Wednesday, November 30, 2011

Historical Events on 1 Dec

Historical Events on 1 Dec

1167 - The Lombard League is formed in northern Italy.
1420 - Henry V of England enters Paris.
1640 - End of the Iberian Union: Portugal acclaims as King João IV of Portugal, thus ending a 60 year period of personal union of the crowns of Portugal and Spain and the end of the rule of the House of Habsburg (also called the Philippine Dynasty). The Spanish
1768 - The slave ship Fredensborg sinks off Tromøy in Norway.
1821 - The first constitution of Costa Rica is issued.
1822 - Peter I is crowned as Emperor of Brazil.
1824 - U.S. presidential election, 1824: Since no candidate received a majority of the total electoral college votes in the election, the United States House of Representatives is given the task to decide the winner (as stipulated by the Twelfth Amendment to the
1826 - French philhellene Fabvier forces his way through the Turkish cordon and ascends the Acropolis of Athens, which had been under siege.
1864 - In his State of the Union Address President Abraham Lincoln reaffirms the necessity of ending slavery as ordered ten weeks earlier in the Emancipation Proclamation.
1884 - American Old West: Near Frisco, New Mexico, deputy sheriff Elfego Baca holds off a gang of 80 Texan cowboys who want to kill him for arresting Charles McCarthy.
1913 - Crete, having obtained self rule from Turkey after the first Balkan war, is annexed by Greece.
1913 - The Ford Motor Company introduces the first moving assembly line.
1918 - Transylvania unites with Romania, following the incorporation of Bessarabia (March 27) and Bukovina (November 28). National Council of Romanians in Banat had voted for union with the Kingdom of Romania. National Council of Romanians in Transylvania had vo
1918 - Iceland becomes a sovereign state, yet remains a part of the Danish kingdom.
1918 - The Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes (later known as the Kingdom of Yugoslavia) is proclaimed.
1919 - Lady Astor becomes first female member of the British Parliament to take her seat (she had been elected to that position on November 28).
1925 - World War I aftermath: The final Locarno Treaty is signed in London, establishing post-war territorial settlements.
1934 - In the Soviet Union, Politburo member Sergei Kirov is shot dead at the Communist Party headquarters in Leningrad by Leonid Nikolayev.
1941 - World War II: Fiorello La Guardia, Mayor of New York City and Director of the Office of Civilian Defense, signs Administrative Order 9, creating the Civil Air Patrol.
1952 - The New York Daily News reports the first successful sexual reassignment operation.
1955 - American Civil Rights Movement: In Montgomery, Alabama, seamstress Rosa Parks refuses to give her bus seat to a white man and is arrested for violating the city's racial segregation laws, an incident which leads to the Montgomery Bus Boycott.
1958 - The Our Lady of the Angels School Fire in Chicago, Illinois kills 92 children and three nuns.
1958 - Central African Republic becomes independent from France.
1959 - Cold War: Antarctic Treaty signed , which sets aside Antarctica as a scientific preserve and bans military activity on that continent.
1960 - Paul McCartney and Pete Best arrested then deported from Hamburg, Germany for accusation of attempted arson.
1961 - The independent Republic of West Papua is proclaimed in modern-day Western New Guinea.
1963 - Nagaland becomes the 16th state of India.
1964 - Vietnam War: U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson and his top-ranking advisers meet to discuss plans to bomb North Vietnam.
1965 - The Border Security Force is formed in India as a special force to guard the borders.
1969 - Vietnam War: The first draft lottery in the United States is held since World War II.
1971 - Indian Army occupies part of Kashmir.
1971 - Cambodian Civil War: Khmer Rouge rebels intensify assaults on Cambodian government positions, forcing their retreat from Kompong Thmar and nearby Ba Ray.
1973 - Papua New Guinea gains self government from Australia.
1974 - Northwest Orient Airlines Flight 6231, crashes northwest of John F. Kennedy International Airport.
1974 - TWA Flight 514, a Boeing 727, crashes northwest of Dulles International Airport killing all 92 people on-board.
1981 - A Yugoslavian Inex Adria Aviopromet DC-9 crashes in Corsica killing all 180 people on-board.
1982 - At the University of Utah, Barney Clark becomes the first person to receive a permanent artificial heart.
1988 - Benazir Bhutto is appointed Prime Minister of Pakistan.
1989 - Right-wing military rebel Reform the Armed forces Movement (RAM) attempts to oust Philippine President Corazon Aquino in a failed bloody coup d' etat.
1989 - Cold War: East Germany's parliament abolishes the constitutional provision granting the communist party the leading role in the state.
1990 - Channel Tunnel sections started from the United Kingdom and France meet 40 meters beneath the seabed.
1991 - Cold War: Ukrainian voters overwhelmingly approve a referendum for independence from the Soviet Union.
1998 - Exxon announces a $73.7 billion USD deal to buy Mobil, thus creating Exxon-Mobil, the world's largest company.
2001 - Captain Bill Compton brings Trans World Airlines Flight 220, an MD-83, into St. Louis International Airport bringing to an end 76 years of TWA operations following TWA’s purchase by American Airlines.
800 - Charlemagne judges the accusations against Pope Leo III in the Vatican.

