Toi.
  • 1966 – Former Massachusetts Attorney General Edward Brooke becomes the first African American elected to the United States Senate since Reconstruction.
  • 1966 – U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson signs into law an antitrust exemption allowing the National Football League to merge with the upstart American Football League.
  • 1968 – The Vienna Convention on Road Traffic is signed to facilitate international road traffic and to increase road safety by standardising the uniform traffic rules among the signatories.
  • 1972 – HBO launches its programming, with the broadcast of the 1971 movie Sometimes a Great Notion, starring Paul Newman and Henry Fonda.
  • 1973 – The right ear of John Paul Getty III is delivered to a newspaper outlet along with a ransom note, convincing his father to pay US$2.9 million.
  • 1977 – Manolis Andronikos, a Greek archaeologist and professor at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, discovers the tomb of Philip II of Macedon at Vergina.
  • 1983 – TAAG Angola Airlines Flight 462 crashes after takeoff from Lubango Airport killing all 130 people on board. UNITA claims to have shot down the aircraft, though this is disputed.
  • 1987 – Remembrance Day bombing: A Provisional IRA bomb explodes in Enniskillen, Northern Ireland during a ceremony honouring those who had died in wars involving British forces. Twelve people are killed and sixty-three wounded.
  • 1994 – Republican Revolution: On the night of the 1994 United States midterm elections, Republicans make historic electoral gains by securing massive majorities in both houses of congress (54 seats in the House and eight seats in the Senate, additionally). Thus bringing a close to four decades of Democratic domination.
  • 1999 – Bruce Miller is killed at his junkyard near Flint, Michigan. His wife Sharee Miller, who convinced her online lover Jerry Cassaday to kill him (before later killing himself) was convicted of the crime, in what became the world’s first Internet murder.
  • 2002 – Iraq disarmament crisis: UN Security Council Resolution 1441: The United Nations Security Council unanimously approves a resolution on Iraq, forcing Saddam Hussein to disarm or face “serious consequences”.
  • 2004 – Iraq War: More than 10,000 U.S. troops and a small number of Iraqi army units participate in a siege on the insurgent stronghold of Fallujah.
  • 2006 – Israeli-Palestinian conflict: the Israeli Defense Force kill 19 Palestinian civilians in their homes during the shelling of Beit Hanoun.
  • 2011 – The potentially hazardous asteroid 2005 YU55 passes 0.85 lunar distances from Earth (about 324,600 kilometres or 201,700 miles), the closest known approach by an asteroid of its brightness since 2010 XC15 in 1976.
  • 2013 – Typhoon Haiyan, one of the strongest tropical cyclones ever recorded, strikes the Visayas region of the Philippines; the storm left at least 6,340 people dead with over 1,000 still missing, and caused $2.86 billion (2013 USD) in damage.
  • 2016 – Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi of the BJP party led NDA government, publicly announced the withdrawal of ₹500 and ₹1000 denomination banknotes only a few hours before the implementation/imposition of diktat, i.e. from midnight, starting of November 9 (9-11 as per Indian date recordings), from the Indian economy, without popular consent, rendering 86% of Indian currency in circulation invalid.

November 9

  • 694 – At the Seventeenth Council of Toledo, Egica, a king of the Visigoths of Hispania, accuses Jews of aiding Muslims, sentencing all Jews to slavery.
  • 1277 – The Treaty of Aberconwy, a humiliating settlement forced on Llywelyn ap Gruffudd by King Edward I of England, brings a temporary end to the Welsh Wars.
  • 1313 – Louis the Bavarian defeats his cousin Frederick I of Austria at the Battle of Gammelsdorf.
  • 1330 – At the Battle of Posada, Basarab I of Wallachia defeats the Hungarian army of Charles I Robert.
  • 1456 – Ulrich II, Count of Celje, last ruler of the County of Cilli, is assassinated in Belgrade.
  • 1520 – More than 50 people are sentenced and executed in the Stockholm Bloodbath
  • 1620 – Pilgrims aboard the Mayflower sight land at Cape Cod, Massachusetts.
  • 1688 – Glorious Revolution: William of Orange captures Exeter.
  • 1697 – Pope Innocent XII founds the city of Cervia.
  • 1720 – The synagogue of Judah HeHasid is burned down by Arab creditors, leading to the expulsion of the Ashkenazim from Jerusalem.
  • 1729 – Spain, France and Great Britain sign the Treaty of Seville.
  • 1780 – American Revolutionary War: In the Battle of Fishdam Ford a force of British and Loyalist troops fail in a surprise attack against the South Carolina Patriot militia under Brigadier General Thomas Sumter.
  • 1791 – Foundation of the Dublin Society of United Irishmen.
  • 1799 – Napoleon Bonaparte leads the Coup of 18 Brumaire ending the Directory government, and becoming First Consul of the successor (Consulate Government).
  • 1851 – Kentucky marshals abduct abolitionist minister Calvin Fairbank from Jeffersonville, Indiana, and take him to Kentucky to stand trial for helping a slave escape.
  • 1861 – The first documented football match in Canada is played at University College, Toronto.
  • 1862 – American Civil War: Union General Ambrose Burnside assumes command of the Army of the Potomac, after George B. McClellan is removed.
  • 1867 – Tokugawa shogunate hands power back to the Emperor of Japan, starting the Meiji Restoration.
  • 1872 – The Great Boston Fire of 1872.
  • 1883 – The 90th Winnipeg Battalion of Rifles, (later the Royal Winnipeg Rifles) of the Canadian Armed Forces is founded.
  • 1887 – The United States receives rights to Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.
  • 1906 – Theodore Roosevelt is the first sitting President of the United States to make an official trip outside the country. He did so to inspect progress on the Panama Canal.
  • 1907 – The Cullinan Diamond is presented to King Edward VII on his birthday.
  • 1913 – The Great Lakes Storm of 1913, the most destructive natural disaster ever to hit the lakes, reaches its greatest intensity after beginning two days earlier. The storm destroys 19 ships and kills more than 250 people.
  • 1914 – SMS Emden is sunk by HMAS Sydney in the Battle of Cocos.
  • 1918 – Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany abdicates after the German Revolution, and Germany is proclaimed a Republic.
  • 1923 – In Munich, Germany, police and government troops crush the Beer Hall Putsch in Bavaria. The failed coup is the work of the Nazis.
  • 1935 – The Congress of Industrial Organizations is founded in Atlantic City, New Jersey, by eight trade unions belonging to the American Federation of Labor.
  • 1937 – Second Sino-Japanese War: The Chinese Army withdraws from the Battle of Shanghai.
  • 1938 – The Nazi German diplomat Ernst vom Rath dies from gunshot wounds by Herschel Grynszpan, an act which the Nazis used as an excuse to instigate the 1938 national pogrom, also known as Kristallnacht.
  • 1940 – Warsaw is awarded the Virtuti Militari.
  • 1953 – Cambodia gains independence from France.
  • 1960 – Robert McNamara is named president of Ford Motor Company, the first non-Ford to serve in that post. A month later, he resigned to join the administration of newly elected John F. Kennedy.
  • 1963 – At Miike coal mine, Miike, Japan, an explosion kills 458, and hospitalises 839 with carbon monoxide poisoning.
  • 1965 – Several U.S. states and parts of Canada are hit by a series of blackouts lasting up to 13 hours in the Northeast blackout of 1965.
  • 1965 – A Catholic Worker Movement member, Roger Allen LaPorte, protesting against the Vietnam War, sets himself on fire in front of the United Nations building.
  • 1967 – Apollo program: NASA launches the unmanned Apollo 4 test spacecraft atop the first Saturn V rocket from Cape Kennedy, Florida.
  • 1967 – The first issue of Rolling Stone magazine is published.
  • 1970 – Vietnam War: The Supreme Court of the United States votes 6–3 against hearing a case to allow Massachusetts to enforce its law granting residents the right to refuse military service in an undeclared war.
  • 1979 – Cold War: Nuclear false alarm: The NORAD computers and the Alternate National Military Command Center in Fort Ritchie, Maryland detected purported massive Soviet nuclear strike. After reviewing the raw data from satellites and checking the early-warning radars, the alert is cancelled.
  • 1985 – Garry Kasparov, 22, of the Soviet Union becomes the youngest World Chess Champion by beating fellow Soviet Anatoly Karpov.
  • 1989 – Cold War: Fall of the Berlin Wall: East Germany opens checkpoints in the Berlin Wall, allowing its citizens to travel to West Berlin.
  • 1993 – Stari Most, the “old bridge” in the Bosnian city of Mostar, built in 1566, collapses after several days of bombing by Croat forces during the Croat–Bosniak War.
  • 1994 – The chemical element darmstadtium is discovered.
  • 1998 – A U.S. federal judge, in the largest civil settlement in American history, orders 37 U.S. brokerage houses to pay US$1.03 billion to cheated NASDAQ investors to compensate for price fixing.
  • 1998 – Capital punishment in the United Kingdom, already abolished for murder, is completely abolished for all remaining capital offences.
  • 1999 – TAESA Flight 725 crashes after takeoff from Uruapan International Airport in Uruapan, Michoacán, Mexico, killing all 18 people on board.
  • 2004 – Firefox 1.0 is released.
  • 2005 – The Venus Express mission of the European Space Agency is launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.
  • 2005 – Suicide bombers attack three hotels in Amman, Jordan, killing at least 60 people.
  • 2007 – The German Bundestag passes the controversial data retention bill mandating storage of citizens’ telecommunications traffic data for six months without probable cause.
  • 2012 – A train carrying liquid fuel crashes and bursts into flames in northern Myanmar, killing 27 people and injuring 80 others.
  • 2012 – At least 27 people are killed and dozens are wounded in conflicts between inmates and guards at Welikada prison in Colombo.
  • 2019 – Kartarpur Corridor was started by India Pakistan on 9 November 2019.

November 10-14

November 10

474 – Emperor Leo II dies after a reign of ten months. He is succeeded by his father Zeno, who becomes sole ruler of the Byzantine Empire.
937 – Ten Kingdoms: Li Bian usurps the throne and deposes Emperor Yang Pu. The Wu State is replaced by Li (now called “Xu Zhigao”), who becomes the first ruler of Southern Tang.
1202 – Fourth Crusade: Despite letters from Pope Innocent III forbidding it and threatening excommunication, Catholic crusaders begin a siege of Zara (now Zadar, Croatia).
1293 – Raden Wijaya is crowned as the first monarch of Majapahit kingdom of Java, taking the throne name Kertarajasa Jayawardhana.
1444 – Battle of Varna: The crusading forces of King Władysław III of Poland (aka Ulaszlo I of Hungary and Władysław III of Varna) are defeated by the Turks under Sultan Murad II and Władysław is killed.
1580 – After a three-day siege, the English Army beheads over 600 people, including papal soldiers and civilians, at Dún an Óir, Ireland.
1659 – Chattrapati Shivaji Maharaj, Maratha King kills Afzal Khan, Adilshahi in the battle popularly known as Battle of Pratapgarh.
1674 – Third Anglo-Dutch War: As provided in the Treaty of Westminster, Netherlands cedes New Netherland to England.
1702 – English colonists under the command of James Moore besiege Spanish St. Augustine during Queen Anne’s War.
1766 – The last colonial governor of New Jersey, William Franklin, signs the charter of Queen’s College (later renamed Rutgers University).
1775 – The United States Marine Corps is founded at Tun Tavern in Philadelphia by Samuel Nicholas.
1793 – A Goddess of Reason is proclaimed by the French Convention at the suggestion of Pierre Gaspard Chaumette.
1821 – Cry of Independence by Rufina Alfaro at La Villa de Los Santos, Panama setting into motion a revolt which led to Panama’s independence from Spain and to it immediately becoming part of Colombia.
1847 – The passenger ship Stephen Whitney is wrecked in thick fog off the southern coast of Ireland, killing 92 of the 110 on board. The disaster results in the construction of the Fastnet Rock lighthouse.
1865 – Major Henry Wirz, the superintendent of a prison camp in Andersonville, Georgia, is hanged, becoming one of only three American Civil War soldiers executed for war crimes.
1871 – Henry Morton Stanley locates missing explorer and missionary, Dr David Livingstone in Ujiji, near Lake Tanganyika, famously greeting him with the words, “Dr. Livingstone, I presume?”.
1898 – Beginning of the Wilmington insurrection of 1898, the only instance of a municipal government being overthrown in United States history.
1910 – The date of Thomas A. Davis’ opening of the San Diego Army and Navy Academy, although the official founding date is November 23, 1910.
1918 – The Western Union Cable Office in North Sydney, Nova Scotia, receives a top-secret coded message from Europe (that would be sent to Ottawa and Washington, D.C.) that said on November 11, 1918, all fighting would cease on land, sea and in the air.
1940 – The 1940 Vrancea earthquake strikes Romania killing an estimated 1,000 and injuring approximately 4,000 more.
1942 – World War II: Germany invades Vichy France following French Admiral François Darlan’s agreement to an armistice with the Allies in North Africa.
1944 – The ammunition ship USS Mount Hood explodes at Seeadler Harbour, Manus, Admiralty Islands, killing at least 432 and wounding 371.
1945 – Heavy fighting in Surabaya between Indonesian nationalists and returning colonialists after World War II, today celebrated as Heroes’ Day (Hari Pahlawan).
1951 – With the rollout of the North American Numbering Plan, direct-dial coast-to-coast telephone service begins in the United States.
1954 – U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower dedicates the USMC War Memorial (Iwo Jima memorial) in Arlington Ridge Park in Arlington County, Virginia.
1958 – The Hope Diamond is donated to the Smithsonian Institution by New York diamond merchant Harry Winston.
1969 – National Educational Television (the predecessor to the Public Broadcasting Service) in the United States debuts Sesame Street.
1970 – Vietnam War: Vietnamization: For the first time in five years, an entire week ends with no reports of American combat fatalities in Southeast Asia.
1971 – In Cambodia, Khmer Rouge forces attack the city of Phnom Penh and its airport, killing 44, wounding at least 30 and damaging nine aircraft.
1972 – Southern Airways Flight 49 from Birmingham, Alabama is hijacked and, at one point, is threatened with crashing into the nuclear installation at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory. After two days, the plane lands in Havana, Cuba, where the hijackers are jailed by Fidel Castro.
1975 – The 729-foot-long freighter SS Edmund Fitzgerald sinks during a storm on Lake Superior, killing all 29 crew on board.
1975 – Israeli-Palestinian conflict: the United Nations General Assembly passes Resolution 3379, determining that Zionism is a form of racism.
1979 – A 106-car Canadian Pacific freight train carrying explosive and poisonous chemicals from Windsor, Ontario, Canada derails in Mississauga, Ontario, just west of Toronto, causing a massive explosion and the largest peacetime evacuation in Canadian history and one of the largest in North American history.
1983 – Bill Gates introduces Windows 1.0.
1989 – Longtime Bulgarian leader Todor Zhivkov is removed from office and replaced by Petar Mladenov.
1989 – Germans begin to tear down the Berlin Wall.
1995 – In Nigeria, playwright and environmental activist Ken Saro-Wiwa, along with eight others from the Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People (Mosop), are hanged by government forces.
1997 – WorldCom and MCI Communications announce a $37 billion merger (the largest merger in US history at the time).
2002 – Veteran’s Day Weekend Tornado Outbreak: A tornado outbreak stretching from Northern Ohio to the Gulf Coast, one of the largest outbreaks recorded in November. The strongest tornado, an F4, hits Van Wert, Ohio, during the early to mid afternoon and destroys a movie theater, which had been evacuated.
2006 – Sri Lankan Tamil politician Nadarajah Raviraj is assassinated in Colombo.
2006 – The National Museum of the Marine Corps in Quantico, Virginia is opened and dedicated by U.S. President George W. Bush, who announces that Marine Corporal Jason Dunham will posthumously receive the Medal of Honor.
2008 – Over five months after landing on Mars, NASA declares the Phoenix mission concluded after communications with the lander were lost.
2009 – Ships of the South and North Korean navies skirmish off Daecheong Island in the Yellow Sea.

