November 20
1910:
Mexican Revolution launched by Francisco Madero.
On this day in 1910, Francisco Madero launched a failed revolt that nonetheless sparked the Mexican Revolution by inspiring hope in such leaders as Pancho Villa and Emiliano Zapata, who then mobilized their ragged armies.
1998:
American tobacco companies signed an agreement with the governments of 46 U.S. states to settle the states' claims for reimbursement of Medicaid funds they had expended to treat smoking-related illnesses, the settlement costing the tobacco manufacturers $206 billion beyond the $40 billion they had agreed to pay four other states in 1997.
1975:
Francisco Franco, ruler of Spain since his overthrow of the democratic government in 1939, died in Madrid.
1917:
For the first time, tanks were used effectively in warfare, by the British at the Battle of Cambrai.
1910: Russian author Leo Tolstoy, suffering from pneumonia, died of heart failure at the railroad station of Astapavo.
1858:
Selma Lagerl鰂, the first woman and first Swedish writer to win the Nobel Prize for Literature, was born.
1815:
In the final phases of the Napoleonic Wars, Britain, Russia, Austria, and Prussia renewed the Quadruple Alliance to prevent further French aggression.
November 21
1620:
Signing of Mayflower Compact.
On this day in 1620, 41 male passengers on the Mayflower, prior to landing at Plymouth, Massachusetts, signed the Mayflower Compact, by which they agreed to abide by the laws of the new government they would establish.
2002:
A North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) summit meeting in Prague extended an official invitation to become new alliance members to Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia, and Slovenia.
2000:
The United Farm Workers called off the boycott of California table grapes begun in 1984 by union organizer Cesar Chavez, saying the goals of the strike had been met.
1964:
The Verrazano-Narrows Bridge, spanning New York Harbor from Brooklyn to Staten Island, opened to traffic.
1920:
On Bloody Sunday, the Irish Republican Army killed 11 Englishmen suspected of being intelligence agents, and the Black and Tans took revenge the same afternoon, attacking spectators and players at a Gaelic football match in Croke Park, Dublin, killing 12 and wounding 60.
1878:
Lord Lytton, the viceroy of India, launched the Second Afghan War.
1806:
The Continental System, a blockade designed to close the entire European continent to British trade, was proclaimed when Napoleon issued the Berlin Decree.
1783:
The first manned hot-air balloon flight was made by Jean-Fran鏾is Pil鈚re de Rozier and Fran鏾is Laurent, marquis d'Arlandes, traveling from the Ch鈚eau de la Muette across the Bois de Boulogne on the edge of Paris in a balloon made by Joseph-Michel and Jacques-蓆ienne Montgolfier.
November 22
1963:
U.S. President John F. Kennedy assassinated.
The most notorious political murder in recent American history occurred this day in 1963, when John F. Kennedy, the 35th U.S. president (1961–63), was shot and killed in Dallas, Texas, while riding in an open car.
1994:
Mount Merapi, on the island of Java, erupted, killing 64 people.
1990:
Margaret Thatcher announced her resignation as British prime minister after a split occurred in the ranks of the Conservative Party.
1975:
Juan Carlos became king of Spain, two days after the death of Francisco Franco.
1718:
The pirate Blackbeard was killed off the coast of North Carolina.
November 23
1855:
Ley Juárez passed.
Passed this day in 1855 in Mexico, the Ley Juárez abolished special courts for the clergy and military in an attempt by justice minister Benito Juárez to eliminate the remnants of colonialism in Mexico and promote equality.
1946:
At least 6,000 Vietnamese civilians were killed in a French naval bombardment of the port city of Haiphong.
1935:
Lincoln Ellsworth landed on Ellsworth Land, Antarctica, and claimed it for the United States, a claim the U.S. government has never taken up.
1883:
Mexican painter José Clemente Orozco, considered the most important 20th-century muralist to work in fresco, was born.
1863:
The Battle of Chattanooga, a decisive Union victory during the American Civil War, began.
1765:
The British Stamp Act received its first repudiation from jurists in the Frederick County Court House in Frederick, Maryland.
1407:
Louis I, duc d'Orléans, was assassinated by agents of John the Fearless, duke of Burgundy, during a power struggle over control of the French king Charles VI.