Tuesday, November 29, 2011

Historical Events on 30 Nov

Historical Events on 30 Nov

1718 - Swedish king Charles XII dies during a siege of the fortress Fredriksten in Norway.
1782 - American Revolutionary War: Treaty of Paris (1783) â€" In Paris, representatives from the United States and the Kingdom of Great Britain sign preliminary peace articles (later formalized as the 1783 Treaty of Paris).
1786 - Peter Leopold Joseph of Habsburg-Lorraine, Grand Duke of Tuscany, promulgates a penal reform making his country the first state to abolish the death penalty. November 30 is therefore commemorated by 300 cities around the world as Cities for Life Day.
1803 - In New Orleans, Louisiana, Spanish representatives officially transfer 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 against Federalist-partisan Supreme Court of the United States Justice Samuel Chase.
1824 - First ground is broken at Allenburg for the building of the original Welland Canal.
1829 - First Welland Canal opens for a trial run, 5 years to the day from the ground breaking.
1853 - Crimean War: Battle of Sinop â€" 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: Battle of Franklin â€" The Army of Tennessee led by General John Bell Hood mounts a dramatically unsuccessful frontal assault on Union positions commanded by John McAllister Schofield around Franklin, Tennessee (Hood lost six generals
1868 - The inauguration of a statue of King Charles XII of Sweden takes place in the King's garden in Stockholm.
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.
1902 - American Old West: Second-in-command of Butch Cassidy's Wild Bunch gang, Kid Curry Logan, is sentenced to 20 years imprisonment with hard labor.
1908 - A mine explosion in the mining town of Marianna, Pennsylvania kills 154.
1916 - Costa Rica becomes a signatory to the Buenos Aires copyright treaty.
1934 - The steam locomotive Flying Scotsman becomes the first to officially exceed 100mph.
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.
1940 - Lucille Ball marries Desi Arnaz in Greenwich, Connecticut.
1942 - World War II Guadalcanal Campaign: Battle of Tassafaronga â€" A smaller squadron of Japanese destroyers led by Raizo Tanaka defeats a US cruiser force under Carleton H. Wright.
1943 - World War II: Tehran Conference â€" U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, and Soviet leader Joseph Stalin agree to the planned June 1944 invasion of Europe code-named Operation Overlord.
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 in the only documented case of a human being hit by a rock from space.
1962 - The United Nations General Assembly elects U Thant of Burma as its 3rd UN Secretary-General.
1966 - Barbados becomes independent from the United Kingdom.
1967 - The People's Republic of South Yemen becomes independent from the United Kingdom.
1967 - The Pakistan Peoples Party is founded by Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto who becomes its first Chairman later as the Head of state and Head of government after the 1971 Civil War.
1971 - Iran seizes the Greater and Lesser Tunbs from the United Arab Emirates.
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 due to the fact that troop levels are now down to 27,000.
1974 - Lucy (Australopithecus) is discovered by Donald Johanson, Maurice Taieb, Yves Coppens and Tim White in the Middle Awash of Ethiopia's Afar Depression.
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 ended inconclusively on December 17).
1982 - A parcel bomb is delivered to British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher at 10 Downing Street.
1982 - Michael Jackson releases his sensational hit, "Thriller".
1988 - Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co. buys RJR Nabisco for $25.07 billion USD.
1989 - Richard Mallory of Palm Harbor, Florida becomes serial killer Aileen Wuornos's first victim.
1989 - Deutsche Bank board member Alfred Herrhausen is killed by a Red Army Faction terrorist bomb.
1993 - U.S. President Bill Clinton signs the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act (the Brady Bill) into law.
1995 - Official end of Operation Desert Storm.
1998 - Deutsche Bank announces a $10 billion USDdeal to buy Bankers Trust, thus creating the largest financial institution in the world.
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.
1999 - In Seattle, Washington, United States, protests against the WTO meeting by anti-globalization protesters catch police unprepared and force the cancellation of opening ceremonies.
2004 - Longtime Jeopardy! champion Ken Jennings of Salt Lake City, Utah finally loses, leaving him with $2,520,700 USD, television's all-time biggest game show haul.
2004 - Lion Air Flight 538 crash lands in Surakarta, Central Java, Indonesia, killing 26.
2004 - Department of Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge resigns.
2005 - John Sentamu becomes the first African American archbishop in the Church of England with his enthronement as the 97th Archbishop of York.
2007 - Hillary Clinton presidential campaign office hostage crisis: Leeland Eisenberg entered the campaign office of Hillary Clinton in Rochester, New Hampshire with a device suspected of being a bomb and held three people hostage for 5 hours.