November 11

308 – At Carnuntum, Emperor emeritus Diocletian confers with Galerius, Augustus of the East, and Maximianus, the recently returned former Augustus of the West, in an attempt to end the civil wars of the Tetrarchy.
1028 – Constantine VIII died, ending his uninterrupted reign as emperor or co-emperor of the Byzantine Empire of 66 years.
1100 – Henry I of England marries Matilda of Scotland, the daughter of Malcolm III of Scotland and a direct descendant of the Saxon king Edmund Ironside; Matilda is crowned in the same day.
1215 – The Fourth Council of the Lateran meets, defining the doctrine of transubstantiation, the process by which bread and wine are, by that doctrine, said to transform into the body and blood of Christ.
1500 – Treaty of Granada: Louis XII of France and Ferdinand II of Aragon agree to divide the Kingdom of Naples between them.
1572 – Tycho Brahe observes the supernova SN 1572.
1620 – The Mayflower Compact is signed in what is now Provincetown Harbor near Cape Cod.
1634 – Following pressure from Anglican bishop John Atherton, the Irish House of Commons passes An Act for the Punishment for the Vice of Buggery.
1673 – Second Battle of Khotyn in Ukraine: Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth forces under the command of Jan Sobieski defeat the Ottoman army. In this battle, rockets made by Kazimierz Siemienowicz are successfully used.
1675 – Gottfried Leibniz demonstrates integral calculus for the first time to find the area under the graph of y = ƒ(x).
1724 – Joseph Blake, alias Blueskin, a highwayman known for attacking “Thief-Taker General” (and thief) Jonathan Wild at the Old Bailey, is hanged in London.
1750 – Riots break out in Lhasa after the murder of the Tibetan regent.
1750 – The F.H.C. Society, also known as the Flat Hat Club, is formed at Raleigh Tavern, Williamsburg, Virginia. It is the first college fraternity.
1778 – Cherry Valley massacre: Loyalists and Seneca Indian forces attack a fort and village in eastern New York during the American Revolutionary War, killing more than forty civilians and soldiers.
1805 – Napoleonic Wars: Battle of Dürenstein: Eight thousand French troops attempt to slow the retreat of a vastly superior Russian and Austrian force.
1813 – War of 1812: Battle of Crysler’s Farm: British and Canadian forces defeat a larger American force, causing the Americans to abandon their Saint Lawrence campaign.
1831 – In Jerusalem, Virginia, Nat Turner is hanged after inciting a violent slave uprising.
1839 – The Virginia Military Institute is founded in Lexington, Virginia.
1864 – American Civil War: General William Tecumseh Sherman begins burning Atlanta to the ground in preparation for his march to the sea.
1865 – Treaty of Sinchula is signed whereby Bhutan cedes the areas east of the Teesta River to the British East India Company.
1869 – The Victorian Aboriginal Protection Act is enacted in Australia, giving the government control of indigenous people’s wages, their terms of employment, where they could live, and of their children, effectively leading to the Stolen Generations.
1880 – Australian bushranger Ned Kelly is hanged at Melbourne Gaol.
1887 – August Spies, Albert Parsons, Adolph Fischer and George Engel are executed as a result of the Haymarket affair.
1889 – The State of Washington is admitted as the 42nd state of the United States.
1911 – Many cities in the Midwestern United States break their record highs and lows on the same day as a strong cold front rolls through.
1918 – World War I: Germany signs an armistice agreement with the Allies in a railroad car in the forest of Compiègne.
1918 – Józef Piłsudski assumes supreme military power in Poland – symbolic first day of Polish independence.
1918 – Emperor Charles I of Austria relinquishes power.
1919 – The Industrial Workers of the World attack an Armistice Day parade in Centralia, Washington, ultimately resulting in the deaths of five people.
1919 – Latvian forces defeat the West Russian Volunteer Army at Riga in the Latvian War of Independence.
1921 – The Tomb of the Unknowns is dedicated by US President Warren G. Harding at Arlington National Cemetery.
1923 – Adolf Hitler was arrested in Munich for high treason for his role in the Beer Hall Putsch.
1926 – The United States Numbered Highway System is established.
1930 – Patent number US1781541 is awarded to Albert Einstein and Leó Szilárd for their invention, the Einstein refrigerator.
1934 – The Shrine of Remembrance in Melbourne, Australia is opened.
1940 – World War II: In the Battle of Taranto, the Royal Navy launches the first all-aircraft ship-to-ship naval attack in history.
1940 – World War II: The German auxiliary cruiser Atlantis captures top secret British mail from the Automedon, and sends it to Japan.
1942 – World War II: France’s zone libre is occupied by German forces in Case Anton.
1960 – A military coup against President Ngô Đình Diệm of South Vietnam is crushed.
1961 – Thirteen Italian Air Force servicemen, deployed to the Congo as a part of the UN peacekeeping force, are massacred by a mob in Kindu.
1962 – Kuwait’s National Assembly ratifies the Constitution of Kuwait.
1965 – Southern Rhodesia’s Prime Minister Ian Smith unilaterally declares the colony independent as the unrecognised state of Rhodesia
1966 – NASA launches Gemini 12.
1967 – Vietnam War: In a propaganda ceremony in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, three American prisoners of war are released by the Viet Cong and turned over to “new left” antiwar activist Tom Hayden.
1968 – Vietnam War: Operation Commando Hunt initiated. The goal is to interdict men and supplies on the Ho Chi Minh trail, through Laos into South Vietnam.
1972 – Vietnam War: Vietnamization: The United States Army turns over the massive Long Binh military base to South Vietnam.
1975 – Australian constitutional crisis of 1975: Australian Governor-General Sir John Kerr dismisses the government of Gough Whitlam, appoints Malcolm Fraser as caretaker Prime Minister and announces a general election to be held in early December.
1975 – Independence of Angola.
1977 – A munitions explosion at a train station in Iri, South Korea kills at least 56 people.
1981 – Antigua and Barbuda joins the United Nations.
1992 – The General Synod of the Church of England votes to allow women to become priests.
1993 – A sculpture honoring women who served in the Vietnam War is dedicated at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C.
1999 – The House of Lords Act is given Royal Assent, restricting membership of the British House of Lords by virtue of a hereditary peerage.
2000 – Kaprun disaster: One hundred fifty-five skiers and snowboarders die when a cable car catches fire in an alpine tunnel in Kaprun, Austria.
2001 – Journalists Pierre Billaud, Johanne Sutton and Volker Handloik are killed in Afghanistan during an attack on the convoy they are traveling in.
2004 – New Zealand Tomb of the Unknown Warrior is dedicated at the National War Memorial, Wellington.
2004 – The Palestine Liberation Organization confirms the death of Yasser Arafat from unidentified causes. Mahmoud Abbas is elected chairman of the PLO minutes later.
2006 – Queen Elizabeth II unveils the New Zealand War Memorial in London, United Kingdom, commemorating the loss of soldiers from the New Zealand Army and the British Army.
2012 – A strong earthquake with the magnitude 6.8 hits northern Burma, killing at least 26 people.
2014 – Fifty-eight people are killed in a bus crash in the Sukkur District in southern Pakistan’s Sindh province.

November 12

954 – The 13-year-old Lothair III is crowned at the Abbey of Saint-Remi as king of the West Frankish Kingdom.
1028 – Future Byzantine empress Zoe takes the throne as empress consort to Romanos III Argyros.
1330 – Battle of Posada ends: Wallachian Voievode Basarab I defeats the Hungarian army by ambush.
1439 – Plymouth becomes the first town incorporated by the English Parliament.
1793 – Jean Sylvain Bailly, the first Mayor of Paris, is guillotined.
1892 – William Heffelfinger becomes the first professional American football player on record, participating in his first paid game for the Allegheny Athletic Association.
1893 – Abdur Rahman Khan accepts the Durand Line as the border between Afghanistan and the British Raj.
1905 – Norway holds a referendum resulting in popular approval of the Storting’s decision to authorise the government to make the offer of the throne of the newly-independent country.
1912 – King George I of Greece makes a triumphal entry into Thessaloniki after its liberation from 482 years of Ottoman rule.
1912 – The frozen bodies of Robert Scott and his men are found on the Ross Ice Shelf in Antarctica.
1918 – Austria becomes a republic. After the proclamation, a coup attempt by the communist Red Guard was defeated by the social-democratic Volkswehr.
1920 – Italy and the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes sign the Treaty of Rapallo.
1927 – Leon Trotsky is expelled from the Soviet Communist Party, leaving Joseph Stalin in undisputed control of the Soviet Union.
1928 – SS Vestris sinks approximately 200 miles (320 km) off Hampton Roads, Virginia, killing at least 110 passengers, mostly women and children who die after the vessel is abandoned.
1936 – In California, the San Francisco–Oakland Bay Bridge opens to traffic.
1940 – World War II: The Battle of Gabon ends as Free French Forces take Libreville, Gabon, and all of French Equatorial Africa from Vichy French forces.
1940 – World War II: Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov arrives in Berlin to discuss the possibility of the Soviet Union joining the Axis Powers.
1941 – World War II: Temperatures around Moscow drop to -12 °C as the Soviet Union launches ski troops for the first time against the freezing German forces near the city.
1941 – World War II: The Soviet cruiser Chervona Ukraina is destroyed during the Battle of Sevastopol.
1942 – World War II: Naval Battle of Guadalcanal between Japanese and American forces begins near Guadalcanal. The battle lasts for three days and ends with an American victory.
1944 – World War II: The Royal Air Force launches 29 Avro Lancaster bombers, which sink the German battleship Tirpitz, with 12,000 lb Tallboy bombs off Tromsø, Norway.
1948 – In Tokyo, the International Military Tribunal for the Far East sentences seven Japanese military and government officials, including General Hideki Tojo, to death for their roles in World War II.
1954 – Ellis Island ceased operations.
1956 – Morocco, Sudan and Tunisia join the United Nations.
1956 – In the midst of the Suez Crisis, Palestinian refugees are shot dead in Rafah by Israeli soldiers following the invasion of the Gaza Strip.
1958 – A team of rock climbers led by Warren Harding completes the first ascent of The Nose on El Capitan in Yosemite Valley.
1969 – Vietnam War: Independent investigative journalist Seymour Hersh breaks the story of the My Lai Massacre.
1970 – The Oregon Highway Division attempts to destroy a rotting beached Sperm whale with explosives, leading to the now infamous “exploding whale” incident.
1970 – The 1970 Bhola cyclone makes landfall on the coast of East Pakistan becoming the deadliest tropical cyclone in history.
1971 – Vietnam War: As part of Vietnamization, US President Richard Nixon sets February 1, 1972 as the deadline for the removal of another 45,000 American troops from Vietnam.
1975 – The Comoros joins the United Nations.
1977 – France conducts the Oreste nuclear test as 14th in the group of 29, 1975–78 French nuclear tests series.
1979 – Iran hostage crisis: In response to the hostage situation in Tehran, US President Jimmy Carter orders a halt to all petroleum imports into the United States from Iran.
1980 – The NASA space probe Voyager I makes its closest approach to Saturn and takes the first images of its rings.
1981 – Space Shuttle program: Mission STS-2, utilizing the Space Shuttle Columbia, marks the first time a manned spacecraft is launched into space twice.
1982 – USSR: Yuri Andropov becomes the General Secretary of the Communist Party’s Central Committee, succeeding Leonid I. Brezhnev.
1990 – Crown Prince Akihito is formally installed as Emperor Akihito of Japan, becoming the 125th Japanese monarch.
1990 – Tim Berners-Lee publishes a formal proposal for the World Wide Web.
1991 – Santa Cruz massacre: Indonesian forces open fire on a crowd of student protesters in Dili, East Timor.
1995 – Erdut Agreement regarding the peaceful resolution to the Croatian War of Independence was reached.
1996 – A Saudi Arabian Airlines Boeing 747 and a Kazakh Ilyushin Il-76 cargo plane collide in mid-air near New Delhi, killing 349. The deadliest mid-air collision to date.
1997 – Ramzi Yousef is found guilty of masterminding the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.
1999 – The 7.2 Mw  Düzce earthquake shakes northwestern Turkey with a maximum Mercalli intensity of IX (Violent). At least 845 people were killed and almost 5,000 were injured.
2001 – In New York City, American Airlines Flight 587, an Airbus A300 en route to the Dominican Republic, crashes minutes after takeoff from John F. Kennedy International Airport, killing all 260 on board and five on the ground.
2001 – War in Afghanistan: Taliban forces abandon Kabul, ahead of advancing Afghan Northern Alliance troops.
2003 – Iraq War: In Nasiriyah, Iraq, at least 23 people, among them the first Italian casualties of the 2003 invasion of Iraq, are killed in a suicide bomb attack on an Italian police base.
2003 – Shanghai Transrapid sets a new world speed record (501 kilometres per hour (311 mph)) for commercial railway systems, which remains the fastest for unmodified commercial rail vehicles.
2011 – Silvio Berlusconi tenders his resignation as Prime Minister of Italy, effective November 16, due in large part to the European sovereign debt crisis.
2011 – A blast in Iran’s Shahid Modarres missile base leads to the death of 17 of the Revolutionary Guards members, including Hassan Tehrani Moghaddam, a key figure in Iran’s missile program.
2014 – The Philae lander, deployed from the European Space Agency’s Rosetta probe, reaches the surface of Comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko.
2015 – Two suicide bombers detonated explosives in Bourj el-Barajneh, Beirut, killing 43 people and injuring over 200 others.
2017 – The 7.3 Mw  Kermanshah earthquake shakes the northern Iran–Iraq border with a maximum Mercalli intensity of VIII (Severe). At least 410 people were killed and over 7,000 were injured.

November 13

1002 – English king Æthelred II orders the killing of all Danes in England, known today as the St. Brice’s Day massacre.
1093 – Battle of Alnwick: in an English victory over the Scots, Malcolm III of Scotland, and his son Edward, are killed.
1160 – Louis VII of France marries Adela of Champagne.
1642 – First English Civil War: Battle of Turnham Green: The Royalist forces withdraw in the face of the Parliamentarian army and fail to take London.
1775 – American Revolutionary War: Patriot revolutionary forces under Gen. Richard Montgomery occupy Montreal.
1841 – James Braid first sees a demonstration of animal magnetism, which leads to his study of the subject he eventually calls hypnotism.
1851 – The Denny Party lands at Alki Point, before moving to the other side of Elliott Bay to what would become Seattle.
1887 – Bloody Sunday clashes in central London.
1901 – The 1901 Caister lifeboat disaster.
1914 – Zaian War: Berber tribesmen inflict the heaviest defeat of French forces in Morocco at the Battle of El Herri.
1916 – World War I: Prime Minister of Australia Billy Hughes is expelled from the Labor Party over his support for conscription.
1918 – World War I: Allied troops occupy Constantinople, the capital of the Ottoman Empire.
1927 – The Holland Tunnel opens to traffic as the first Hudson River vehicle tunnel linking New Jersey to New York City.
1940 – Walt Disney’s animated musical film Fantasia is first released, on the first night of a roadshow at New York’s Broadway Theatre.
1941 – World War II: The aircraft carrier HMS Ark Royal is torpedoed by U-81, sinking the following day.
1942 – World War II: Naval Battle of Guadalcanal: U.S. and Japanese ships engage in an intense, close-quarters surface naval engagement during the Guadalcanal Campaign.
1947 – The Soviet Union completes development of the AK-47, one of the first proper assault rifles.
1950 – General Carlos Delgado Chalbaud, President of Venezuela, is assassinated in Caracas.
1954 – Great Britain defeats France to capture the first ever Rugby League World Cup in Paris in front of around 30,000 spectators.
1956 – The Supreme Court of the United States declares Alabama laws requiring segregated buses illegal, thus ending the Montgomery Bus Boycott.
1966 – In response to Fatah raids against Israelis near the West Bank border, Israel launches an attack on the village of As-Samu.
1969 – Vietnam War: Anti-war protesters in Washington, D.C. stage a symbolic March Against Death.
1970 – Bhola cyclone: A 150-mph tropical cyclone hits the densely populated Ganges Delta region of East Pakistan (now Bangladesh), killing an estimated 500,000 people in one night.
1974 – Ronald DeFeo, Jr. murders his entire family in Amityville, Long Island in the house that would become known as The Amityville Horror.
1982 – Ray Mancini defeats Duk Koo Kim in a boxing match held in Las Vegas. Kim’s subsequent death (on November 17) leads to significant changes in the sport.
1982 – The Vietnam Veterans Memorial is dedicated in Washington, D.C. after a march to its site by thousands of Vietnam War veterans.
1985 – The volcano Nevado del Ruiz erupts and melts a glacier, causing a lahar (volcanic mudslide) that buries Armero, Colombia, killing approximately 23,000 people.
1985 – Xavier Suárez is sworn in as Miami’s first Cuban-born mayor.
1989 – Hans-Adam II, the present Prince of Liechtenstein, begins his reign on the death of his father.
1990 – In Aramoana, New Zealand, David Gray shoots dead 13 people in a massacre before being tracked down and killed by police the next day.
1992 – The High Court of Australia rules in Dietrich v The Queen that although there is no absolute right to have publicly funded counsel, in most circumstances a judge should grant any request for an adjournment or stay when an accused is unrepresented.
1994 – In a referendum, voters in Sweden decide to join the European Union.
1995 – A truck-bomb explodes outside of a US-operated Saudi Arabian National Guard training center in Riyadh, killing five Americans and two Indians. A group called the Islamic Movement for Change claims responsibility.
2000 – Philippine House Speaker Manny Villar passes the articles of impeachment against Philippine President Joseph Estrada.
2001 – War on Terror: In the first such act since World War II, US President George W. Bush signs an executive order allowing military tribunals against foreigners suspected of connections to terrorist acts or planned acts on the United States.
2002 – Iraq disarmament crisis: Iraq agrees to the terms of the UN Security Council Resolution 1441.
2002 – During the Prestige oil spill a storm burst a tank of the oil tanker MV Prestige which was not allowed to dock and sank on November 19, 2002 off the coast of Galicia, spilling 63,000 metric tons of heavy fuel oil, more than the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill.
2012 – A total solar eclipse occurred in parts of Australia and the South Pacific
2013 – Hawaii legalizes same sex marriage.
2013 – 4 World Trade Center officially opens.
2015 – A set of coordinated terror attacks in Paris, including multiple shootings, explosions, and a hostage crisis in the 10th and 11th arrondissements kill 130 people, seven attackers, and injured 368 others, with at least 80 critically wounded.
2015 – WT1190F, a temporary satellite of Earth, impacts just southeast of Sri Lanka.