November 24
1642:
Dutch discovery of Tasmania.
Dutch navigator Abel Janszoon Tasman, who sailed from Batavia (Jakarta) to investigate the practicality of a sea passage eastward to Chile and to explore New Guinea, skirted the southern shores of Tasmania this day in 1642.
2001:
The Grand National Assembly of Turkey ratified changes to the country's legal code that made women equal to men before the law and no longer subject to their husbands.
1998:
Queen Elizabeth II, speaking at the annual ceremonies opening the British Parliament, announced that the right of hereditary peers to vote in the House of Lords would end, though compromise legislation later allowed 92 hereditary peers to remain in the Lords.
1963:
Dallas nightclub owner Jack Ruby fatally shot Lee Harvey Oswald, the accused assassin of U.S. President John F. Kennedy.
1947:
The Hollywood Ten, a group of motion-picture producers, directors, and screenwriters who appeared before the House Un-American Activities Committee in October 1947, were found in contempt of Congress.
1874:
American inventor Joseph Farwell Glidden patented the first commercially successful barbed wire.
1859:
Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection was published.
1832:
A special state convention in South Carolina adopted the Ordinance of Nullification, upholding the doctrine of nullification.
1700:
Louis XIV of France proclaimed his grandson Philip to be king of Spain, beginning the War of the Spanish Succession.
1531:
The second Peace of Kappel brought an end to the Kappel Wars during the Swiss Reformation.
November 25
1970:
Japanese military base seized by Mishima Yukio.
On this day in 1970, renowned Japanese novelist Mishima Yukio and four members of his Shield Society, a private army formed to preserve Japan's martial spirit, seized control of a military headquarters near downtown Tokyo.
2002:
In London the Agatha Christie play The Mousetrap celebrated its 50th anniversary with a royal gala, having opened on November 25, 1952, and this performance being its 20,807th.
1975:
Suriname gained its independence from The Netherlands.
1942:
Leslie Groves and J. Robert Oppenheimer chose Los Alamos, New Mexico, as the site of Project Y, which developed the first atomic bomb.
1936:
Germany and Japan formed the Anti-Comintern Pact against the Soviet Union.
1863:
General Ulysses S. Grant defeated General Braxton Bragg's Confederate forces at Lookout Mountain during the American Civil War.
1846:
American temperance advocate Carry Nation, famous for using a hatchet to demolish barrooms, was born.
1277:
Nicholas III was elected pope of the Roman Catholic church.
1120:
William the Aetheling, duke of Normandy, was killed in a shipwreck on his way to England.
November 26
1942:
Premiere of Casablanca.
Set in occupied Morocco during World War II, directed by Michael Curtiz, and starring Humphrey Bogart, Ingrid Bergman, and Paul Henreid, Casablanca premiered this day in 1942 and became one of Hollywood's most revered films.
1982:
Nakasone Yasuhiro, leader of the Liberal-Democratic Party, was elected prime minister of Japan, replacing Suzuki Zenkō.
1950:
The People's Republic of China officially entered the Korean War on the side of North Korea.
1941:
U.S. Secretary of State Cordell Hull sent a harsh notice to Japan, calling for a full withdrawal from China and Indochina.
1924:
After the defeat of the White Russians and the Chinese, the Mongolian People's Republic was proclaimed.
1922:
Charles Schulz, the creator of the popular comic strip Peanuts, was born.
1909:
Eugène Ionesco, the Romanian-born French dramatist whose one-act “antiplay” La Cantatrice chauve (1949; The Bald Soprano) inspired a revolution in dramatic techniques and helped inaugurate the Theatre of the Absurd, was born.
1894:
Nicholas II, the last tsar of Russia, married Alexandra.
1883:
Sojourner Truth, the African American evangelist and reformer who applied her religious fervour to the abolitionist and women's rights movements, died.
579:
Pelagius II succeeded Benedict I as pope.
November 27
1895:
Nobel Prizes established.
Through the will drawn up by Alfred Bernhard Nobel—the Swedish chemist, engineer, and industrialist who invented dynamite and other, more powerful explosives—the Nobel Prizes were established on this day in 1895.