Monday, November 28, 2011

Historical Events on 29 Nov

Historical Events on 29 Nov

1777 - San Jose, California, is founded as el Pueblo de San José de Guadalupe. It is the first civilian settlement, or pueblo, in Alta California.
1781 - The crew of the slave ship Zong murders 133 Africans by dumping them into the sea in order to claim insurance.
1830 - November Uprising: An armed rebellion against Russia's rule in Poland begins.
1845 - 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, signed in Olomouc means diplomatic capitulation of Prussia to Austrian Empire, which took over the leadership of German Confederation.
1864 - 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 - Confederate advance into Tennessee misses opportunity to crush Union army. Gen. Hood angered, leads to Battle of Franklin.
1872 - 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.
1890 - At West Point, New York, the United States Naval Academy defeats the United States Military Academy 24-0 in the first Army-Navy football game.
1893 - Ziqiang Institute, today known as Wuhan University, is founded by Zhang Zhidong, governor of Hubei and Hunan Provinces in late Qing Dynasty of China after his memorial to the throne is approved by the Qing Government.
1910 - The first US patent for inventing the traffic lights system is issued to Ernest Sirrine.
1915 - Fire destroys most of the buildings on Santa Catalina Island, California.
1922 - Howard Carter opens the tomb of Pharaoh Tutankhamun to the public.
1929 - U.S. Admiral Richard Byrd becomes the first person to fly over the South Pole.
1934 - The Chicago Bears defeat the Detroit Lions 19-16 in the first nationally broadcast game.
1943 - The second session of AVNOJ, the Anti-fascist council of national liberation of Yugoslavia, is held in Jajce, Bosnia and Herzegovina, determining the post-war ordering of the country.
1944 - The first surgery (on a human) to correct blue baby syndrome is performed by Alfred Blalock and Vivien Thomas.
1945 - The Federal People's Republic of Yugoslavia is declared.
1947 - The United Nations General Assembly votes to partition Palestine (The Partition Plan).
1950 - Korean War: North Korean and Chinese troops force United Nations forces to retreat from North Korea.
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 orbited the Earth twice and splashed-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 Airlines Flight 831: A Douglas DC-8 carrying 118, crashes after taking-off from Dorval Airport near Montreal.
1965 - Canadian Space Agency launches the satellite Alouette 2.
1967 - Vietnam War: U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara announces his resignation.
1972 - Nolan Bushnell (co-founder of Atari) releases Pong (the first commercially successful video game) in Andy Capp’s Tavern in Sunnyvale, California.
1983 - Soviet war in Afghanistan: The United Nations General Assembly passes United Nations Resolution 37/37, stating that Soviet Union forces should withdraw from Afghanistan.
1987 - A Korean Air Boeing 707 explodes over the Thai-Burmese border, killing 155.
1990 - Gulf War: The United Nations Security Council passes United Nations Security Council Resolution 678, authorizing "use all necessary means to uphold and implement" United Nations Security Council Resolution 660 "to restore international peace and security"
2005 - The new Croatian Communist Party (KPH) is founded in Vukovar.
2007 - The Armed Forces of the Philippines lay siege to The Peninsula Manila after soldiers led by Senator Antonio Trillanes stage a mutiny.
2007 - A 7.4 magnitude earthquake occurs off the northern coast of Martinique. This affected the Eastern Caribbean as far north as Puerto Rico and as south as Trinidad.