November 14

1770 – James Bruce discovers what he believes to be the source of the Nile.
1812 – Napoleonic Wars: Battle of Smoliani, French Marshals Victor & Oudinot defeated by Wittgenstein.
1851 – Moby-Dick, a novel by Herman Melville, is published in the USA.
1862 – American Civil War: President Abraham Lincoln approves General Ambrose Burnside’s plan to capture the Confederate capital at Richmond, Virginia, leading to the Battle of Fredericksburg.
1886 – Friedrich Soennecken first developed the hole puncher, a type of office tool capable of punching small holes in paper.
1889 – Pioneering female journalist Nellie Bly (aka Elizabeth Cochrane) begins a successful attempt to travel around the world in less than 80 days. She completes the trip in 72 days.
1910 – Aviator Eugene Burton Ely performs the first takeoff from a ship in Hampton Roads, Virginia. He took off from a makeshift deck on the USS Birmingham in a Curtiss pusher.
1918 – Czechoslovakia becomes a republic.
1921 – Foundation of the Communist Party of Spain.
1922 – The British Broadcasting Company begins radio service in the United Kingdom.
1938 – The Lions Gate Bridge, connecting Vancouver to the North Shore region, opens to traffic.
1940 – World War II: In England, Coventry is heavily bombed by German Luftwaffe bombers. Coventry Cathedral is almost completely destroyed.
1941 – World War II: The aircraft carrier HMS Ark Royal sinks due to torpedo damage from the German submarine U-81 sustained on November 13.
1941 – World War II: In Slonim, German forces engaged in Operation Barbarossa murder 9,000 Jews in a single day.
1952 – The first regular UK Singles Chart published by the New Musical Express.
1957 – The “Apalachin Meeting” in rural Tioga County in upstate New York is raided by law enforcement; many high level Mafia figures are arrested while trying to flee.
1960 – Ruby Bridges becomes the first black child to attend an all-white elementary school in Louisiana.
1965 – Vietnam War: The Battle of Ia Drang begins: The first major engagement between regular American and North Vietnamese forces.
1967 – The Congress of Colombia, in commemoration of the 150 years of the death of Policarpa Salavarrieta, declares this day as “Day of the Colombian Woman”.
1967 – American physicist Theodore Maiman is given a patent for his ruby laser systems, the world’s first laser.
1969 – Apollo program: NASA launches Apollo 12, the second crewed mission to the surface of the Moon.
1970 – Soviet Union enters ICAO, making Russian the fourth official language of organization.
1970 – Southern Airways Flight 932 crashes in the mountains near Huntington, West Virginia, killing 75, including almost all of the Marshall University football team.
1971 – Mariner 9 enters orbit around Mars.
1973 – In the United Kingdom, Princess Anne marries Captain Mark Phillips, in Westminster Abbey.
1973 – The Athens Polytechnic uprising, a massive demonstration of popular rejection of the Greek military junta of 1967–74, begins.
1975 – With the signing of the Madrid Accords, Spain abandons Western Sahara.
1977 – During a British House of Commons debate, Labour MP Tam Dalyell poses what would become known as the West Lothian question, referring to issues related to devolution in the United Kingdom.
1978 – France conducts the Aphrodite nuclear test as 25th in the group of 29, 1975–78 French nuclear tests.
1979 – Iran hostage crisis: US President Jimmy Carter issues Executive order 12170, freezing all Iranian assets in the United States in response to the hostage crisis.
1982 – Lech Wałęsa, the leader of Poland’s outlawed Solidarity movement, is released after eleven months of internment near the Soviet border.
1984 – Zamboanga City mayor Cesar Climaco, a prominent critic of the government of Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos, is assassinated in his home city.
1990 – After German reunification, the Federal Republic of Germany and Poland sign a treaty confirming the Oder–Neisse line as the border between Germany and Poland.
1991 – American and British authorities announce indictments against two Libyan intelligence officials in connection with the downing of the Pan Am Flight 103.
1991 – Cambodian Prince Norodom Sihanouk returns to Phnom Penh after thirteen years of exile.
1995 – A budget standoff between Democrats and Republicans in the U.S. Congress forces the federal government to temporarily close national parks and museums and to run most government offices with skeleton staffs.
2001 – War in Afghanistan: Afghan Northern Alliance fighters take over the capital Kabul.
2001 – A magnitude 7.8 earthquake strikes a remote part of the Tibetan plateau. It had the longest known surface rupture recorded on land (~400 km) and is the best documented example of a supershear earthquake.
2003 – Astronomers Michael E. Brown, Chad Trujillo, and David L. Rabinowitz discover 90377 Sedna, a Trans-Neptunian object.
2008 – The first G-20 economic summit opens in Washington, D.C.
2012 – Israel launches a major military operation in the Gaza Strip, as hostilities with Hamas escalate.
2016 – A magnitude 7.8 earthquake strikes Kaikoura, New Zealand, at a depth of 15 km (9 miles), resulting in the deaths of two people.
2017 – A gunman kills four people and injures 12 others during a shooting spree across Rancho Tehama Reserve, California. He had earlier murdered his wife in their home.

November 15-19

November 15

655 – Battle of the Winwaed: Penda of Mercia is defeated by Oswiu of Northumbria.
1315 – Battle of Morgarten: The Schweizer Eidgenossenschaft ambushes the army of Leopold I.
1532 – Commanded by Francisco Pizarro, Spanish conquistadors under Hernando de Soto meet Inca Empire leader Atahualpa for the first time outside Cajamarca, arranging a meeting on the city plaza the following day.
1533 – Francisco Pizarro arrives in Cuzco, the capital of the Inca Empire.
1705 – Battle of Zsibó: Austrian-Danish victory over the Kurucs (Hungarians).
1760 – The secondly-built Castellania in Valletta is officially inaugurated with the blessing of the interior Chapel of Sorrows.
1777 – American Revolutionary War: After 16 months of debate the Continental Congress approves the Articles of Confederation.
1806 – Pike expedition: Lieutenant Zebulon Pike sees a distant mountain peak while near the Colorado foothills of the Rocky Mountains. (It is later named Pikes Peak.)
1864 – American Civil War: Union General William Tecumseh Sherman begins Sherman’s March to the Sea.
1889 – Brazil is declared a republic by Marshal Deodoro da Fonseca as Emperor Pedro II is deposed in a military coup.
1914 – Harry Turner becomes the first player to die from game-related injuries in the “Ohio League”, the direct predecessor to the National Football League.
1920 – First assembly of the League of Nations is held in Geneva, Switzerland.
1920 – The Free City of Danzig is established.
1922 – At least 300 are massacred during a general strike in Guayaquil, Ecuador.
1926 – The NBC radio network opens with 24 stations.
1928 – The RNLI lifeboat Mary Stanford capsized in Rye Harbour with the loss of the entire 17-man crew.
1933 – Thailand has its first election.
1939 – In Washington, D.C., US President Franklin D. Roosevelt lays the cornerstone of the Jefferson Memorial.
1942 – World War II: The Battle of Guadalcanal ends in a decisive Allied victory.
1943 – The Holocaust: German SS leader Heinrich Himmler orders that Gypsies are to be put “on the same level as Jews and placed in concentration camps”.
1949 – Nathuram Godse and Narayan Apte are executed for assassinating Mahatma Gandhi.
1951 – Greek resistance leader Nikos Beloyannis, along with 11 resistance members, is sentenced to death by the court-martial.
1955 – The first part of Saint Petersburg Metro is opened.
1959 – The murders of the Clutter Family in Holcomb, Kansas were discovered, inspiring Truman Capote’s non-fiction book In Cold Blood.
1966 – Project Gemini: Gemini 12 completes the program’s final mission, when it splashes down safely in the Atlantic Ocean.
1966 – A Boeing 727 carrying Pan Am Flight 708 crashes near Berlin, Germany, killing all three people on board.
1967 – The only fatality of the North American X-15 program occurs during the 191st flight when Air Force test pilot Michael J. Adams loses control of his aircraft which is destroyed mid-air over the Mojave Desert.
1968 – The Cleveland Transit System becomes the first transit system in the western hemisphere to provide direct rapid transit service from a city’s downtown to its major airport.
1969 – Cold War: The Soviet submarine K-19 collides with the American submarine USS Gato in the Barents Sea.
1969 – Vietnam War: In Washington, D.C., 250,000-500,000 protesters staged a peaceful demonstration against the war, including a symbolic “March Against Death”.
1971 – Intel releases the world’s first commercial single-chip microprocessor, the 4004.
1976 – René Lévesque and the Parti Québécois take power to become the first Quebec government of the 20th century clearly in favor of independence.
1978 – A chartered Douglas DC-8 crashes near Colombo, Sri Lanka, killing 183.
1979 – A package from Unabomber Ted Kaczynski begins smoking in the cargo hold of a flight from Chicago to Washington, D.C., forcing the plane to make an emergency landing.
1983 – Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus declares independence. Recognized only by Turkey.
1985 – A research assistant is injured when a package from the Unabomber addressed to a University of Michigan professor explodes.
1985 – The Anglo-Irish Agreement is signed at Hillsborough Castle by British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and Irish Taoiseach Garret FitzGerald.
1987 – In Brașov, Romania, workers rebel against the communist regime of Nicolae Ceaușescu.
1988 – In the Soviet Union, the unmanned Shuttle Buran makes its only space flight.
1988 – Israeli–Palestinian conflict: An independent State of Palestine is proclaimed by the Palestinian National Council.
1988 – The first Fairtrade label, Max Havelaar, is launched in the Netherlands.
1990 – Space Shuttle program: Space Shuttle Atlantis launches with flight STS-38.
1990 – The Communist People’s Republic of Bulgaria is disestablished and a new republican government is instituted.
2000 – A chartered Antonov An-24 crashes after takeoff from Luanda, Angola, killing more than 40 people.
2002 – Hu Jintao becomes General Secretary of the Communist Party of China and a new nine-member Politburo Standing Committee is inaugurated.
2003 – The first day of the 2003 Istanbul bombings, in which two car bombs, targeting two synagogues, explode, killing 25 people and wounding about 300.
2006 – Al Jazeera English launches worldwide.
2007 – Cyclone Sidr hits Bangladesh, killing an estimated 5,000 people and destroying parts of the world’s largest mangrove forest, the Sundarbans.
2012 – Xi Jinping becomes General Secretary of the Communist Party of China and a new seven-member Politburo Standing Committee is inaugurated.
2016 – Hong Kong’s High Court bans elected politicians Yau Wai-ching and Baggio Leung from the city’s Parliament.

November 16

534 – Justinian I, who was an Eastern Roman (Byzantine) emperor in Constantinople, approves and publishes the second and final revision of the Codex Justinianus
951 – Emperor Li Jing sends a Southern Tang expeditionary force of 10,000 men under Bian Hao to conquer Chu. Li Jing removes the ruling family to his own capital in Nanjing, ending the Chu Kingdom.
1272 – While travelling during the Ninth Crusade, Prince Edward becomes King of England upon Henry III of England’s death, but he will not return to England for nearly two years to assume the throne.
1491 – An auto-da-fé, held in the Brasero de la Dehesa outside of Ávila, concludes the case of the Holy Child of La Guardia with the public execution of several Jewish and converso suspects.
1532 – Francisco Pizarro and his men capture Inca Emperor Atahualpa at the Battle of Cajamarca.
1776 – American Revolutionary War: British and Hessian units capture Fort Washington from the Patriots.
1776 – American Revolution: The United Provinces (Low Countries) recognize the independence of the United States.
1793 – French Revolution: Ninety dissident Roman Catholic priests are executed by drowning at Nantes.
1797 – The Prussian heir apparent, Frederick William, becomes King of Prussia as Frederick William III.
1805 – Napoleonic Wars: Battle of Schöngrabern: Russian forces under Pyotr Bagration delay the pursuit by French troops under Joachim Murat.
1822 – American Old West: Missouri trader William Becknell arrives in Santa Fe, New Mexico, over a route that became known as the Santa Fe Trail.
1828 – Greek War of Independence: The London Protocol entails the creation of an autonomous Greek state under Ottoman suzerainty, encompassing the Morea and the Cyclades.
1849 – A Russian court sentences writer Fyodor Dostoyevsky to death for anti-government activities linked to a radical intellectual group; his sentence is later commuted to hard labor.
1852 – The English astronomer John Russell Hind discovers the asteroid 22 Kalliope.
1855 – David Livingstone becomes the first European to see the Victoria Falls in what is now Zambia-Zimbabwe.
1857 – Second relief of Lucknow: Twenty-four Victoria Crosses are awarded, the most in a single day.
1863 – American Civil War: Battle of Campbell’s Station near Knoxville, Tennessee: Confederate troops unsuccessfully attack Union forces.
1871 – The National Rifle Association receives its charter from New York State.
1885 – Canadian rebel leader of the Métis and “Father of Manitoba” Louis Riel is executed for treason.
1904 – English engineer John Ambrose Fleming receives a patent for the thermionic valve (vacuum tube).
1907 – Indian Territory and Oklahoma Territory join to form Oklahoma, which is admitted as the 46th U.S. state.
1907 – Cunard Line’s RMS Mauretania, sister ship of RMS Lusitania, sets sail on her maiden voyage from Liverpool, England, to New York City.
1914 – The Federal Reserve Bank of the United States officially opens.
1920 – Qantas, Australia’s national airline, is founded as Queensland and Northern Territory Aerial Services Limited.
1933 – The United States and the Soviet Union establish formal diplomatic relations.
1938 – LSD is first synthesized by Albert Hofmann from ergotamine at the Sandoz Laboratories in Basel.
1940 – World War II: In response to the leveling of Coventry by the German Luftwaffe two days before, the Royal Air Force bombs Hamburg.
1940 – The Holocaust: In occupied Poland, the Nazis close off the Warsaw Ghetto from the outside world.
1940 – New York City’s “Mad Bomber” George Metesky places his first bomb at a Manhattan office building used by Consolidated Edison.
1943 – World War II: American bombers strike a hydro-electric power facility and heavy water factory in German-controlled Vemork, Norway.
1944 – World War II: Operation Queen, the costly Allied thrust to the Rur, is launched.
1944 – World War II: Düren, Germany, is destroyed by Allied bombers.
1945 – UNESCO is founded.
1965 – Venera program: The Soviet Union launches the Venera 3 space probe toward Venus, which will be the first spacecraft to reach the surface of another planet.
1973 – Skylab program: NASA launches Skylab 4 with a crew of three astronauts from Cape Canaveral, Florida for an 84-day mission.
1973 – U.S. President Richard Nixon signs the Trans-Alaska Pipeline Authorization Act into law, authorizing the construction of the Alaska Pipeline.
1974 – The Arecibo message is broadcast from the Arecibo Radio Telescope in Puerto Rico. It was aimed at the current location of the globular star cluster Messier 13 some 25,000 light years away. The message will reach empty space by the time it finally arrives since the cluster will have changed position.
1979 – The first line of Bucharest Metro (Line M1) is opened from Timpuri Noi to Semănătoarea in Bucharest, Romania.
1988 – The Supreme Soviet of the Estonian Soviet Socialist Republic declares that Estonia is “sovereign” but stops short of declaring independence.
1988 – In the first open election in more than a decade, voters in Pakistan elect populist candidate Benazir Bhutto to be Prime Minister of Pakistan.
1989 – El Salvadoran army troops kills six Jesuit priests and two others at Jose Simeon Canas University.
1990 – Pop group Milli Vanilli are stripped of their Grammy Award because the duo did not sing at all on the Girl You Know It’s True album. Session musicians had provided all the vocals.
1992 – The Hoxne Hoard is discovered by metal detectorist Eric Lawes in Hoxne, Suffolk.
1997 – After nearly 18 years of incarceration, the People’s Republic of China releases Wei Jingsheng, a pro-democracy dissident, from jail for medical reasons.