1983:
The revised Code of Canon Law, signed by Pope John Paul II in January, took effect.
1973:
The U.S. Senate voted overwhelmingly in favour of Gerald R. Ford's succession to the vice presidency.
1953:
Eugene O'Neill, playwright and author of Long Day's Journey into Night, died at age 65.
1942:
The French navy scuttled 73 ships at Toulon in order to avoid German seizure.
1919:
The Treaty of Neuilly, outlining the post-World War I peace terms for Bulgaria, was signed between the defeated country and the Allied powers.
1874:
Chaim Weizmann, the first president of Israel and the guiding force behind the World Zionist Organization, was born.
November 28
1943:
Opening of Tehrān Conference .
The Tehrān Conference, attended by U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, and Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin, at which Stalin pressed for an invasion of France, opened this day in 1943.
2000:
The parliament of The Netherlands passed a bill permitting euthanasia under specified conditions.
1961:
Gridiron football player Ernie Davis of Syracuse University became the first African American to win the prestigious Heisman Trophy.
1960:
Mauritania declared its independence and left the French Community.
1919:
Lady Astor became the first woman elected to the British House of Commons.
1912:
Albanian national delegates, led by Ismail Qemal, issued the Vlor
November 29
1947:
United Nations resolution for the partition of Palestine.
On this day in 1947, the United Nations General Assembly adopted a resolution (not implemented) calling for the partition of Palestine into two separate states—an Arab and a Jewish one—that would retain an economic union.
2001:
George Harrison, formerly of the Beatles, died of cancer at the home of a friend in Los Angeles.
1997:
In a ceremony that was broadcast around the world by satellite, some 28,000 couples gathered at RFK Stadium in Washington, D.C., for a “wedding” conducted by Sun Myung Moon, leader of the Unification Church.
1963:
U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson appointed the Warren Commission to investigate the assassination of John F. Kennedy.
1929:
American pioneer aviator Richard E. Byrd flew over the South Pole.
1864:
Colonel John M. Chivington led a controversial surprise attack, known as the Sand Creek Massacre, on a surrendered, partially disarmed Cheyenne Indian camp in southeastern Colorado Territory.
1850:
Prussia and Austria signed the Punctation of Olmütz, an agreement regulating the two powers' relations.
1832:
American author Louisa May Alcott, known for her children's books, especially Little Women, was born.
1830:
A Polish secret society of infantry cadets staged an uprising in Warsaw, beginning the November Insurrection.
November 30
1966:
Independence of Barbados.
Barbados, an island nation in the Caribbean situated about 100 miles (160 km) east of the Windward Islands, had gained internal self-rule in 1961 and achieved its full independence from Britain on this day in 1966.
1996:
A block of gray sandstone known as the Stone of Scone was returned to Scotland, 700 years after it had been taken to England as war booty by King Edward I.
1939:
After Finland refused to grant the Soviet Union a naval base and other concessions in the fall of 1939, Soviet troops totaling about one million men attacked Finland on several fronts, initiating the Russo-Finnish War.
1936:
A fire virtually destroyed the Crystal Palace, the giant exhibition hall that housed the Great Exhibition of 1851.
1924:
Politician Shirley Chisholm, the first African American woman to be elected to the U.S. Congress, was born.
1908:
The United States and Japan signed the Root-Takahira Agreement, which averted a drift toward possible war through the mutual acknowledgment of certain international policies and spheres of influence in the Pacific.
1874:
British statesman, orator, and author Sir Winston Churchill was born in Oxfordshire, England.
1782:
Britain and the United States signed the preliminary articles of the Treaty of Paris as part of the Peace of Paris, a collection of treaties concluding the American Revolution.
1718:
Charles XII, king of Sweden, was killed during a siege of the fortress of Fredriksten, east of Oslo Fjord, ending Sweden's “Age of Greatness.”
December 1
1955:
Rosa Parks's refusal to relinquish her bus seat.
This day in 1955, in violation of segregation laws in Montgomery, Alabama, Rosa Parks refused to surrender her bus seat to a white passenger and was arrested, sparking a 381-day bus boycott led by Martin Luther King, Jr.
2000:
Vicente Fox was inaugurated as president of Mexico, ending the dominance of the Institutional Revolutionary Party, which had ruled since 1929.