Sunday, November 27, 2011

Historical Events on 28 Nov

Historical Events on 28 Nov

1095 - On the last day of the Council of Clermont, Pope Urban II appoints Bishop Adhemar of Le Puy and Count Raymond IV of Toulouse to lead the First Crusade to the Holy Land.
1443 - Skanderbeg and his forces liberate Kruja in Middle Albania and raise the Albanian flag.
1520 - After navigating through the South American strait, three ships under the command of Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan reach the Pacific Ocean, becoming the first Europeans to sail from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific.
1582 - In Stratford-upon-Avon, William Shakespere and Anne Hathaway pay a £40 bond for their marriage license.
1660 - At Gresham College, 12 men, including Christopher Wren, Robert Boyle, John Wilkins, and Sir Robert Moray decide to found what is later known as the Royal Society.
1729 - Natchez Indians massacre 138 Frenchmen, 35 French women, and 56 children at Fort Rosalie, near the site of modern-day Natchez, Mississippi.
1785 - The Treaty of Hopewell is signed.
1814 - The Times in London is for the first time printed by automatic, steam powered presses built by the German inventors Friedrich Koenig and Andreas Friedrich Bauer, signaling the beginning of the availability of newspapers to a mass audience.
1821 - Panama Independence Day: Panama separates from Spain and joins Gran Colombia.
1843 - Ka Lahui: Hawaiian Independence Day - The Kingdom of Hawaii is officially recognized by the United Kingdom and France as an independent nation.
1862 - American Civil War: In the Battle of Cane Hill, Union troops under General John Blunt defeat General John Marmaduke's Confederates.
1893 - Women vote in a national election for the first time: the 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.
1905 - Irish nationalist Arthur Griffith founds Sinn Féin as a political party with the main aim of establishing a dual monarchy in Ireland.
1907 - In Haverhill, Massachusetts, scrap-metal dealer Louis B. Mayer opens his first movie theater.
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.
1918 - Bucovina voted for the union with the Kingdom of Romania.
1919 - Lady Astor is elected as a Member of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. She is the first woman to sit as a British MP, although not the first to be elected - that was Countess Markiewicz.
1920 - Kilmichael Ambush, Battle of the Irish War of Independence.
1929 - Ernie Nevers of the then Chicago Cardinals scores all the points in this game as the Cardinals defeat the Chicago Bears 40-6.
1942 - In Boston, Massachusetts, a fire in the Cocoanut Grove nightclub kills 491 people.
1943 - World War II: Tehran Conference - U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Soviet leader Joseph Stalin meet in Tehran, Iran to discuss war strategy.
1944 - Albania is liberated by the Albanian partisans.
1958 - Chad, the Republic of the Congo, and Gabon become autonomous republics within the French Community.
1960 - Mauritania becomes independent of France.
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.
1964 - Mariner program: NASA launches the Mariner 4 probe toward Mars.
1965 - Vietnam War: In response to U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson's call for "more flags" in Vietnam, Philippines President Elect Ferdinand Marcos announces he will send troops to help fight in South Vietnam.
1975 - East Timor declares its independence from Portugal.
1975 - As the World Turns and The Edge of Night, the final two American soap operas that had resisted going to pre-taped broadcasts, air their last live episodes.
1979 - The Mount Erebus disaster: An Air New Zealand DC-10 crashes into Mount Erebus on a sightseeing trip, killing all 257 people on board.
1982 - Representatives from 88 countries gather in Geneva to discuss world trade and ways to work toward aspects of free trade.
1984 - Over 250 years after their deaths, William Penn and his wife Hannah Callowhill Penn are made Honorary Citizens of the United States.
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 they will give up their monopoly on political power.
1994 - Voters in Norway reject European Union membership (see Norwegian EU referendum, 1994).
1994 - In Portage, Wisconsin, convicted serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer is clubbed to death by an inmate in the Columbia Correctional Institution gymnasium.
1997 - First public appearance of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), an ethnic Albanian guerrilla group that fought for the independence of Kosovo from Serbia.
1998 - The people of Albania vote for their new Constitution in a referendum.
2000 - Ukrainian politician Oleksander Moroz begins the Cassette Scandal by publicly accusing President Leonid Kuchma of involvement in the murder of journalist Georgiy Gongadze.
2004 - Male Poʻo-uli dies of Avian malaria in the Maui Bird Conservation Center in Olinda, Hawaii before it could breed, making the species in all probability extinct.