November 17

794 – Japanese Emperor Kanmu changes his residence from Nara to Kyoto.
887 – Emperor Charles the Fat is deposed by the Frankish magnates in an assembly at Frankfurt. His nephew Arnulf of Carinthia is elected as king of the East Frankish Kingdom.
1183 – Genpei War: The Battle of Mizushima takes place.
1292 – John Balliol becomes King of Scotland.
1405 – Sharif ul-Hāshim establishes the Sultanate of Sulu.
1511 – Henry VIII of England concludes the Treaty of Westminster, a pledge of mutual aid against the French, with Ferdinand II of Aragon.
1558 – Elizabethan era begins: Queen Mary I of England dies and is succeeded by her half-sister Elizabeth I of England.
1603 – English explorer, writer and courtier Sir Walter Raleigh goes on trial for treason.
1777 – Articles of Confederation (United States) are submitted to the states for ratification.
1796 – French Revolutionary Wars: Battle of the Bridge of Arcole: French forces defeat the Austrians in Italy.
1800 – The United States Congress holds its first session in Washington, D.C.
1810 – Sweden declares war on its ally the United Kingdom to begin the Anglo-Swedish War, although no fighting ever takes place.
1811 – José Miguel Carrera, Chilean founding father, is sworn in as President of the executive Junta of the government of Chile.
1820 – Captain Nathaniel Palmer becomes the first American to see Antarctica. (The Palmer Peninsula is later named after him.)
1831 – Ecuador and Venezuela are separated from Gran Colombia.
1837 – An earthquake in Valdivia, south-central Chile, causes a tsunami that leads to significant destruction along Japan’s coast.
1839 – Oberto, Giuseppe Verdi’s first opera, opens at the Teatro alla Scala in Milan, Italy.
1856 – American Old West: On the Sonoita River in present-day southern Arizona, the United States Army establishes Fort Buchanan in order to help control new land acquired in the Gadsden Purchase.
1858 – Modified Julian Day zero.
1858 – The city of Denver, Colorado is founded.
1863 – American Civil War: Siege of Knoxville begins: Confederate forces led by General James Longstreet place Knoxville, Tennessee, under siege.
1869 – In Egypt, the Suez Canal, linking the Mediterranean Sea with the Red Sea, is inaugurated.
1876 – Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s “Slavonic March” is given its premiere performance in Moscow, Russia.
1878 – First assassination attempt against Umberto I of Italy by anarchist Giovanni Passannante, who was armed with a dagger. The King survived with a slight wound in an arm. Prime Minister Benedetto Cairoli blocked the aggressor, receiving an injury in a leg.
1885 – Serbo-Bulgarian War: The decisive Battle of Slivnitsa begins.
1894 – H. H. Holmes, one of the first modern serial killers, is arrested in Boston, Massachusetts.
1896 – The Western Pennsylvania Hockey League, which later became the first ice hockey league to openly trade and hire players, began play at Pittsburgh’s Schenley Park Casino.
1903 – The Russian Social Democratic Labour Party splits into two groups: The Bolsheviks (Russian for “majority”) and Mensheviks (Russian for “minority”).
1911 – Omega Psi Phi Fraternity Incorporated, which is the first black Greek-lettered organization founded at an American historically black college or university, was founded on the campus of Howard University in Washington, D.C.
1933 – The United States recognizes the Soviet Union.
1939 – Nine Czech students are executed as a response to anti-Nazi demonstrations prompted by the death of Jan Opletal. All Czech universities are shut down and more than 1,200 students sent to concentration camps. Since this event, International Students’ Day is celebrated in many countries, especially in the Czech Republic.
1947 – The Screen Actors Guild implements an anti-Communist loyalty oath.
1947 – American scientists John Bardeen and Walter Houser Brattain observe the basic principles of the transistor, a key element for the electronics revolution of the 20th century.
1950 – Lhamo Dondrub is officially named the 14th Dalai Lama.
1950 – United Nations Security Council Resolution 89 relating to the Palestine Question is adopted.
1953 – The remaining human inhabitants of the Blasket Islands, Kerry, Ireland, are evacuated to the mainland.
1957 – Vickers Viscount G-AOHP of British European Airways crashes at Ballerup after the failure of three engines on approach to Copenhagen Airport. The cause is a malfunction of the anti-icing system on the aircraft. There are no fatalities.
1962 – President John F. Kennedy dedicates Washington Dulles International Airport, serving the Washington, D.C., region.
1967 – Vietnam War: Acting on optimistic reports that he had been given on November 13, U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson tells the nation that, while much remained to be done, “We are inflicting greater losses than we’re taking…We are making progress.”
1968 – British European Airways introduces the BAC One-Eleven into commercial service.
1968 – Viewers of the Raiders–Jets football game in the eastern United States are denied the opportunity to watch its exciting finish when NBC broadcasts Heidi instead, prompting changes to sports broadcasting in the U.S.
1969 – Cold War: Negotiators from the Soviet Union and the United States meet in Helsinki, Finland to begin SALT I negotiations aimed at limiting the number of strategic weapons on both sides.
1970 – Vietnam War: Lieutenant William Calley goes on trial for the My Lai Massacre.
1970 – Luna programme: The Soviet Union lands Lunokhod 1 on Mare Imbrium (Sea of Rains) on the Moon. This is the first roving remote-controlled robot to land on another world and is released by the orbiting Luna 17 spacecraft.
1973 – Watergate scandal: In Orlando, Florida, U.S. President Richard Nixon tells 400 Associated Press managing editors “I am not a crook.”
1973 – The Athens Polytechnic uprising against the military regime ends in a bloodshed in the Greek capital.
1978 – The Star Wars Holiday Special airs on CBS, receiving negative reception from critics, fans, and even Star Wars creator George Lucas.
1979 – Brisbane Suburban Railway Electrification. The first stage from Ferny Grove to Darra is commissioned.
1983 – The Zapatista Army of National Liberation is founded in Mexico.
1989 – Cold War: Velvet Revolution begins: In Czechoslovakia, a student demonstration in Prague is quelled by riot police. This sparks an uprising aimed at overthrowing the communist government (it succeeds on December 29).
1990 – Fugendake, part of the Mount Unzen volcanic complex, Nagasaki Prefecture, Japan, becomes active again and erupts.
1993 – United States House of Representatives passes a resolution to establish the North American Free Trade Agreement.
1993 – In Nigeria, General Sani Abacha ousts the government of Ernest Shonekan in a military coup.
1997 – In Luxor, Egypt, 62 people are killed by six Islamic militants outside the Temple of Hatshepsut, known as Luxor massacre.
2000 – A catastrophic landslide in Log pod Mangartom, Slovenia, kills seven, and causes millions of SIT of damage. It is one of the worst catastrophes in Slovenia in the past 100 years.
2000 – Alberto Fujimori is removed from office as president of Peru.
2012 – At least 50 schoolchildren are killed in an accident at a railway crossing near Manfalut, Egypt.
2013 – Fifty people are killed when Tatarstan Airlines Flight 363 crashes at Kazan Airport, Russia.
2013 – A rare late-season tornado outbreak strikes the Midwest. Illinois and Indiana are most affected with tornado reports as far north as lower Michigan. In all around six dozen tornadoes touch down in approximately an 11-hour time period, including seven EF3 and two EF4 tornadoes.

November 18 

326 – The old St. Peter’s Basilica is consecrated.
401 – The Visigoths, led by king Alaric I, cross the Alps and invade northern Italy.
1095 – The Council of Clermont begins: called by Pope Urban II, it led to the First Crusade to the Holy Land.
1105 – Maginulfo is elected the Antipope as Sylvester IV.
1180 – Phillip II becomes king of France.
1210 – Pope Innocent III excommunicates Holy Roman Emperor Otto IV.
1282 – Pope Martin IV excommunicates King Peter III of Aragon.
1302 – Pope Boniface VIII issues the Papal bull Unam sanctam, claiming spiritual supremacy for the papacy.
1421 – A seawall at the Zuiderzee dike in the Netherlands breaks, flooding 72 villages and killing about 10,000 people. This event will be known as St Elizabeth’s flood.
1493 – Christopher Columbus first sights the island now known as Puerto Rico.
1494 – French King Charles VIII occupies Florence, Italy.
1601 – Tiryaki Hasan Pasha, an Ottoman provincial governor, routs the Habsburg forces commanded by Ferdinand the Archduke of Austria during the Siege of Nagykanizsa.
1626 – The new St Peter’s Basilica is consecrated.
1730 – The future Frederick II (known as Frederick the Great), King of Prussia, is granted a royal pardon and released from confinement.
1760 – The rebuilt debtors’ prison, at the Castellania in Valletta, receives the first prisoners.
1803 – The Battle of Vertières, the last major battle of the Haitian Revolution, is fought, leading to the establishment of the Republic of Haiti, the first black republic in the Western Hemisphere.
1809 – In a naval action during the Napoleonic Wars, French frigates defeat British East Indiamen in the Bay of Bengal.
1812 – Napoleonic Wars: The Battle of Krasnoi ends in French defeat, but Marshal of France Michel Ney’s leadership leads to him becoming known as “the bravest of the brave”.
1863 – King Christian IX of Denmark signs the November constitution that declares Schleswig to be part of Denmark. This is seen by the German Confederation as a violation of the London Protocol and leads to the German–Danish war of 1864.
1865 – Mark Twain’s short story “The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County” is published in the New York Saturday Press.
1872 – Susan B. Anthony and 14 other women are arrested for voting illegally in the United States presidential election of 1872.
1883 – American and Canadian railroads institute five standard continental time zones, ending the confusion of thousands of local times.
1901 – Britain and the United States sign the Hay–Pauncefote Treaty, which nullifies the Clayton–Bulwer Treaty and withdraws British objections to an American-controlled canal in Panama.
1903 – The Hay–Bunau-Varilla Treaty is signed by the United States and Panama, giving the United States exclusive rights over the Panama Canal Zone.
1905 – Prince Carl of Denmark becomes King Haakon VII of Norway.
1909 – Two United States warships are sent to Nicaragua after 500 revolutionaries (including two Americans) are executed by order of José Santos Zelaya.
1916 – World War I: First Battle of the Somme: In France, British Expeditionary Force commander Douglas Haig calls off the battle which started on July 1, 1916.
1918 – Latvia declares its independence from Russia.
1928 – Release of the animated short Steamboat Willie, the first fully synchronized sound cartoon, directed by Walt Disney and Ub Iwerks, featuring the third appearances of cartoon characters Mickey Mouse and Minnie Mouse. This is considered by the Disney corporation to be Mickey’s birthday.
1929 – Grand Banks earthquake: Off the south coast of Newfoundland in the Atlantic Ocean, a Richter magnitude 7.2 submarine earthquake, centered on the Grand Banks, breaks 12 submarine transatlantic telegraph cables and triggers a tsunami that destroys many south coast communities in the Burin Peninsula.
1940 – World War II: German leader Adolf Hitler and Italian Foreign Minister Galeazzo Ciano meet to discuss Benito Mussolini’s disastrous Italian invasion of Greece.
1943 – World War II: Battle of Berlin: Four hundred and forty Royal Air Force planes bomb Berlin causing only light damage and killing 131. The RAF loses nine aircraft and 53 air crew.
1944 – The Popular Socialist Youth is founded in Cuba.
1947 – The Ballantyne’s Department Store fire in Christchurch, New Zealand, kills 41; it is the worst fire disaster in the history of New Zealand.
1949 – The Iva Valley Shooting occurs after the coal miners of Enugu in Nigeria go on strike over withheld wages; 21 miners are shot dead and 51 are wounded by police under the supervision of the British colonial administration of Nigeria.
1961 – United States President John F. Kennedy sends 18,000 military advisors to South Vietnam.
1963 – The first push-button telephone goes into service.
1970 – U.S. President Richard Nixon asks the U.S. Congress for $155 million in supplemental aid for the Cambodian government.
1971 – Oman declares its independence from United Kingdom.
1978 – In Jonestown, Guyana, Jim Jones led his Peoples Temple to a mass murder–suicide that claimed 918 lives in all, 909 of them in Jonestown itself, including over 270 children. Congressman Leo Ryan is murdered by members of the Peoples Temple hours earlier.
1987 – King’s Cross fire: In London, 31 people die in a fire at the city’s busiest underground station, King’s Cross St Pancras.
1988 – War on Drugs: U.S. President Ronald Reagan signs a bill into law allowing the death penalty for drug traffickers.
1991 – Shiite Muslim kidnappers in Lebanon release Anglican Church envoys Terry Waite and Thomas Sutherland.
1991 – After an 87-day siege, the Croatian city of Vukovar capitulates to the besieging Yugoslav People’s Army and allied Serb paramilitary forces.
1993 – In the United States, the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) is approved by the House of Representatives.
1993 – In South Africa, 21 political parties approve a new constitution, expanding voting rights and ending white minority rule.
1996 – A fire occurs on a train traveling through the Channel Tunnel from France to England causing several injuries and damaging approximately 500 metres (1,600 ft) of tunnel.
1999 – At Texas A&M University, the Aggie Bonfire collapses killing 12 students and injuring 27 others.
2002 – Iraq disarmament crisis: United Nations weapons inspectors led by Hans Blix arrive in Iraq.
2003 – The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court rules 4–3 in Goodridge v. Department of Public Health that the state’s ban on same-sex marriage is unconstitutional and gives the state legislature 180 days to change the law making Massachusetts the first state in the United States to grant marriage rights to same-sex couples.
2012 – Pope Tawadros II of Alexandria becomes the 118th Pope of the Coptic Orthodox Church of Alexandria.
2013 – NASA launches the MAVEN probe to Mars.

November 19

461 – Libius Severus is declared emperor of the Western Roman Empire. The real power is in the hands of the magister militum Ricimer.
636 – The Rashidun Caliphate defeats the Sasanian Empire at the Battle of al-Qādisiyyah in Iraq.
1493 – Christopher Columbus goes ashore on an island called Borinquen he first saw the day before. He names it San Juan Bautista (later renamed again Puerto Rico).
1794 – The United States and the Kingdom of Great Britain sign Jay’s Treaty, which attempts to resolve some of the lingering problems left over from the American Revolutionary War.
1802 – The Garinagu arrive at British Honduras (Present day Belize)
1816 – Warsaw University is established.
1847 – The second Canadian railway line, the Montreal and Lachine Railroad, is opened.
1863 – American Civil War: U.S. President Abraham Lincoln delivers the Gettysburg Address at the dedication ceremony for the military cemetery at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania.
1881 – A meteorite lands near the village of Grossliebenthal, southwest of Odessa, Ukraine.
1885 – Serbo-Bulgarian War: Bulgarian victory in the Battle of Slivnitsa solidifies the unification between the Principality of Bulgaria and Eastern Rumelia.
1911 – The Doom Bar in Cornwall claimed two ships, Island Maid and Angele, the latter killing the entire crew except the captain.
1912 – First Balkan War: The Serbian Army captures Bitola, ending the five-century-long Ottoman rule of Macedonia.
1916 – Samuel Goldwyn and Edgar Selwyn establish Goldwyn Pictures.
1941 – World War II: Battle between HMAS Sydney and HSK Kormoran. The two ships sink each other off the coast of Western Australia, with the loss of 645 Australians and about 77 German seamen.
1942 – World War II: Battle of Stalingrad: Soviet Union forces under General Georgy Zhukov launch the Operation Uranus counterattacks at Stalingrad, turning the tide of the battle in the USSR’s favor.
1942 – Mutesa II is crowned the 35th and last Kabaka (king) of Buganda, prior to the restoration of the kingdom in 1993.
1943 – Holocaust: Nazis liquidate Janowska concentration camp in Lemberg (Lviv), western Ukraine, murdering at least 6,000 Jews after a failed uprising and mass escape attempt.
1944 – World War II: U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt announces the 6th War Loan Drive, aimed at selling US$14 billion in war bonds to help pay for the war effort.
1944 – World War II: Thirty members of the Luxembourgish resistance defend the town of Vianden against a larger Waffen-SS attack in the Battle of Vianden.
1946 – Afghanistan, Iceland and Sweden join the United Nations.
1950 – US General Dwight D. Eisenhower becomes Supreme Commander of NATO-Europe.
1952 – Greek Field Marshal Alexander Papagos becomes the 152nd Prime Minister of Greece.
1954 – Télé Monte Carlo, Europe’s oldest private television channel, is launched by Prince Rainier III.
1955 – National Review publishes its first issue.
1959 – The Ford Motor Company announces the discontinuation of the unpopular Edsel.
1967 – The establishment of TVB, the first wireless commercial television station in Hong Kong.
1969 – Apollo program: Apollo 12 astronauts Pete Conrad and Alan Bean land at Oceanus Procellarum (the “Ocean of Storms”) and become the third and fourth humans to walk on the Moon.
1969 – Association football player Pelé scores his 1,000th goal.
1977 – TAP Portugal Flight 425 crashes in the Madeira Islands, killing 131.
1979 – Iran hostage crisis: Iranian leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini orders the release of 13 female and black American hostages being held at the US Embassy in Tehran.
1984 – San Juanico disaster: A series of explosions at the Pemex petroleum storage facility at San Juan Ixhuatepec in Mexico City starts a major fire and kills about 500 people.
1985 – Cold War: In Geneva, U.S. President Ronald Reagan and Soviet Union General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev meet for the first time.
1985 – Pennzoil wins a US$10.53 billion judgment against Texaco, in the largest civil verdict in the history of the United States, stemming from Texaco executing a contract to buy Getty Oil after Pennzoil had entered into an unsigned, yet still binding, buyout contract with Getty.
1985 – Police in Baling, Malaysia, lay siege to houses occupied by an Islamic sect of about 400 people led by Ibrahim Mahmud.
1988 – Serbian communist representative and future Serbian and Yugoslav president Slobodan Milošević publicly declares that Serbia is under attack from Albanian separatists in Kosovo as well as internal treachery within Yugoslavia and a foreign conspiracy to destroy Serbia and Yugoslavia.
1994 – In the United Kingdom, the first National Lottery draw is held. A £1 ticket gave a one-in-14-million chance of correctly guessing the winning six out of 49 numbers.
1996 – Lt. Gen. Maurice Baril of Canada arrives in Africa to lead a multi-national policing force in Zaire.
1998 – Clinton–Lewinsky scandal: The United States House of Representatives Judiciary Committee begins impeachment hearings against U.S. President Bill Clinton.
1998 – Vincent van Gogh’s Portrait of the Artist Without Beard sells at auction for US$71.5 million.
1999 – Shenzhou 1: The People’s Republic of China launches its first Shenzhou spacecraft.
2002 – The Greek oil tanker Prestige splits in half and sinks off the coast of Galicia, releasing over 20 million US gallons (76,000 m³) of oil in the largest environmental disaster in Spanish and Portuguese history.
2004 – The Malice at the Palace: The worst brawl in NBA history, Ron Artest suspended 86 games (rest of season), Stephen Jackson suspended 30 games.
2006 – Nintendo’s first video game console with motion control, the Wii, is released.
2010 – The first of four explosions takes place at the Pike River Mine in New Zealand. Twenty-nine people are killed in the nation’s worst mining disaster since 1914.
2013 – A double suicide bombing at the Iranian embassy in Beirut kills 23 people and injures 160 others.