1959:
The Antarctic Treaty was signed by 12 countries, making the Antarctic continent a demilitarized zone to be preserved for scientific research.
1925:
Germany, France, Belgium, Great Britain, and Italy signed the Pact of Locarno, a series of agreements intended to guarantee peace in western Europe.
1825:
Russian Emperor Alexander I died unexpectedly in southern Russia.
1814:
General Andrew Jackson, commander of the U.S. Army of the Southwest, hastened to defend New Orleans, Louisiana, against British invasion; a series of skirmishes over the next few weeks culminated in the Battle of New Orleans.
December 2
1823:
Monroe Doctrine.
The Monroe Doctrine, which declared that the U.S. would not interfere in European affairs but that its sphere of interest included the entire Western Hemisphere, was enunciated by President James Monroe this day in 1823.
1982:
William C. DeVries implanted the first permanent artificial heart in Barney Clark.
1971:
The United Arab Emirates was formed by the union of six small emirates on the Arabian Peninsula, with a seventh emirate joining in February 1972.
1954:
The U.S. Senate voted to censure Senator Joseph R. McCarthy for his conduct in the investigation of communism in the United States.
1942:
Scientists led by Enrico Fermi conducted the world's first controlled self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction at the University of Chicago.
1884:
American monologuist and monodramatist Ruth Draper was born in New York City.
1859:
Abolitionist John Brown was hanged following a raid on Harpers Ferry, Virginia.
1804:
Napoleon was crowned emperor of France by Pope Pius VII.
December 3
1984:
Gas leak in Bhopal, India.
On this day in 1984, a gas leak from a Union Carbide plant in Bhopal, India, spread over a populated area, resulting ultimately in 15,000 to 20,000 deaths and leaving some half million survivors with chronic medical ailments.
2001:
The U.S. military announced that one of the last 80 Taliban prisoners who had surrendered on December 1 after the November uprising at a prison in Mazār-e Sharīf, Afghanistan, was a U.S. citizen, John Walker Lindh.
1967:
Christiaan Barnard of South Africa performed the first human heart transplant, at Groote Schuur Hospital in Cape Town.
1895:
Anna Freud, a founder of child psychoanalysis and one of its foremost practitioners, was born in Vienna.
1861:
In a battle during the American Civil War, Federal troops ousted the Confederates from Salem, Missouri.
1854:
After hastily constructing a fortification and barricading themselves inside, miners (“diggers”) working in the Eureka goldfield in Victoria, Australia, opened fire on government forces surrounding the stockade, the culmination of long-standing grievances on the part of the diggers.
1818:
Illinois was admitted as the 21st state of the United States of America.
1721:
German composer Johann Sebastian Bach married his second wife, Anna Magdalena Wilcken, daughter of a trumpeter at Weissenfels.
1552:
St. Francis Xavier, the leading Roman Catholic missionary of modern times, died of fever off the coast of China.
December 4
1533:
Ivan the Terrible proclaimed grand prince of Moscow.
On this day in 1533, the three-year-old who became Ivan the Terrible was proclaimed grand prince of Moscow upon the death of his father, Grand Prince Vasily III, with his mother ruling in Ivan's name until her death in 1538.
1996:
The unmanned space vehicle Mars Pathfinder was launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida, in order to explore the surface of Mars.
1918:
U.S. President Woodrow Wilson departed for France to attend the Paris Peace Conference, where, following the cessation of hostilities in World War I, the League of Nations was established and the Treaty of Versailles was drafted.
1892:
General Francisco Franco, who led the Nationalist forces that overthrew the democratic Second Republic in the Spanish Civil War (1936–39) and subsequently was dictator of Spain until his death, was born.
1679:
English philosopher and political theorist Thomas Hobbes died at age 91.
1154:
Adrian IV was elected pope, becoming the only Englishman to occupy the papal throne.
1093:
St. Anselm of Canterbury was consecrated as archbishop.
December 5
1484:
Witchcraft condemned by Pope Innocent VIII.
Innocent VIII condemned witchcraft this day in 1484 via papal bull, and subsequently he dispatched inquisitors to Germany to try witches and persecuted a chief exponent of Renaissance Platonism, Giovanni Pico della Mirandola.