Saturday, November 26, 2011

Historical Events on 27 Nov

Historical Events on 27 Nov

1095 - Pope Urban II declares the First Crusade at the Council of Clermont.
1295 - The first elected representatives from Lancashire were called to Westminster by King Edward I to attend what later became known as "The Model Parliament".
1703 - The first Eddystone Lighthouse is destroyed in the Great Storm of 1703.
1807 - The Portuguese Royal Family leaves Lisbon to escape from Napoleonic troops
1815 - Adoption of Constitution of the Kingdom of Poland
1839 - In Boston, Massachusetts, the American Statistical Association is founded.
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.
1868 - Indian Wars: Battle of Washita River - United States Army Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer leads an attack on Cheyenne living on reservation land.
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.
1901 - U.S. Army War College is established.
1912 - Spain declares a protectorate over the north shore of Morocco.
1919 - Haiti becomes a signatory to the Buenos Aires copyright treaty.
1924 - In New York City, the first Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade is held.
1934 - Bank robber Baby Face Nelson dies in a shoot-out with the FBI.
1940 - In Romania, the ruling party Iron Guard arrests and executes over 60 of exiled King Carol II of Romania's aides, including former minister Nicolae Iorga.
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: An explosion at a RAF ammunition dump at Fauld, Staffordshire kills seventy people.
1954 - Alger Hiss is released from prison after serving 44 months for perjury.
1963 - The Convention on the Unification of Certain Points of Substantive Law on Patents for Invention is signed at Strasbourg.
1964 - Cold War: Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru appeals to the United States and the Soviet Union to end nuclear testing and to start nuclear disarmament, stating that such an action would "save humanity from the ultimate disaster".
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.
1971 - Mars 2 of the Soviet space program landed on Mars.
1973 - The Twenty-fifth Amendment: The United States Senate votes 92 to 3 to confirm Gerald Ford as Vice President of the United States (on December 6, the House confirmed him 387 to 35).
1975 - The Provisional IRA assassinates Ross McWhirter, after a press conference in which McWhirter announced a reward for the capture of those responsible for multiple bombings and shootings across England.
1978 - In San Francisco, California, city mayor George Moscone and openly gay city supervisor Harvey Milk are assassinated by former supervisor Dan White.
1983 - A Colombian Boeing 747 crashes near Madrid's Barajas Airport, killing 183.
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.
1990 - The British Conservative Party chooses John Major to succeed Margaret Thatcher as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.
1991 - The United Nations Security Council adopts UN Security Council Resolution 721, leading the way to the establishment of peacekeeping operations in Yugoslavia.
1992 - Two Venezuelan F-16s took part in the November Venezuelan Coup Attempt on the side of the loyalists.
1992 - For the second time in a year, military forces try to overthrow president Carlos Andres Perez in Venezuela.
1997 - Twenty-five are killed in the second Souhane massacre in Algeria.
1999 - The left-wing 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 returned the relics of Saint John Chrysostom to the Eastern Orthodox Church.
2005 - The first partial human face transplant is completed in Amiens, France.
2005 - President El Hadj Omar Bongo Ondimba of Gabon, in power since 1967 and the longest-serving head of state in the world, was re-elected to his third consecutive seven-year term.
2006 - The Canadian House of Commons endorses Prime Minister Stephen Harper's motion to declare Québécois a nation within a unified Canada.
2006 - Francesco Cossiga, Italian politician and former President of the Italian Republic, resigned from his position as lifetime senator.