November 20-24

November 20

284 – Diocletian is chosen as Roman emperor.
762 – During the An Shi Rebellion, the Tang dynasty, with the help of Huihe tribe, recaptures Luoyang from the rebels.
1194 – Palermo is conquered by Henry VI, Holy Roman Emperor.
1407 – A truce between John the Fearless, Duke of Burgundy and Louis of Valois, Duke of Orléans is agreed upon under the auspices of John, Duke of Berry. Orléans would be assassinated three days later by Burgundy.
1441 – The Peace of Cremona ends the war between the Republic of Venice and the Duchy of Milan.
1695 – Zumbi, the last of the leaders of Quilombo dos Palmares in early Brazil, is executed by the forces of Portuguese bandeirante Domingos Jorge Velho – an event nowadays commemorated in Black Awareness Day.
1739 – Start of the Battle of Porto Bello between British and Spanish forces during the War of Jenkins’ Ear.
1776 – American Revolutionary War: British forces land at the Palisades and then attack Fort Lee. The Continental Army starts to retreat across New Jersey.
1789 – New Jersey becomes the first U.S. state to ratify the Bill of Rights.
1805 – Beethoven’s only opera, Fidelio, premieres in Vienna.
1820 – An 80-ton sperm whale attacks and sinks the Essex (a whaling ship from Nantucket, Massachusetts) 2,000 miles from the western coast of South America. (Herman Melville’s 1851 novel Moby-Dick is in part inspired by this story.)
1845 – Anglo-French blockade of the Río de la Plata: Battle of Vuelta de Obligado.
1861 – American Civil War: A secession ordinance is filed by Kentucky’s Confederate government.
1910 – Mexican Revolution: Francisco I. Madero issues the Plan de San Luis Potosí, denouncing Mexican President Porfirio Díaz, calling for a revolution to overthrow the government of Mexico, effectively starting the Mexican Revolution.
1917 – World War I: Battle of Cambrai begins: British forces make early progress in an attack on German positions but are later pushed back.
1936 – José Antonio Primo de Rivera, founder of the Falange, is killed by a republican execution squad.
1940 – World War II: Hungary becomes a signatory of the Tripartite Pact, officially joining the Axis powers.
1943 – World War II: Battle of Tarawa (Operation Galvanic) begins: United States Marines land on Tarawa Atoll in the Gilbert Islands and suffer heavy fire from Japanese shore guns and machine guns.
1945 – Nuremberg trials: Trials against 24 Nazi war criminals start at the Palace of Justice at Nuremberg.
1947 – The Princess Elizabeth marries Lieutenant Philip Mountbatten, who becomes the Duke of Edinburgh, at Westminster Abbey in London.
1959 – The Declaration of the Rights of the Child is adopted by the United Nations.
1962 – Cuban Missile Crisis ends: In response to the Soviet Union agreeing to remove its missiles from Cuba, U.S. President John F. Kennedy ends the quarantine of the Caribbean nation.
1968 – A total of 78 miners are killed in an explosion at the Consolidated Coal Company’s No. 9 mine in Farmington, West Virginia in the Farmington Mine disaster.
1969 – Vietnam War: The Plain Dealer (Cleveland, Ohio) publishes explicit photographs of dead villagers from the My Lai Massacre in Vietnam.
1969 – Occupation of Alcatraz: Native American activists seize control of Alcatraz Island until being ousted by the U.S. Government on June 11, 1971.
1974 – The United States Department of Justice files its final anti-trust suit against AT&T Corporation. This suit later leads to the breakup of AT&T and its Bell System.
1974 – The first fatal crash of a Boeing 747 occurs when Lufthansa Flight 540 crashes while attempting to takeoff from Jomo Kenyatta International Airport in Nairobi, Kenya, killing 59 out of the 157 people on board.
1977 – Egyptian President Anwar Sadat becomes the first Arab leader to officially visit Israel, when he meets Israeli prime minister Menachem Begin and speaks before the Knesset in Jerusalem, seeking a permanent peace settlement.
1979 – Grand Mosque seizure: About 200 Sunni Muslims revolt in Saudi Arabia at the site of the Kaaba in Mecca during the pilgrimage and take about 6000 hostages. The Saudi government receives help from Pakistani special forces to put down the uprising.
1980 – Lake Peigneur drains into an underlying salt deposit. A misplaced Texaco oil probe had been drilled into the Diamond Crystal Salt Mine, causing water to flow down into the mine, eroding the edges of the hole.
1985 – Microsoft Windows 1.0 is released.
1989 – Velvet Revolution: The number of protesters assembled in Prague, Czechoslovakia swells from 200,000 the day before to an estimated half-million.
1990 – Andrei Chikatilo, one of the Soviet Union’s most prolific serial killers, is arrested; he eventually confesses to 56 killings.
1991 – An Azerbaijani MI-8 helicopter carrying 19 peacekeeping mission team with officials and journalists from Russia, Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan is shot down by Armenian military forces in Khojavend District of Azerbaijan.
1992 – In England, a fire breaks out in Windsor Castle, badly damaging the castle and causing over £50 million worth of damage.
1993 – Savings and loan crisis: The United States Senate Ethics Committee issues a stern censure of California senator Alan Cranston for his “dealings” with savings-and-loan executive Charles Keating.
1993 – Macedonia’s deadliest aviation disaster occurs Avioimpex Flight 110, a Yakovlev Yak-42 crashes near Ohrid killing all 116 people on board.
1994 – The Angolan government and UNITA rebels sign the Lusaka Protocol in Zambia, ending 19 years of civil war. (Localized fighting resumes the next year.)
1996 – A fire breaks out in an office building in Hong Kong, killing 41 people and injuring 81.
1998 – A court in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan declares accused terrorist Osama bin Laden “a man without a sin” in regard to the 1998 U.S. embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania.
1998 – The first space station module component, Zarya, for the International Space Station was launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.
2003 – After the November 15 bombings, a second day of the 2003 Istanbul bombings occurs in Istanbul, Turkey, destroying the Turkish head office of HSBC Bank AS and the British consulate.
2015 – Following a hostage siege, at least 19 people are killed in Bamako, Mali.

November 21

164 BCE – Judas Maccabeus, son of Mattathias of the Hasmonean family, restores the Temple in Jerusalem. This event is commemorated each year by the festival of Hanukkah.
235 – Pope Anterus succeeds Pontian as the nineteenth pope. During the persecutions of emperor Maximinus Thrax he is martyred.
1009 – Lý Công Uẩn is enthroned as emperor of Đại Cồ Việt, founding the Lý dynasty.
1386 – Timur of Samarkand captures and sacks the Georgian capital of Tbilisi, taking King Bagrat V of Georgia captive.
1620 – Plymouth Colony settlers sign the Mayflower Compact (November 11, O.S.)
1676 – The Danish astronomer Ole Rømer presents the first quantitative measurements of the speed of light.
1783 – In Paris, Jean-François Pilâtre de Rozier and François Laurent d’Arlandes, make the first untethered hot air balloon flight.
1789 – North Carolina ratifies the United States Constitution and is admitted as the 12th U.S. state.
1832 – Wabash College is founded in Crawfordsville, Indiana.
1861 – American Civil War: Confederate President Jefferson Davis appoints Judah Benjamin Secretary of War.
1877 – Thomas Edison announces his invention of the phonograph, a machine that can record and play sound.
1894 – Port Arthur, China, falls to the Japanese, a decisive victory of the First Sino-Japanese War; Japanese troops are accused of massacring the remaining inhabitants.
1902 – The Philadelphia Football Athletics defeated the Kanaweola Athletic Club of Elmira, New York, 39–0, in the first ever professional American football night game.
1905 – Albert Einstein’s paper that leads to the mass–energy equivalence formula, E = mc², is published in the journal Annalen der Physik.
1910 – Sailors on board Brazil’s warships including the Minas Gerais, São Paulo, and Bahia, violently rebel in what is now known as the Revolta da Chibata (Revolt of the Lash).
1916 – Mines from SM U-73 sink the HMHS Britannic, the largest ship lost in the First World War.
1918 – The Flag of Estonia, previously used by pro-independence activists, is formally adopted as the national flag of the Republic of Estonia.
1918 – The Parliament (Qualification of Women) Act 1918 is passed, allowing women to stand for Parliament in the UK.
1918 – A pogrom takes place in Lwów (now Lviv); over three days, at least 50 Jews and 270 Ukrainian Christians are killed by Poles.
1920 – Irish War of Independence: In Dublin, 31 people are killed in what became known as “Bloody Sunday”.
1922 – Rebecca Latimer Felton of Georgia takes the oath of office, becoming the first female United States Senator.
1927 – Columbine Mine massacre: Striking coal miners are allegedly attacked with machine guns by a detachment of state police dressed in civilian clothes.
1942 – The completion of the Alaska Highway (also known as the Alcan Highway) is celebrated (however, the highway is not usable by standard road vehicles until 1943).
1944 – World War II: American submarine USS Sealion sinks the Japanese battleship Kongō and Japanese destroyer Urakaze in the Formosa Strait.
1945 – The United Auto Workers strike 92 General Motors plants in 50 cities to back up worker demands for a 30-percent raise.
1950 – Two Canadian National Railway trains collide in northeastern British Columbia in the Canoe River train crash; the death toll is 21, with 17 of them Canadian troops bound for Korea.
1953 – The Natural History Museum, London announces that the “Piltdown Man” skull, initially believed to be one of the most important fossilized hominid skulls ever found, is a hoax.
1959 – American disc jockey Alan Freed, who had popularized the term “rock and roll” and music of that style, is fired from WABC-AM radio over allegations he had participated in the payola scandal.
1961 – The “La Ronde” opens in Honolulu, first revolving restaurant in the United States.
1962 – The Chinese People’s Liberation Army declares a unilateral ceasefire in the Sino-Indian War.
1964 – The Verrazano-Narrows Bridge opens to traffic. At the time it is the world’s longest bridge span.
1964 – Second Vatican Council: The third session of the Roman Catholic Church’s ecumenical council closes.
1967 – Vietnam War: American General William Westmoreland tells news reporters: “I am absolutely certain that whereas in 1965 the enemy was winning, today he is certainly losing.”
1969 – U.S. President Richard Nixon and Japanese Premier Eisaku Satō agree on the return of Okinawa to Japanese control in 1972. The U.S. retains rights to bases on the island, but these are to be nuclear-free.
1969 – The first permanent ARPANET link is established between UCLA and SRI.
1970 – Vietnam War: Operation Ivory Coast: A joint United States Air Force and Army team raids the Sơn Tây prisoner-of-war camp in an attempt to free American prisoners of war thought to be held there.
1971 – Indian troops, partly aided by Mukti Bahini (Bengali guerrillas), defeat the Pakistan army in the Battle of Garibpur.
1972 – Voters in South Korea overwhelmingly approve a new constitution, giving legitimacy to Park Chung-hee and the Fourth Republic.
1974 – The Birmingham pub bombings kill 21 people. The Birmingham Six are sentenced to life in prison for the crime but subsequently acquitted.
1977 – Minister of Internal Affairs Allan Highet announces that the national anthems of New Zealand shall be the traditional anthem “God Save the Queen” and “God Defend New Zealand”.
1979 – The United States Embassy in Islamabad, Pakistan, is attacked by a mob and set on fire, killing four.
1980 – A deadly fire breaks out at the MGM Grand Hotel in Paradise, Nevada (now Bally’s Las Vegas). Eighty-seven people are killed and more than 650 are injured in the worst disaster in Nevada history.
1985 – United States Navy intelligence analyst Jonathan Pollard is arrested for spying after being caught giving Israel classified information on Arab nations. He is subsequently sentenced to life in prison.
1986 – National Security Council member Oliver North and his secretary start to shred documents allegedly implicating them in the Iran–Contra affair.
1992 – A major tornado strikes the Houston, Texas area during the afternoon. Over the next two days the largest tornado outbreak ever to occur in the US during November spawns over 100 tornadoes.
1995 – The Dayton Agreement is initialed at the Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, near Dayton, Ohio, ending three and a half years of war in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
1996 – Humberto Vidal explosion: Thirty-three people die when a Humberto Vidal shoe shop in Río Piedras, Puerto Rico explodes.
2002 – NATO invites Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia to become members.
2004 – The second round of the Ukrainian presidential election is held, giving rise to massive protests and controversy over the election’s integrity.
2004 – Dominica is hit by the most destructive earthquake in its history. The northern half of the island sustains the most damage, especially the town of Portsmouth. In neighboring Guadeloupe, one person is killed.
2004 – The Paris Club agrees to write off 80% (up to $100 billion) of Iraq’s external debt.
2006 – Anti-Syrian Lebanese politician and government minister Pierre Gemayel is assassinated in suburban Beirut.
2009 – A mine explosion in Heilongjiang, China kills 108.
2012 – At least 28 are wounded after a bomb is thrown onto a bus in Tel Aviv.
2013 – Fifty-four people are killed when the roof of a shopping center collapses in Riga, Latvia.
2013 – Massive protests start in Ukraine after President Viktor Yanukovych suspended signing the Ukraine–European Union Association Agreement.
2014 – A stampede in Kwekwe, Zimbabwe caused by the police firing tear gas kills at least eleven people and injures 40 others.
2015 – The government of Belgium imposed a security lockdown on Brussels, including the closure of shops, schools, public transportation, due to potential terrorist attacks.
2017 – Robert Mugabe formally resigns as President of Zimbabwe, after thirty-seven years in office.
2019 – Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is indicted on charges of bribery, fraud, and breach of trust.