1955:
The American Federation of Labor–Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO) became a united body of autonomous labour unions.
1947:
American boxer Joe Louis defended his heavyweight title against challenger Jersey Joe Walcott in New York City.
1933:
Utah became the 36th U.S. state to ratify the Twenty-first Amendment, repealing Prohibition.
1791:
Austrian composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart died in Vienna at age 35.
1784:
Phillis Wheatley, the first African American woman poet of note in the United States, died in Boston.
1782:
Martin Van Buren, who served as the eighth president of the United States (1837–41) and was one of the founders of the Democratic Party, was born.
1757:
In his greatest victory, Prussian King Frederick II (the Great) defeated the Austrians at Leuthen during the Seven Years' War.
December 6
1921:
Irish Free State established.
The British government and Irish leaders Arthur Griffith, Michael Collins, and others signed the Anglo-Irish Treaty, establishing the Irish Free State as an independent member of the British Commonwealth this day in 1921.
1992:
The Babri Masjid (“Mosque of Bābur”) in Ayodhya was destroyed by Hindu fundamentalists, leading to Hindu-Muslim riots throughout India.
1973:
Gerald R. Ford was sworn in as vice president of the United States, succeeding Spiro T. Agnew, who had resigned.
1917:
Finland declared itself independent of Russia, following the Bolshevik Revolution.
1534:
Sebastián de Belalcázar, under the authority of Francisco Pizarro, occupied the Indian city of Quito in what is now Ecuador.
1421:
King Henry VI of England was born in Windsor, Berkshire.
December 7
1941:
Pearl Harbor attack.
On this day in 1941, Japanese bombers launched a surprise aerial attack on the U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor on the island of Oahu, Hawaii, precipitating the entry of the United States into World War II.
1975:
Shortly after declaring its independence, East Timor was invaded and occupied by Indonesian forces.
1972:
American astronaut Eugene Andrew Cernan commanded the last manned flight to the Moon, effectively ending the Apollo program.
1941:
Adolf Hitler issued his Night and Fog Decree, a secret order for the arrest and execution of “persons endangering German security.”
1917:
The United States declared war on the Austro-Hungarian Empire during World War I.
1787:
Delaware became the first state to ratify the U.S. Constitution.
December 8
1980:
John Lennon fatally shot by deranged fan.
On this day in 1980, British musician John Lennon—who rose to fame with the Beatles and had a successful solo career—was murdered outside his home in the Dakota building in New York City, causing a global outpouring of grief.
2004:
Mia Hamm, a leading figure in U.S. women's football (soccer), retired from the sport.
1991:
Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus signed an agreement to form the Commonwealth of Independent States in the wake of the demise of the Soviet Union.
1987:
The intifāḍah, an uprising of Palestinians in the territories occupied by Israel, began this week.
1987:
U.S. President Ronald Reagan and Soviet General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev signed a nuclear weapons reduction treaty.
1903:
English thinker and scholar Herbert Spencer, best known for his work The Synthetic Philosophy, died in Brighton, Sussex, England.
1854:
Pope Pius IX proclaimed the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception, asserting that Mary, Jesus' mother, was preserved free from the effects of “original sin” from the first instant of her conception.
1542:
Mary, Queen of Scots, was born, and six days later she became queen of Scotland.
December 9
1990:
Lech Wałęsa elected president of Poland.
On this day in 1990, Lech Wałęsa—who had led Solidarity, Poland's first independent trade union, and had received the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1983—won Poland's first direct presidential election by a landslide.
1998:
The United Nations General Assembly declared anti-Semitism a form of racism.
1990:
Slobodan Milošević was reelected president of Serbia at the head of the Socialist Party, formerly the League of Communists of Serbia (LCS).
1961:
Tanganyika became independent, with Julius Nyerere as its first prime minister, and in 1964 the territory united with the island of Zanzibar to form Tanzania.
1958:
The John Birch Society was founded in the United States by Robert H.W. Welch, Jr.
1824:
Revolutionary forces under the leadership of Venezuelan Antonio José de Sucre defeated the Spanish royal army at the Battle of Ayacucho.