Friday, November 25, 2011

Historical Events on 26 Nov

Historical Events on 26 Nov

1476 - Vlad III Dracula defeats Basarab Laiota with the help of Stephen the Great and Stephen V Bathory 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.
1784 - Catholic Apostolic Prefecture of the United States established.
1789 - A national Thanksgiving Day is observed in the United States as recommended by President George Washington and approved by Congress.
1805 - Official opening of Thomas Telford's Pontcysyllte Aqueduct.
1825 - At Union College in Schenectady, New York a group of college students form Kappa Alpha Society, the first college social fraternity.
1842 - The University of Notre Dame is founded.
1863 - American Civil War: Mine Run - Union forces under General George Meade position against troops led by Confederate General Robert E. Lee.
1865 - Battle of Papudo: The Spanish navy engages a combined Peruvian-Chilean fleet north of Valparaiso, Chile.
1909 - Sigma Alpha Mu is founded in the City College of New York by 8 Jewish young men.
1913 - Phi Sigma Sigma is founded at Hunter College in New York City.
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 Podgorica Assembly votes for "union of the people", declaring assimilation into the Kingdom of Serbia.
1922 - 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).
1922 - Howard Carter and Lord Carnarvon become the first people to enter the tomb of Egyptian King Tutankhamun in over 3000 years.
1939 - Shelling of Mainila: The Soviet Army orchestrates the incident which is used to justify the start of the Winter War with Finland four days later.
1941 - U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt signs a bill establishing the fourth Thursday in November as Thanksgiving Day in the United States.
1942 - Holocaust: Shoah: 572 Norwegian Jews are deported to Auschwitz on the cargo vessel Donau. This was the first step on the journey to the death camp Auschwitz. Altogether the total number of Jews deported from Norway was 767. 25 of the deported survived.
1942 - World War II: Yugoslav Partisans convene the first meeting of the Anti-Fascist Council of National Liberation of Yugoslavia at Bihać in northwestern Bosnia.
1944 - World War II: Germany begins V-1 and V-2 attacks on Antwerp, Belgium.
1949 - The Indian Constituent Assembly adopts India's constitution.
1950 - Korean War: Troops from the People's Republic of China launch a massive counterattack in North Korea against South Korean and American forces (Battle of Chosin Reservoir), ending any hopes of a quick end to the conflict.
1965 - In the Hammaguir launch facility in the Sahara Desert, France launches a Diamant-A rocket with its first satellite, Asterix-1 on board, becoming the third country to enter outer space.
1968 - Vietnam War: United States Air Force helicopter pilot James P. Fleming rescues an Army Special Forces unit pinned down by Viet Cong fire and is later awarded the Medal of Honor.
1970 - In Basse-Terre, Guadeloupe, 1.5 inches (38.1mm) of rain fall in a minute, the heaviest rainfall ever on record.
1977 - 'Vrillon', claiming to be the representative of the 'Ashtar Galactic Command', takes over Britain's Southern Television for six minutes at 5:12 PM.
1983 - Brinks Mat robbery: In London, 6,800 gold bars worth nearly £26 million are stolen from the Brinks Mat vault at Heathrow Airport.
1986 - Iran-Contra scandal: U.S. President Ronald Reagan announces the members of what will become known as the Tower Commission.
1990 - The Delta II rocket makes its maiden flight.
1998 - Tony Blair becomes the first Prime Minister of the United Kingdom to address the Republic of Ireland's parliament.
2003 - Concorde makes its last ever 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.
43 BC - The Second Triumvirate alliance of Gaius Julius Caesar Octavianus ("Octavian", later "Caesar Augustus"), Marcus Aemilius Lepidus, and Mark Antony is formed.
783 - The Asturian queen Adosinda is put up in a monastery to prevent her kin from retaking the throne from Mauregatus.