November 22

498 – After the death of Anastasius II, Symmachus is elected Pope in the Lateran Palace, while Laurentius is elected Pope in Santa Maria Maggiore.
845 – The first duke of Brittany, Nominoe, defeats the Frankish king Charles the Bald at the Battle of Ballon near Redon.
1307 – Pope Clement V issues the papal bull Pastoralis Praeeminentiae which instructed all Christian monarchs in Europe to arrest all Templars and seize their assets.
1574 – Spanish navigator Juan Fernández discovers islands now known as the Juan Fernández Islands off Chile.
1635 – Dutch colonial forces on Taiwan launch a pacification campaign against native villages, resulting in Dutch control of the middle and south of the island.
1718 – Off the coast of North Carolina, British pirate Edward Teach (best known as “Blackbeard”) is killed in battle with a boarding party led by Royal Navy Lieutenant Robert Maynard.
1837 – Canadian journalist and politician William Lyon Mackenzie calls for a rebellion against the United Kingdom in his essay “To the People of Upper Canada”, published in his newspaper The Constitution.
1869 – In Dumbarton, Scotland, the clipper Cutty Sark is launched
1873 – The French steamer SS Ville du Havre sinks in 12 minutes after colliding with the Scottish iron clipper Loch Earn in the Atlantic, with a loss of 226 lives.
1908 – The Congress of Manastir establishes the Albanian alphabet.
1928 – The premier performance of Ravel’s Boléro takes place in Paris.
1931 – Al-Mina’a SC is founded in Iraq.
1935 – The China Clipper inaugurates the first commercial transpacific air service, connecting Alameda, California with Manila.
1940 – World War II: Following the initial Italian invasion, Greek troops counterattack into Italian-occupied Albania and capture Korytsa.
1942 – World War II: Battle of Stalingrad: General Friedrich Paulus sends Adolf Hitler a telegram saying that the German 6th Army is surrounded.
1943 – World War II: Cairo Conference: U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, and Chinese Premier Chiang Kai-shek meet in Cairo, Egypt, to discuss ways to defeat Japan.
1943 – Lebanon gains independence from France.
1948 – Chinese Civil War: Elements of the Chinese Communist Second Field Army under Liu Bocheng trap the Nationalist 12th Army, beginning the Shuangduiji Campaign, the largest engagement of the Huaihai Campaign.
1954 – The Humane Society of the United States is founded.
1956 – The Summer Olympics, officially known as the games of the XVI Olympiad, are opened in Melbourne, Australia.
1963 – U.S. President John F. Kennedy is assassinated and Texas Governor John Connally is seriously wounded by Lee Harvey Oswald, who also kills Dallas Police officer J. D. Tippit after fleeing the scene. U.S Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson is sworn in as the 36th President of the United States afterwards.
1963 – William Clay Ford Sr. buys the Detroit Lions for $4.5 million.
1963 – The Beatles release With the Beatles.
1967 – UN Security Council Resolution 242 is adopted, establishing a set of the principles aimed at guiding negotiations for an Arab–Israeli peace settlement.
1968 – The Beatles release The Beatles (known popularly as The White Album).
1971 – In Britain’s worst mountaineering tragedy, the Cairngorm Plateau Disaster, five children and one of their leaders are found dead from exposure in the Scottish mountains.
1973 – The Italian Fascist organization Ordine Nuovo is disbanded.
1974 – The United Nations General Assembly grants the Palestine Liberation Organization observer status.
1975 – Juan Carlos is declared King of Spain following the death of Francisco Franco.
1977 – British Airways inaugurates a regular London to New York City supersonic Concorde service.
1986 – Mike Tyson from Brooklyn, New York becomes the youngest heavyweight champion in boxing history at age 20.
1987 – Two Chicago television stations are hijacked by an unknown pirate dressed as Max Headroom.
1988 – In Palmdale, California, the first prototype B-2 Spirit stealth bomber is revealed.
1989 – In West Beirut, a bomb explodes near the motorcade of Lebanese President René Moawad, killing him.
1990 – British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher withdraws from the Conservative Party leadership election, confirming the end of her Prime-Ministership.
1994 – The Sega Saturn is released in Japan.
1995 – Toy Story is released as the first feature-length film created completely using computer-generated imagery.
1995 – The 7.3 Mw  Gulf of Aqaba earthquake shakes the Sinai Peninsula and Saudi Arabia region with a maximum Mercalli intensity of VIII (Severe), killing eight and injuring 30, and generating a non-destructive tsunami.
2002 – In Nigeria, more than 100 people are killed at an attack aimed at the contestants of the Miss World contest.
2003 – Baghdad DHL attempted shootdown incident: Shortly after takeoff, a DHL Express cargo plane is struck on the left wing by a surface-to-air missile and forced to land.
2003 – England defeats Australia in the 2003 Rugby World Cup Final, becoming the first side from the Northern Hemisphere to win the tournament.
2004 – The Orange Revolution begins in Ukraine, resulting from the presidential elections.
2005 – Angela Merkel becomes the first female Chancellor of Germany.
2012 – Ceasefire begins between Hamas in the Gaza Strip and Israel after eight days of violence and 150 deaths.
2015 – A landslide in Hpakant, Kachin State, northern Myanmar kills at least 116 people near a jade mine, with around 100 more missing.

November 23

534 BC – Thespis of Icaria becomes the first recorded actor to portray a character onstage.
1174 – Saladin enters Damascus, and adds it to his domain.
1248 – Conquest of Seville by Christian troops under King Ferdinand III of Castile.
1499 – Pretender to the throne Perkin Warbeck is hanged for reportedly attempting to escape from the Tower of London. He had invaded England in 1497, claiming to be the lost son of King Edward IV of England.
1510 – First campaign of the Ottoman Empire against the Kingdom of Imereti (modern western Georgia). Ottoman armies sack the capital Kutaisi and burn Gelati Monastery.
1531 – The Second War of Kappel results in the dissolution of the Protestant alliance in Switzerland.
1644 – John Milton publishes Areopagitica, a pamphlet decrying censorship.
1733 – The start of the 1733 slave insurrection on St. John in what was then the Danish West Indies.
1808 – French and Poles defeat the Spanish at Battle of Tudela.
1810 – Sarah Booth debuts at the Royal Opera House.
1863 – American Civil War: Battle of Chattanooga begins: Union forces led by General Ulysses S. Grant reinforce troops at Chattanooga, Tennessee, and counter-attack Confederate troops.
1867 – The Manchester Martyrs are hanged in Manchester, England, for killing a police officer while freeing two Irish Republican Brotherhood members from custody.
1876 – Corrupt Tammany Hall leader William Magear Tweed (better known as Boss Tweed) is delivered to authorities in New York City after being captured in Spain.
1889 – The first jukebox goes into operation at the Palais Royale Saloon in San Francisco.
1890 – King William III of the Netherlands dies without a male heir and a special law is passed to allow his daughter Princess Wilhelmina to succeed him.
1910 – Johan Alfred Ander becomes the last person to be executed in Sweden.
1914 – Mexican Revolution: The last of U.S. forces withdraw from Veracruz, occupied seven months earlier in response to the Tampico Affair.
1918 – Heber J. Grant succeeds Joseph F. Smith as the seventh president of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
1924 – Edwin Hubble’s discovery, that the Andromeda “nebula” is actually another island galaxy far outside of our own Milky Way, is first published in The New York Times.
1934 – An Anglo-Ethiopian boundary commission in the Ogaden discovers an Italian garrison at Walwal, well within Ethiopian territory. This leads to the Abyssinia Crisis.
1936 – Life magazine is reborn as a photo magazine and enjoys instant success.
1939 – World War II: HMS Rawalpindi is sunk by the German battleships Scharnhorst and Gneisenau.
1940 – World War II: Romania becomes a signatory of the Tripartite Pact, officially joining the Axis powers.
1943 – World War II: The Deutsche Opernhaus on Bismarckstraße in the Berlin neighborhood of Charlottenburg is destroyed. It will eventually be rebuilt in 1961 and be called the Deutsche Oper Berlin.
1943 – World War II: Tarawa and Makin atolls fall to American forces.
1946 – French naval bombardment of Hai Phong, Vietnam, kills thousands of civilians.
1953 – Pilot Felix Moncla and Lieutenant Robert Wilson disappear while in pursuit of a mysterious craft over Lake Superior.
1955 – The Cocos Islands are transferred from the control of the United Kingdom to that of Australia.
1959 – French President Charles de Gaulle declares in a speech in Strasbourg his vision for “Europe, from the Atlantic to the Urals”.
1963 – The BBC broadcasts An Unearthly Child (starring William Hartnell), the first episode of the first story from the first series of Doctor Who, which is now the world’s longest running science fiction drama.
1968 – 1968 Yale vs. Harvard football game: Harvard Crimson rallies to tie Yale Bulldogs 29–29 at Harvard Stadium in Boston, Massachusetts.
1971 – Representatives of the People’s Republic of China attend the United Nations, including the United Nations Security Council, for the first time.
1972 – The Soviet Union makes its final attempt at successfully launching the N1 rocket.
1974 – Sixty Ethiopian politicians, aristocrats, military officers, and other persons are executed by the provisional military government.
1976 – Apneist Jacques Mayol is the first man to reach a depth of 100 m undersea without breathing equipment.
1978 – Cyclone kills about 1000 people in eastern Sri Lanka.
1978 – The Geneva Frequency Plan of 1975 goes into effect, realigning many of Europe’s longwave and mediumwave broadcasting frequencies.
1980 – The 6.9 Mw  Irpinia earthquake shakes southern Italy with a maximum Mercalli intensity of X (Extreme), killing 2,483–4,900, and injuring 7,700–8,934.
1981 – Iran–Contra affair: Ronald Reagan signs the top secret National Security Decision Directive 17 (NSDD-17), giving the Central Intelligence Agency the authority to recruit and support Contra rebels in Nicaragua.
1985 – Gunmen hijack EgyptAir Flight 648 en route from Athens to Cairo. When the plane lands in Malta, Egyptian commandos storm the aircraft, but 60 people die in the raid.
1992 – The first smartphone, the IBM Simon, is introduced at COMDEX in Las Vegas, Nevada.
1993 – Rachel Whiteread wins both the £20,000 Turner Prize award for best British modern artist and the £40,000 K Foundation art award for the worst artist of the year.
1996 – Ethiopian Airlines Flight 961 is hijacked, then crashes into the Indian Ocean off the coast of Comoros after running out of fuel, killing 125.
2001 – The Convention on Cybercrime is signed in Budapest, Hungary.
2003 – Rose Revolution: Georgian president Eduard Shevardnadze resigns following weeks of mass protests over flawed elections.
2004 – The Holy Trinity Cathedral of Tbilisi, the largest religious building in Georgia, is consecrated.
2005 – Ellen Johnson Sirleaf is elected president of Liberia and becomes the first woman to lead an African country.
2006 – A series of bombings kills at least 215 people and injures 257 others in Sadr City, making it the second deadliest sectarian attack since the beginning of the Iraq War in 2003.
2007 – MS Explorer, a cruise liner carrying 154 people, sinks in the Antarctic Ocean south of Argentina after hitting an iceberg near the South Shetland Islands. There are no fatalities.
2009 – The Maguindanao massacre occurs in Ampatuan, Maguindanao, Philippines.
2010 – Bombardment of Yeonpyeong: North Korean artillery attack kills two civilians and two marines on Yeonpyeong Island, South Korea.
2011 – Arab Spring: After 11 months of protests in Yemen, Yemeni president Ali Abdullah Saleh signs a deal to transfer power to the vice president, in exchange for legal immunity.
2015 – Blue Origin’s New Shepard space vehicle became the first rocket to successfully fly to space and then return to Earth for a controlled, vertical landing.

November 24

380 – Theodosius I makes his adventus, or formal entry, into Constantinople.
1190 – Conrad of Montferrat becomes King of Jerusalem upon his marriage to Isabella I of Jerusalem.
1227 – Gąsawa massacre: At an assembly of Piast dukes at Gąsawa, Polish Prince Leszek the White, Duke Henry the Bearded and others are attacked by assassins while bathing.
1248 – An overnight landslide on the north side of Mont Granier, one of the largest historical rockslope failures ever recorded in Europe, destroys five villages.
1359 – Peter I of Cyprus ascends the throne of Cyprus after his father, Hugh IV of Cyprus, abdicates.
1429 – Hundred Years’ War: Joan of Arc unsuccessfully besieges La Charité.
1542 – Battle of Solway Moss: An English army defeats a much larger Scottish force near the River Esk in Dumfries and Galloway.
1642 – Abel Tasman becomes the first European to discover the island Van Diemen’s Land (later renamed Tasmania).
1750 – Tarabai, regent of the Maratha Empire, imprisons Rajaram II of Satara for refusing to remove Balaji Baji Rao from the post of peshwa.
1832 – South Carolina passes the Ordinance of Nullification, declaring that the Tariffs of 1828 and 1832 were null and void in the state, beginning the Nullification Crisis.
1835 – The Texas Provincial Government authorizes the creation of a horse-mounted police force called the Texas Rangers (which is now the Texas Ranger Division of the Texas Department of Public Safety).
1850 – Danish troops defeat a Schleswig-Holstein force in the town of Lottorf, Schleswig-Holstein.
1859 – Charles Darwin publishes On the Origin of Species.
1863 – American Civil War: Battle of Lookout Mountain: Near Chattanooga, Tennessee, Union forces under General Ulysses S. Grant capture Lookout Mountain and begin to break the Confederate siege of the city led by General Braxton Bragg.
1877 – Anna Sewell’s animal welfare novel Black Beauty is published.
1906 – A 13–6 victory by the Massillon Tigers over their rivals, the Canton Bulldogs, for the “Ohio League” Championship, leads to accusations that the championship series was fixed and results in the first major scandal in professional American football.
1917 – In Milwaukee, nine members of the Milwaukee Police Department are killed by a bomb, the most deaths in a single event in U.S. police history until the September 11 attacks in 2001.
1922 – Nine Irish Republican Army members are executed by an Irish Free State firing squad. Among them is author Erskine Childers, who had been arrested for illegally carrying a revolver.
1932 – In Washington, D.C., the FBI Scientific Crime Detection Laboratory (better known as the FBI Crime Lab) officially opens.
1935 – The Senegalese Socialist Party holds its second congress.
1940 – World War II: The First Slovak Republic becomes a signatory to the Tripartite Pact, officially joining the Axis powers.
1941 – World War II: The United States grants Lend-Lease to the Free French Forces.
1943 – World War II: At the battle of Makin the USS Liscome Bay is torpedoed near Tarawa and sinks, killing 650 men.
1944 – World War II: The 73rd Bombardment Wing launches the first attack on Tokyo from the Northern Mariana Islands.
1962 – Cold War: The West Berlin branch of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany forms a separate party, the Socialist Unity Party of West Berlin.
1962 – The influential British satirical television programme That Was the Week That Was is first broadcast.
1963 – Lee Harvey Oswald, the assassin of President John F. Kennedy, is killed by Jack Ruby.
1965 – Joseph-Désiré Mobutu seizes power in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and becomes President; he rules the country (which he renames Zaire in 1971) for over 30 years, until being overthrown by rebels in 1997.
1966 – Bulgarian TABSO Flight 101 crashes near Bratislava, Czechoslovakia, killing all 82 people on board.
1969 – Apollo program: The Apollo 12 command module splashes down safely in the Pacific Ocean, ending the second manned mission to land on the Moon.
1971 – During a severe thunderstorm over Washington state, a hijacker calling himself Dan Cooper (aka D. B. Cooper) parachutes from a Northwest Orient Airlines plane with $200,000 in ransom money. He has never been found.
1973 – A national speed limit is imposed on the Autobahn in Germany because of the 1973 oil crisis. The speed limit lasts only four months.
1974 – Donald Johanson and Tom Gray discover the 40% complete Australopithecus afarensis skeleton, nicknamed “Lucy” (after The Beatles song “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds”), in the Awash Valley of Ethiopia’s Afar Depression.
1976 – The Çaldıran–Muradiye earthquake in eastern Turkey kills between 4,000 and 5,000 people.
1992 – China Southern Airlines Flight 3943 crashes on approach to Guilin Qifengling Airport in Guilin, China, killing all 141 people on board.
2012 – A fire at a clothing factory in Dhaka, Bangladesh, kills at least 112 people.
2013 – Iran signs an interim agreement with the P5+1 countries, limiting its nuclear program in exchange for reduced sanctions.
2015 – A Russian Air Force Sukhoi Su-24 fighter jet is shot down by the Turkish Air Force over the Syria–Turkey border, killing one of the two pilots; a Russian marine is also killed during a subsequent rescue effort.
2015 – A terrorist attack on a hotel in Al-Arish, Egypt, kills at least seven people and injures 12 others.
2015 – An explosion on a bus carrying Tunisian Presidential Guard personnel in Tunisia’s capital Tunis leaves at least 14 people dead.
2016 – The government of Colombia and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia—People’s Army sign a revised peace deal, bringing an end to the country’s more than 50-year-long civil war.

November 25-30

November 25

571 BC – Servius Tullius, king of Rome, celebrates a triumph for his victory over the Etruscans.
1034 – Máel Coluim mac Cináeda, King of Scots, dies. His grandson, Donnchad, son of Bethóc and Crínán of Dunkeld, inherits the throne.
1120 – The White Ship sinks in the English Channel, drowning William Adelin, son and heir of Henry I of England.
1177 – Baldwin IV of Jerusalem and Raynald of Châtillon defeat Saladin at the Battle of Montgisard.
1343 – A tsunami, caused by an earthquake in the Tyrrhenian Sea, devastates Naples and the Maritime Republic of Amalfi, among other places.
1487 – Elizabeth of York is crowned Queen of England.
1491 – The siege of Granada, the last Moorish stronghold in Spain, ends with the Treaty of Granada.
1510 – Portuguese conquest of Goa: Portuguese naval forces under the command of Afonso de Albuquerque, and local mercenaries working for privateer Timoji, seize Goa from the Bijapur Sultanate, resulting in 451 years of Portuguese colonial rule.
1667 – A deadly earthquake rocks Shemakha in the Caucasus, killing 80,000 people.
1678 – Trunajaya rebellion: After a long and logistically challenging march, the allied Mataram and Dutch troops successfully assaulted the rebel stronghold of Kediri.
1755 – King Ferdinand VI of Spain grants royal protection to the Beaterio de la Compañia de Jesus, now known as the Congregation of the Religious of the Virgin Mary.
1758 – French and Indian War: British forces capture Fort Duquesne from French control. Later, Fort Pitt will be built nearby and grow into modern Pittsburgh.
1759 – An earthquake hits the Mediterranean destroying Beirut and Damascus and killing 30,000-40,000.
1783 – American Revolutionary War: The last British troops leave New York City three months after the signing of the Treaty of Paris.
1795 – Partitions of Poland: Stanisław August Poniatowski, the last king of independent Poland, is forced to abdicate and is exiled to Russia.
1826 – The Greek frigate Hellas arrives in Nafplion to become the first flagship of the Hellenic Navy.
1833 – A massive undersea earthquake, estimated magnitude between 8.7-9.2, rocks Sumatra, producing a massive tsunami all along the Indonesian coast.
1839 – A cyclone slams into south-eastern India, with high winds and a 40-foot storm surge destroying the port city of Coringa (which has never been completely rebuilt). The storm wave swept inland, taking with it 20,000 ships and thousands of people. An estimated 300,000 deaths resulted from the disaster.
1863 – American Civil War: Battle of Missionary Ridge: At Missionary Ridge in Tennessee, Union forces led by General Ulysses S. Grant break the Siege of Chattanooga by routing Confederate troops under General Braxton Bragg.
1864 – American Civil War: A group of Confederate operatives calling themselves the Confederate Army of Manhattan starts fires in more than 20 locations in an unsuccessful attempt to burn down New York City.
1874 – The United States Greenback Party is established as a political party consisting primarily of farmers affected by the Panic of 1873.
1876 – American Indian Wars: In retaliation for the American defeat at the Battle of the Little Bighorn, United States Army troops sack the sleeping village of Cheyenne Chief Dull Knife at the headwaters of the Powder River.
1905 – Prince Carl of Denmark arrives in Norway to become King Haakon VII of Norway.
1915 – Albert Einstein presents the field equations of general relativity to the Prussian Academy of Sciences.
1917 – World War I: German forces defeat Portuguese army of about 1,200 at Negomano on the border of modern-day Mozambique and Tanzania.
1918 – Vojvodina, formerly Austro-Hungarian crown land, proclaims its secession from Austria–Hungary to join the Kingdom of Serbia.
1926 – The deadliest November tornado outbreak in U.S. history kills 76 people and injures more than 400.
1936 – In Berlin, Germany and Japan sign the Anti-Comintern Pact, agreeing to consult on measures “to safeguard their common interests” in the case of an unprovoked attack by the Soviet Union against either nation. The pact is renewed on the same day five years later with additional signatories.
1940 – World War II: First flights of both the de Havilland Mosquito and Martin B-26 Marauder.
1941 – HMS Barham is sunk by a German torpedo during World War II.
1943 – World War II: Statehood of Bosnia and Herzegovina is re-established at the State Anti-fascist Council for the National Liberation of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
1947 – Red Scare: The “Hollywood Ten” are blacklisted by Hollywood movie studios.
1947 – New Zealand ratifies the Statute of Westminster and thus becomes independent of legislative control by the United Kingdom.
1950 – The Great Appalachian Storm of November 1950 impacts 22 American states, killing 353 people, injuring over 160, and causing US$66.7 million in damages (1950 dollars).
1952 – Agatha Christie’s murder-mystery play The Mousetrap opens at the Ambassadors Theatre in London. It will become the longest continuously-running play in history.
1952 – Korean War: After 42 days of fighting, the Battle of Triangle Hill ends with Chinese victory, American and South Korean units abandon their attempt to capture the “Iron Triangle”.
1958 – French Sudan gains autonomy as a self-governing member of the French Community.
1960 – The Mirabal sisters of the Dominican Republic are assassinated.
1963 – President John F. Kennedy is buried at Arlington National Cemetery in Arlington County, Virginia, across the Potomac River from Washington, D.C.; his assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald, is buried on the same day in Fort Worth, Texas.
1970 – In Japan, author Yukio Mishima and one compatriot commit ritualistic seppuku after an unsuccessful coup attempt.
1973 – Georgios Papadopoulos, head of the military Regime of the Colonels in Greece, is ousted in a hardliners’ coup led by Brigadier General Dimitrios Ioannidis.
1975 – Suriname gains independence from the Netherlands.
1977 – Former Senator Benigno Aquino, Jr., is found guilty by the Philippine Military Commission No. 2 and is sentenced to death by firing squad. He is later assassinated in 1983.
1981 – Pope John Paul II appoints Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger (the future Pope Benedict XVI) Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.
1984 – Thirty-six top musicians gather in a Notting Hill studio and record Band Aid’s “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” in order to raise money for famine relief in Ethiopia.
1986 – Iran–Contra affair: U.S. Attorney General Edwin Meese announces that profits from covert weapons sales to Iran were illegally diverted to the anti-communist Contra rebels in Nicaragua.
1986 – The King Fahd Causeway is officially opened in the Persian Gulf.
1987 – Typhoon Nina pummels the Philippines with category 5 winds of 165 mph and a surge that destroys entire villages. At least 1,036 deaths are attributed to the storm.
1992 – The Federal Assembly of Czechoslovakia votes to split the country into the Czech Republic and Slovakia, with effect from January 1, 1993.
1996 – An ice storm strikes the central U.S., killing 26 people. A powerful windstorm affects Florida and winds gust over 90 mph, toppling trees and flipping trailers.
1999 – A 5-year-old Cuban boy, Elian Gonzalez, is rescued by fishermen while floating in an inner tube off the Florida coast.
2000 – The 2000 Baku earthquake, with a Richter magnitude of 7.0, leaves 26 people dead in Baku, Azerbaijan, and becomes the strongest earthquake in the region in 158 years.
2008 – Cyclone Nisha strikes northern Sri Lanka, killing 15 people and displacing 90,000 others while dealing the region the highest rainfall in nine decades.
2009 – Jeddah floods: Freak rains swamp the city of Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, during an ongoing Hajj pilgrimage. Three thousand cars are swept away and 122 people perish in the torrents, with 350 others missing.

November 26

783 – The Asturian queen Adosinda is held at a monastery to prevent her kin from retaking the throne from Mauregatus.
1161 – Battle of Caishi: A Song dynasty fleet fights a naval engagement with Jin dynasty ships on the Yangtze river during the Jin–Song Wars.
1476 – Vlad the Impaler defeats Basarab Laiota with the help of Stephen the Great and Stephen V Báthory and becomes the ruler of Wallachia for the third time.
1778 – In the Hawaiian Islands, Captain James Cook becomes the first European to visit Maui.
1789 – A national Thanksgiving Day is observed in the United States as proclaimed by President George Washington at the request of Congress.
1805 – Official opening of Thomas Telford’s Pontcysyllte Aqueduct.
1812 – The Battle of Berezina begins during Napoleon’s retreat from Russia.
1825 – At Union College in Schenectady, New York, a group of college students form the Kappa Alpha Society, the first college social fraternity.
1842 – The University of Notre Dame is founded.
1863 – United States President Abraham Lincoln proclaims November 26 as a national Thanksgiving Day, to be celebrated annually on the final Thursday of November. Following the Franksgiving controversy from 1939 to 1941, it has been observed on the fourth Thursday in 1942 and subsequent years.
1865 – Battle of Papudo: A Spanish navy schooner is defeated by a Chilean corvette north of Valparaíso, Chile.
1917 – The Manchester Guardian publishes the 1916 secret Sykes-Picot Agreement between the United Kingdom and France.
1917 – The National Hockey League is formed, with the Montreal Canadiens, Montreal Wanderers, Ottawa Senators, Quebec Bulldogs, and Toronto Arenas as its first teams.
1918 – The Montenegran Podgorica Assembly votes for a “union of the people”, declaring assimilation into the Kingdom of Serbia.
1922 – Howard Carter and Lord Carnarvon become the first people to enter the tomb of Pharaoh Tutankhamun in over 3000 years.
1922 – The Toll of the Sea debuts as the first general release film to use two-tone Technicolor. (The Gulf Between was the first film to do so, but it was not widely distributed.)
1939 – Shelling of Mainila: The Soviet Army orchestrates an incident which is used to justify the start of the Winter War with Finland four days later.
1941 – World War II: Japan’s 1st Air Fleet departs the Kuril Islands to strike Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941.
1942 – World War II: Yugoslav Partisans convene the first meeting of the Anti-Fascist Council for the National Liberation of Yugoslavia at Bihać in northwestern Bosnia.
1942 – Casablanca, the movie starring Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman, premieres in New York City.
1943 – World War II: HMT Rohna is sunk by the Luftwaffe in an air attack in the Mediterranean north of Béjaïa, Algeria.
1944 – World War II: A German V-2 rocket hits a Woolworth’s shop in London, United Kingdom, killing 168 people.
1944 – World War II: Germany begins V-1 and V-2 attacks on Antwerp, Belgium.
1949 – The Constituent Assembly of India adopts the constitution presented by Dr. B. R. Ambedkar.
1950 – Korean War: Troops from the People’s Republic of China launch a massive counterattack in North Korea against South Korean and United Nations forces (Battle of the Ch’ongch’on River and Battle of Chosin Reservoir), ending any hopes of a quick end to the conflict.
1965 – At the Hammaguir launch facility in the Algerian Sahara, France launches a Diamant-A rocket with its first satellite, Asterix-1, on board.
1968 – Vietnam War: United States Air Force helicopter pilot James P. Fleming rescues an Army Special Forces unit pinned down by Viet Cong fire. He is later awarded the Medal of Honor.
1970 – In Basse-Terre, Guadeloupe, 1.5 inches (38.1 mm) of rain fall in a minute, the heaviest rainfall ever recorded.
1976 – “Anarchy in the U.K.”, the debut single of the Sex Pistols, is released, heralding the arrival of punk rock
1977 – An unidentified hijacker named Vrillon, claiming to be the representative of the “Ashtar Galactic Command”, takes over Britain’s Southern Television for six minutes, starting at 5:12 pm.
1983 – Brink’s-Mat robbery: In London, 6,800 gold bars worth nearly £26 million are stolen from the Brink’s-Mat vault at Heathrow Airport.
1986 – Iran–Contra affair: U.S. President Ronald Reagan announces the members of what will become known as the Tower Commission.
1986 – The trial of John Demjanjuk, accused of committing war crimes as a guard at the Nazi Treblinka extermination camp, starts in Jerusalem.
1991 – National Assembly of Azerbaijan abolishes the autonomous status of Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Oblast of Azerbaijan and renames several cities back to their original names.
1998 – Tony Blair becomes the first Prime Minister of the United Kingdom to address the Oireachtas, the parliament of the Republic of Ireland.
1998 – The Khanna rail disaster takes 212 lives in Khanna, Ludhiana, India.
1999 – The 7.5 Mw  Ambrym earthquake shakes Vanuatu and a destructive tsunami follows. Ten people were killed and forty were injured.
2000 – George W. Bush is certified the winner of Florida’s electoral votes by Katherine Harris, going on to win the United States presidential election, despite losing in the national popular vote.
2003 – The Concorde makes its final flight, over Bristol, England.
2004 – Ruzhou School massacre: A man stabs and kills eight people and seriously wounds another four in a school dormitory in Ruzhou, China.
2004 – The last Poʻouli (Black-faced honeycreeper) dies of avian malaria in the Maui Bird Conservation Center in Olinda, Hawaii, before it could breed, making the species in all probability extinct.
2008 – Mumbai attacks by Lashkar-e-Taiba.
2011 – NATO attack in Pakistan: NATO forces in Afghanistan attack a Pakistani check post in a friendly fire incident, killing 24 soldiers and wounding 13 others.
2011 – The Mars Science Laboratory launches to Mars with the Curiosity Rover.
2018 – The robotic probe Insight lands on Elysium Planitia, Mars.
2019 – A magnitude 6.4 earthquake strikes western Albania leaving at least 52 people dead and over 1000 injured. This was the second deadliest earthquake to strike Albania in recorded history, and the deadliest in 168 years.

November 27

AD 25 – Luoyang is declared capital of the Eastern Han dynasty by Emperor Guangwu of Han.
176 – Emperor Marcus Aurelius grants his son Commodus the rank of “Imperator” and makes him Supreme Commander of the Roman legions.
395 – Rufinus, praetorian prefect of the East, is murdered by Gothic mercenaries under Gainas.
511 – King Clovis I dies at Lutetia and is buried in the Abbey of St Genevieve.
602 – Emperor Maurice is forced to watch his five sons be executed before being beheaded himself.
1095 – Pope Urban II declares the First Crusade at the Council of Clermont.
1703 – The first Eddystone Lighthouse is destroyed in the Great Storm of 1703.
1727 – The foundation stone to the Jerusalem Church in Berlin is laid.
1809 – The Berners Street hoax was perpetrated by Theodore Hook in the City of Westminster, London.
1815 – Adoption of Constitution of the Kingdom of Poland.
1830 – Saint Catherine Labouré experiences a Marian apparition.
1835 – James Pratt and John Smith are hanged in London; they are the last two to be executed for sodomy in England.
1839 – In Boston, Massachusetts, the American Statistical Association is founded.
1856 – The Coup of 1856 leads to Luxembourg’s unilateral adoption of a new, reactionary constitution.
1863 – American Civil War: Confederate cavalry leader John Hunt Morgan and several of his men escape the Ohio Penitentiary and return safely to the South.
1863 – American Civil War: Battle of Mine Run: Union forces under General George Meade take up positions against troops led by Confederate General Robert E. Lee.
1868 – American Indian Wars: Battle of Washita River: United States Army Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer leads an attack on Cheyenne living on reservation land.
1886 – German judge Emil Hartwich sustains fatal injuries in a duel, which would become the background for Theodor Fontane’s Effi Briest.
1895 – At the Swedish–Norwegian Club in Paris, Alfred Nobel signs his last will and testament, setting aside his estate to establish the Nobel Prize after he dies.
1896 – Also sprach Zarathustra by Richard Strauss is first performed.
1901 – The U.S. Army War College is established.
1912 – Spain declares a protectorate over the north shore of Morocco.
1924 – In New York City, the first Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade is held.
1940 – In Romania, the ruling Iron Guard fascist party assassinates over 60 of arrested King Carol II of Romania’s aides and other political dissidents.
1940 – World War II: At the Battle of Cape Spartivento, the Royal Navy engages the Regia Marina in the Mediterranean Sea.
1942 – World War II: At Toulon, the French navy scuttles its ships and submarines to keep them out of Nazi hands.
1944 – World War II: RAF Fauld explosion: An explosion at a Royal Air Force ammunition dump in Staffordshire kills seventy people.
1945 – CARE (then the Cooperative for American Remittances to Europe) was founded to a send CARE Packages of food relief to Europe after World War II.
1954 – Alger Hiss is released from prison after serving 44 months for perjury.
1965 – Vietnam War: The Pentagon tells U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson that if planned operations are to succeed, the number of American troops in Vietnam has to be increased from 120,000 to 400,000.
1968 – Penny Ann Early became the first woman to play major professional basketball for the Kentucky Colonels in an ABA game against the Los Angeles Stars.
1971 – The Soviet space program’s Mars 2 orbiter releases a descent module. It malfunctions and crashes, but it is the first man-made object to reach the surface of Mars.
1973 – Twenty-fifth Amendment: The United States Senate votes 92–3 to confirm Gerald Ford as Vice President of the United States. (On December 6, the House will confirm him 387–35).
1975 – The Provisional IRA assassinates Ross McWhirter, after a press conference in which McWhirter had announced a reward for the capture of those responsible for multiple bombings and shootings across England.
1978 – In San Francisco, city mayor George Moscone and openly gay city supervisor Harvey Milk are assassinated by former supervisor Dan White.
1978 – The Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) is founded in the city of Riha (Urfa) in Turkey.
1983 – Avianca Flight 011: A Boeing 747 crashes near Madrid’s Barajas Airport, killing 181.
1984 – Under the Brussels Agreement signed between the governments of the United Kingdom and Spain, the former agreed to enter into discussions with Spain over Gibraltar, including sovereignty.
1989 – Avianca Flight 203: A Boeing 727 explodes in mid-air over Colombia, killing all 107 people on board and three people on the ground. The Medellín Cartel will claim responsibility for the attack.
1992 – For the second time in a year, military forces try to overthrow president Carlos Andrés Pérez in Venezuela.
1997 – Twenty-five people are killed in the second Souhane massacre in Algeria.
1999 – The centre-left Labour Party takes control of the New Zealand government with leader Helen Clark becoming the first elected female Prime Minister in New Zealand’s history.
2001 – A hydrogen atmosphere is discovered on the extrasolar planet Osiris by the Hubble Space Telescope, the first atmosphere detected on an extrasolar planet.
2004 – Pope John Paul II returns the relics of Saint John Chrysostom to the Eastern Orthodox Church.
2006 – The House of Commons of Canada approves a motion introduced by Prime Minister Stephen Harper recognizing the Québécois as a nation within Canada.
2008 – XL Airways Germany Flight 888T: An Airbus A320 performing a flight test crashes near the French commune of Canet-en-Roussillon, killing all seven people on board.
2009 – Nevsky Express bombing: A bomb explodes on the Nevsky Express train between Moscow and Saint Petersburg, derailing it and causing 28 deaths and 96 injuries.
2015 – United States: An active shooter inside a Planned Parenthood facility in Colorado Springs, Colorado, shoots at least four police officers. One officer later dies. Two civilians were also killed, and six injured. The shooter later surrendered.