Thursday, November 24, 2011

Historical Events on 25 Nov

Historical Events on 25 Nov

1034 - Máel Coluim mac Cináeda, King of Scots dies. Donnchad, the son of his second daughter Bethóc and Crínán of Dunkeld, inherits the throne.
1120 - The White Ship sinks in the English Channel, drowning William Adelin, son of Henry I of England.
1177 - Baldwin IV of Jerusalem and Raynald of Chatillon defeat Saladin at the Battle of Montgisard.
1491 - The siege of Granada, last Moorish stronghold in Spain, begins.
1542 - Battle of Solway Moss. The English army defeats the Scots.
1667 - A deadly earthquake rocks Shemakha, in the Caucasus, killing 80,000 people.
1703 - The Great Storm of 1703, the greatest windstorm ever recorded in the southern part of Great Britain, reaches its peak intensity which it maintains through November 27. Winds gust up to 120 mph, and 9,000 people perish in the mighty gale.
1758 - French and Indian War: British forces capture Fort Duquesne from French control.
1758 - Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania is founded.
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: Stanislaus 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.
1839 - A cyclone slams India with high winds and a 40 foot storm surge, destroying the port city of Coringa (never to be entirely rebuilt again). The storm wave sweeps inland, taking with it 20,000 ships and thousands of people. An estimated 300,000 deaths resul
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.
1867 - Alfred Nobel patents dynamite.
1874 - The United States Greenback Party is established as a political party consisting primarily of farmers affected by the Panic of 1873.
1876 - Indian Wars: In retaliation for the American defeat at the Battle of the Little Bighorn, United States Army troops sack Chief Dull Knife's sleeping Cheyenne village at the headwaters of the Powder River.
1905 - The Danish Prins Carl arrives in Norway to become King Haakon VII of Norway.
1913 - Panama becomes a signatory to the Buenos Aires copyright treaty.
1918 - Vojvodina, former Austro-Hungarian crownland, proclaims its secession from this state to join the Kingdom of Serbia.
1926 - The deadliest tornado outbreak in U.S. November history strikes on Thanksgiving day. 27 twisters of great strength reported in the Midwest, including the strongest November tornado, an estimated F4, that devastates Heber Springs, Arkansas. 51 deaths in Ar
1936 - In Berlin, Germany and Japan sign the Anti-Comintern Pact, thus agreeing to consult on what measures to take "to safeguard their common interests" in case of an unprovoked attack by the Soviet Union against either nation.
1940 - First flight of the deHavilland Mosquito and Martin B-26 Marauder.
1941 - Finland joined the Anti-Comintern Pact.
1943 - Statehood of Bosnia and Herzegovina was re-established at the Anti-Fascist Council of National Liberation of Yugoslavia.
1944 - World War II: Battle of Peleliu - At Peleliu, Palau, American forces led by the general officer William H. Rupertus defeat the Japanese army led by Colonel Kunio Nakagawa.
1944 - World War II: A German V-2 rocket hits a Woolworth's store in Deptford, United Kingdom, killing 160 shoppers.
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 "Storm of the Century", a violent snowstorm, paralyzes the northeastern United States and the Appalachians, bringing winds up to 100 mph and sub-zero temperatures. Pickens, West Virginia, records 57 inches of snow. 323 people die due to the storm.
1950 - The People's Republic of China joins the Korean War, sending thousands of troops across the Yalu river border to fight United Nations forces.
1952 - Agatha Christie's murder-mystery play The Mousetrap opens at the Ambassadors Theatre in London and eventually becomes the longest continuously-running play in history.
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.
1970 - In Japan, author Yukio Mishima and two compatriots commit ritualistic suicide after an unsuccessful coup attempt.
1973 - George Papadopoulos, head of the military Regime of the Colonels in Greece, is ousted in a military coup led by Lieutenant General Phaidon Gizikis.
1975 - Suriname gains independence from the Netherlands.
1977 - Former Senator Benigno Aquino, Jr. was found "guilty" by the Philippine Military Commission No. 2 and was sentenced to death by firing squad.
1982 - The Minneapolis Thanksgiving Day Fire destroys an entire city block, including the Northwestern National Bank building and the recently closed Donaldson's Department Store.
1984 - 36 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: US 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 was officially opened in the Persian Gulf.
1987 - Supertyphoon Nina pummels the Philippines with category 5 winds of 165 mph and a surge that swallows entire villages. at least 1,036 deaths attributed to the storm.
1988 - German politician Rita Süssmuth becomes president of the Bundestag.
1992 - The Czechoslovakia Federal Assembly votes to split the country into the Czech Republic and Slovakia from January 1, 1993.
1994 - Sony founder Akio Morita announces he will be stepping down as CEO of the company.
1996 - An Ice storm strikes the central U.S. killing 26 people. Powerful windstorm affects Florida, winds gust over 90 mph, toppling trees and flipping trailers.
2000 - 2000 Baku earthquake took place.
2005 - Polish Minister of National Defence Radek Sikorski opens Warsaw Pact archives to historians. Maps of possible nuclear strikes against Western Europe, as well as the possible nuclear annihilation of 43 Polish cities and 2 million of its citizens by Soviet-
2007 - The first European Parliament election and a referendum on changing the voting system (called by the President and declared invalid because of insufficient turnout) were held in Romania.
2007 - President of Georgia Mikheil Saakashvili resigns.