November 28

587 – Treaty of Andelot: King Guntram of Burgundy recognizes Childebert II as his heir.
936 – Shi Jingtang is enthroned as the first emperor of the Later Jin by Emperor Taizong of Liao, following a revolt against Emperor Fei of Later Tang.
1443 – Skanderbeg and his forces liberate Kruja in central Albania and raise the Albanian flag.
1470 – Champa–Đại Việt War: Emperor Lê Thánh Tông of Đại Việt formally launches his attack against Champa.
1520 – An expedition under the command of Ferdinand Magellan passes through the Strait of Magellan.
1582 – In Stratford-upon-Avon, William Shakespeare and Anne Hathaway pay a £40 bond for their marriage licence.
1627 – The Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth Navy has its greatest and last victory in the Battle of Oliwa.
1660 – At Gresham College, twelve men, including Christopher Wren, Robert Boyle, John Wilkins, and Sir Robert Moray decide to found what is later known as the Royal Society.
1666 – At least 3,000 men of the Royal Scots Army led by Tam Dalyell of the Binns defeat about 900 Covenanter rebels in the Battle of Rullion Green.
1785 – The first Treaty of Hopewell is signed, by which the United States acknowledges Cherokee lands in what is now East Tennessee.
1798 – Trade between the United States and modern-day Uruguay begins when John Leamy’s frigate John arrives in Montevideo.
1811 – Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 5 in E-flat major, Op. 73, premieres at the Gewandhaus in Leipzig.
1814 – The Times of London becomes the first newspaper to be produced on a steam-powered printing press, built by the German team of Koenig & Bauer.
1821 – Panama Independence Day: Panama separates from Spain and joins Gran Colombia.
1843 – Ka Lā Hui (Hawaiian Independence Day): The Kingdom of Hawaii is officially recognized by the United Kingdom and France as an independent nation.
1861 – American Civil War: The Confederate States of America accept a rival state government’s pronouncement that declares Missouri to be the 12th state of the Confederacy.
1862 – American Civil War: In the Battle of Cane Hill, Union troops under General James G. Blunt defeat General John Marmaduke’s Confederates.
1885 – Bulgarian victory in the Serbo-Bulgarian War preserves the Unification of Bulgaria.
1893 – Women’s suffrage in New Zealand concludes with the 1893 New Zealand general election.
1895 – The first American automobile race takes place over the 54 miles from Chicago’s Jackson Park to Evanston, Illinois. Frank Duryea wins in approximately 10 hours.
1899 – The Second Boer War: a British column is engaged by Boer forces at the Battle of Modder River; although the Boers withdraw, the British suffer heavy casualties.
1905 – Irish nationalist Arthur Griffith founds Sinn Féin as a political party with the main aim of establishing a dual monarchy in Ireland.
1908 – A mine explosion in Marianna, Pennsylvania, kills 154 men, leaving only one survivor.
1912 – Albania declares its independence from the Ottoman Empire.
1914 – World War I: Following a war-induced closure in July, the New York Stock Exchange re-opens for bond trading.
1917 – The Estonian Provincial Assembly declares itself the sovereign power of Estonia.
1919 – Lady Astor is elected as a Member of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. She is the first woman to sit in the House of Commons. (Countess Markievicz, the first to be elected, refused to sit.)
1920 – FIDAC (The Interallied Federation of War Veterans Organisations), the first international organization of war veterans is established in Paris, France
1920 – Irish War of Independence: Kilmichael Ambush: The Irish Republican Army ambush a convoy of British Auxiliaries and kill seventeen.
1925 – The Grand Ole Opry begins broadcasting in Nashville, Tennessee, as the WSM Barn Dance.
1942 – In Boston, Massachusetts, a fire in the Cocoanut Grove nightclub kills 492 people.
1943 – World War II: Tehran Conference: U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin meet in Tehran, Iran, to discuss war strategy.
1958 – Chad, the Republic of the Congo, and Gabon become autonomous republics within the French Community.
1958 – First successful flight of SM-65 Atlas; the first operational intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), developed by the United States and the first member of the Atlas rocket family.
1960 – Mauritania becomes independent of France.
1964 – Mariner program: NASA launches the Mariner 4 probe toward Mars.
1964 – Vietnam War: National Security Council members agree to recommend that U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson adopt a plan for a two-stage escalation of bombing in North Vietnam.
1965 – Vietnam War: In response to U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson’s call for “more flags” in Vietnam, Philippine President-elect Ferdinand Marcos announces he will send troops to help fight in South Vietnam.
1966 – Michel Micombero overthrows the monarchy of Burundi and makes himself the first president.
1967 – The first pulsar (PSR B1919+21, in the constellation of Vulpecula) is discovered by two astronomers Jocelyn Bell Burnell and Antony Hewish.
1971 – Fred Quilt, a leader of the Tsilhqot’in First Nation suffers severe abdominal injuries allegedly caused by Royal Canadian Mounted Police officers; he dies two days later.
1971 – Wasfi al-Tal, Prime Minister of Jordan, is assassinated by the Black September unit of the Palestine Liberation Organization.
1972 – Last executions in Paris: Claude Buffet and Roger Bontems are guillotined at La Santé Prison.
1975 – East Timor declares its independence from Portugal.
1979 – Air New Zealand Flight 901, a DC-10 sightseeing flight over Antarctica, crashes into Mount Erebus, killing all 257 people on board.
1980 – Iran–Iraq War: Operation Morvarid: The bulk of the Iraqi Navy is destroyed by the Iranian Navy in the Persian Gulf. (Commemorated in Iran as Navy Day.)
1987 – South African Airways Flight 295 crashes into the Indian Ocean, killing all 159 people on board.
1989 – Cold War: Velvet Revolution: In the face of protests, the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia announces it will give up its monopoly on political power.
1990 – British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher resigns as leader of the Conservative Party and, therefore, as Prime Minister. She is succeeded in both positions by John Major.
1991 – South Ossetia declares independence from Georgia.
2002 – Suicide bombers blow up an Israeli-owned hotel in Mombasa, Kenya; their colleagues fail in their attempt to bring down Arkia Israel Airlines Flight 582 with surface-to-air missiles.
2014 – Gunmen set off three bombs at the central mosque in the northern Nigerian city of Kano killing at least 120 people.
2016 – A chartered Avro RJ85 plane carrying at least 77 people, including the Chapecoense football team, crashes near Medellín, Colombia.

November 29

561 – King Chlothar I dies at Compiègne. The Merovingian dynasty is continued by his four sons, Charibert I, Guntram, Sigebert I and Chilperic I, who divide the Frankish Kingdom.
618 – The Tang dynasty scores a decisive victory over their rival Xue Rengao at the Battle of Qianshuiyuan.
903 – The Abbasid army under Muhammad ibn Sulayman al-Katib deals a crushing defeat to the Qarmatians at the Battle of Hama.
1394 – The Korean king Yi Seong-gye, founder of the Joseon dynasty, moves the capital from Kaesŏng to Hanyang, today known as Seoul.
1549 – The papal conclave of 1549–50 begins.
1612 – The Battle of Swally takes place, which loosens the Portuguese Empire’s hold on India.
1729 – Natchez Indians massacre 138 Frenchmen, 35 French women, and 56 children at Fort Rosalie, near the site of modern-day Natchez, Mississippi.
1732 – The magnitude 6.6 Irpinia earthquake causes 1,940 deaths in the former Kingdom of Naples, southern Italy.
1776 – American Revolutionary War: The Battle of Fort Cumberland, Nova Scotia, comes to an end with the arrival of British reinforcements.
1777 – San Jose, California, is founded as Pueblo de San José de Guadalupe by José Joaquín Moraga. It is the first civilian settlement, or pueblo, in Alta California.
1781 – The crew of the British slave ship Zong murders 133 Africans by dumping them into the sea to claim insurance.
1783 – A 5.3 magnitude earthquake strikes New Jersey.
1807 – Transfer of the Portuguese Court to Brazil: John VI of Portugal flees Lisbon from advancing Napoleonic forces during the Peninsular War, transferring the Portuguese court to Brazil.
1830 – November Uprising: An armed rebellion against Russia’s rule in Poland begins.
1847 – The Sonderbund is defeated by the joint forces of other Swiss cantons under General Guillaume-Henri Dufour.
1847 – Whitman massacre: Missionaries Dr. Marcus Whitman, his wife Narcissa, and 15 others are killed by Cayuse and Umatilla Indians, causing the Cayuse War.
1850 – The treaty, Punctation of Olmütz, is signed in Olomouc. Prussia capitulates to Austria, which will take over the leadership of the German Confederation.
1863 – American Civil War: Battle of Fort Sanders: Union forces under Ambrose Burnside successfully defend Knoxville, Tennessee from Confederate forces under James Longstreet.
1864 – American Indian Wars: Sand Creek massacre: Colorado volunteers led by Colonel John Chivington massacre at least 150 Cheyenne and Arapaho noncombatants inside Colorado Territory.
1864 – American Civil War: Battle of Spring Hill: The Confederate Army of Tennessee misses an opportunity to crush the Army of the Ohio.
1872 – American Indian Wars: The Modoc War begins with the Battle of Lost River.
1877 – Thomas Edison demonstrates his phonograph for the first time.
1890 – The Meiji Constitution goes into effect in Japan, and the first Diet convenes.
1899 – FC Barcelona is founded by Catalan, Spanish and Englishmen. It later develops into one of Spanish football’s most iconic and strongest teams.
1902 – The Pittsburgh Stars defeated the Philadelphia Athletics, 11–0 to win the first championship associated with an American national professional football league.
1929 – U.S. Admiral Richard E. Byrd leads the first expedition to fly over the South Pole.
1943 – World War II: The second session of the Anti-Fascist Council for the National Liberation of Yugoslavia (AVNOJ), held to determine the post-war ordering of the country, concludes in Jajce (present-day Bosnia and Herzegovina).
1944 – World War II: Albania is liberated by the Partisans.
1945 – The Federal People’s Republic of Yugoslavia is declared.
1947 – Partition Plan: The United Nations General Assembly approves a plan for the partition of Palestine.
1947 – First Indochina War: French forces carry out a massacre at Mỹ Trạch, Vietnam.
1952 – Korean War: U.S. President-elect Dwight D. Eisenhower fulfills a campaign promise by traveling to Korea to find out what can be done to end the conflict.
1961 – Project Mercury: Mercury-Atlas 5 Mission: Enos, a chimpanzee, is launched into space. The spacecraft orbits the Earth twice and splashes down off the coast of Puerto Rico.
1963 – U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson establishes the Warren Commission to investigate the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.
1963 – Trans-Canada Air Lines Flight 831 crashes shortly after takeoff from Montreal-Dorval International Airport, killing all 118 people on board.
1963 – “I Want to Hold Your Hand”, recorded on October 17, 1963, is released by the Beatles in the United Kingdom.
1967 – Vietnam War: U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara announces his resignation.
1972 – Atari releases Pong, the first commercially successful video game.
1986 – The Surinamese military attacks the village of Moiwana during the Suriname Guerrilla War, killing at least 39 civilians, mostly women and children.
1987 – North Korean agents plant a bomb on Korean Air Flight 858, which kills all 115 passengers and crew.
2007 – The Armed Forces of the Philippines lay siege to the Peninsula Manila after soldiers led by Senator Antonio Trillanes stage a mutiny.
2009 – Maurice Clemmons shoots and kills four police officers inside a coffee shop in Lakewood, Washington.

November 30

977 – Emperor Otto II lifts the siege at Paris and withdraws. His rearguard is defeated while crossing the Aisne River by Frankish forces under King Lothair III.
1707 – The second Siege of Pensacola comes to end with the failure of the British to capture Pensacola, Florida.
1718 – King Charles XII of Sweden dies during a siege of the fortress of Fredriksten in Norway.
1782 – American Revolutionary War: Treaty of Paris: In Paris, representatives from the United States and Great Britain sign preliminary peace articles (later formalized as the 1783 Treaty of Paris).
1786 – The Grand Duchy of Tuscany, under Pietro Leopoldo I, becomes the first modern state to abolish the death penalty (later commemorated as Cities for Life Day).
1803 – The Balmis Expedition starts in Spain with the aim of vaccinating millions against smallpox in Spanish America and Philippines.
1803 – In New Orleans, Spanish representatives officially transfer the Louisiana Territory to a French representative. Just 20 days later, France transfers the same land to the United States as the Louisiana Purchase.
1804 – The Democratic-Republican-controlled United States Senate begins an impeachment trial of Federalist Supreme Court Justice Samuel Chase.
1829 – First Welland Canal opens for a trial run, five years to the day from the ground breaking.
1853 – Crimean War: Battle of Sinop: The Imperial Russian Navy under Pavel Nakhimov destroys the Ottoman fleet under Osman Pasha at Sinop, a sea port in northern Turkey.
1864 – American Civil War: The Confederate Army of Tennessee suffers heavy losses in an attack on the Union Army of the Ohio in the Battle of Franklin.
1868 – A statue of King Charles XII of Sweden is inaugurated in Stockholm’s Kungsträdgården.
1872 – The first-ever international football match takes place at Hamilton Crescent, Glasgow, between Scotland and England.
1886 – The Folies Bergère stages its first revue.
1916 – Costa Rica signs the Buenos Aires Convention, a copyright treaty.
1934 – The LNER Class A3 4472 Flying Scotsman becomes the first steam locomotive to be authenticated as reaching 100 mph.
1936 – In London, the Crystal Palace is destroyed by fire.
1939 – Winter War: Soviet forces cross the Finnish border in several places and bomb Helsinki and several other Finnish cities, starting the war.
1942 – World War II: Battle of Tassafaronga; A smaller squadron of Japanese destroyers led by Raizō Tanaka defeats a U.S. cruiser force under Carleton H. Wright.
1947 – Civil War in Mandatory Palestine begins, leading up to the creation of the state of Israel.
1953 – Edward Mutesa II, the kabaka (king) of Buganda is deposed and exiled to London by Sir Andrew Cohen, Governor of Uganda.
1954 – In Sylacauga, Alabama, United States, the Hodges meteorite crashes through a roof and hits a woman taking an afternoon nap; this is the only documented case in the Western Hemisphere of a human being hit by a rock from space.
1966 – Barbados becomes independent from the United Kingdom.
1967 – South Yemen becomes independent from the United Kingdom.
1967 – The Pakistan Peoples Party is founded by Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, who becomes its first chairman.
1967 – Pro-Soviet communists in the Philippines establish Malayang Pagkakaisa ng Kabataan Pilipino as its new youth wing.
1971 – Iran seizes the Greater and Lesser Tunbs from the Sharjah and Ras Al Khaimah.
1972 – Vietnam War: White House Press Secretary Ron Ziegler tells the press that there will be no more public announcements concerning American troop withdrawals from Vietnam because troop levels are now down to 27,000.
1979 – Pink Floyd’s rock opera, The Wall is released.
1981 – Cold War: In Geneva, representatives from the United States and the Soviet Union begin to negotiate intermediate-range nuclear weapon reductions in Europe. (The meetings end inconclusively on December 17.)
1982 – Michael Jackson’s sixth solo studio album, Thriller, is released worldwide, ultimately to become the best-selling record album in history.
1994 – MS Achille Lauro catches fire off the coast of Somalia.
1995 – Official end of Operation Desert Storm.
1995 – U.S. President Bill Clinton visits Northern Ireland and speaks in favour of the “Northern Ireland peace process” to a huge rally at Belfast City Hall; he calls terrorists “yesterday’s men”.
1999 – Exxon and Mobil sign a US$73.7 billion agreement to merge, thus creating ExxonMobil, the world’s largest company.
1999 – In Seattle, United States, demonstrations against a World Trade Organization meeting by anti-globalization protesters catch police unprepared and force the cancellation of opening ceremonies.
1999 – British Aerospace and Marconi Electronic Systems merge to form BAE Systems, Europe’s largest defense contractor and the fourth largest aerospace firm in the world.
2000 – NASA launches STS-97, the 101st Space Shuttle mission.
2001 – Gary Ridgway is apprehended and charged with four murders as the Green River Killer.
2005 – John Sentamu becomes the first black archbishop in the Church of England with his enthronement as the 97th Archbishop of York.
2012 – An Ilyushin Il-76 cargo plane belonging to Aéro-Service, crashes into houses near Maya-Maya Airport during a thunderstorm, killing at least 32 people.
2018 – A magnitude 7.0 earthquake with its epicenter only 15 miles from Anchorage, Alaska causes significant property damage but no deaths.

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