Wednesday, November 23, 2011

Historical Events on 24 Nov

Historical Events on 24 Nov

1190 - Isabella of Jerusalem marries Conrad of Montferrat at Acre, making him de jure King.
1639 - Jeremiah Horrocks observes the transit of Venus, an event he had predicted.
1642 - Abel Tasman becomes the first European to discover the island Van Diemen's Land (later renamed Tasmania).
1859 - Charles Darwin publishes 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.
1898 - The International Conference of Rome for the Social Defense Against Anarchists opens.
1917 - Nine police officers and one civilian are killed when a bomb explodes at the Milwaukee, Wisconsin police headquarters building.
1922 - Author and Irish Republican Army member Robert Erskine Childers is executed by an Irish Free State firing squad 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.
1941 - World War II: The United States grants Lend-Lease to the Free French.
1943 - World War II: The USS Liscome Bay is torpedoed near Tarawa and sinks with nearly 650 men killed.
1944 - World War II: Bombing of Tokyo - The first bombing raid against the Japanese capital from the east and by land is carried out by 88 American aircraft.
1947 - Red Scare: After the so-called Hollywood 10 refuse to co-operate with the House Un-American Activities Committee concerning allegations of Communist influence in the movie industry, the United States House of Representatives votes 346 to 17 to approve cit
1962 - The West Berlin branch of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany forms a separate party, the Socialist Unity Party of West Berlin.
1963 - Lee Harvey Oswald is assassinated by Jack Ruby in the basement of Dallas police department headquarters on live television.
1963 - Vietnam War: Newly sworn-in US President Lyndon B. Johnson confirms that the United States intends to continue supporting South Vietnam both militarily and economically.
1965 - Joseph Désiré Mobutu seizes power in the Congo and becomes President; he goes on to rule the country (which he renames Zaire in 1971) for over 30 years, until being overthrown by rebels in 1997.
1966 - New York City experiences the smoggiest day in the city's history.
1966 - A Bulgarian plane with 82 people on board crashes near Bratislava, Slovakia.
1969 - Apollo program: The Apollo 12 command module splashes down safely in the Pacific Ocean, ending the second manned mission to 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 US$200,000 in ransom money - neither he nor the money have ever been found.
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.
1992 - In the People's Republic of China, a China Southern Airlines domestic flight crashes, killing all 141 people on-board.
1993 - In Liverpool, 11-year-olds Robert Thompson and Jon Venables are convicted of the murder of 2-year-old James Bulger.
2005 - Conservative leader Stephen Harper, the leader of the Official Opposition in the Canadian Parliament, introduces a motion of no confidence, which NDP leader Jack Layton seconds. The motion is passed on November 28 leading to the dissolution of the 38th Ca
2006 - Israeli rapist Benny Sela escapes from police custody while being transferred to a court hearing.
380 - Theodosius I makes his adventus, or formal entry, into Constantinople.

Tuesday, November 22, 2011

Historical Events on 23 Nov

Historical Events on 23 Nov

1227 - Polish Prince Leszek I the White is assassinated at an assembly of Piast dukes at GÄ…sawa.
1248 - Conquest of Seville by the 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.
1531 - The Second war of Kappel results in the dissolution of the Protestant alliance in Switzerland.
1644 - Areopagitica, a pamphlet decrying censorship, and written by John Milton is published.
1654 - French mathematician, scientist, and religious philosopher Blaise Pascal experiences an intense, mystical vision that marks him for life.
1844 - Independence of the Duke of Schleswig-Holstein from Denmark.
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 were hanged in Manchester, England for rescuing two Irish men from jail.
1869 - In Dumbarton, Scotland, the clipper Cutty Sark is launched - one of the last clippers ever to be built, and the only one still surviving to this day.
1876 - Corrupt Tammany Hall leader William Marcy 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 - General elections in Italy.
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 become his heir.
1903 - Colorado Governor James Peabody sends the state militia into the town of Cripple Creek to break up a miners' strike.
1914 - The US Army retreats from Mexico.
1934 - An Anglo-Ethiopian boundary commission in the Ogaden discovers an Italian garrison at Walwal, which lay well within Ethiopian territory. This leads to the Abyssinia Crisis.
1936 - The first edition of Life is published.
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 - The Workers Party of South Korea is founded.
1954 - For the first time, the Dow Jones Industrial Average closes above the peak it reached just before the 1929 crash.
1955 - The Cocos Islands are transferred from the control of the United Kingdom to Australia.
1959 - General Charles de Gaulle, President of France, declares in a speech in Strasbourg his vision for a "Europe, from the Atlantic to the Urals."
1963 - Dr Who first broadcast
1971 - The representatives of the People's Republic of China first attended the United Nations, including the United Nations Security Council, as China's representatives (See China and the United Nations).
1976 - Apneist Jacques Mayol is the first man to reach a depth of 100 m undersea without breathing equipment.
1979 - In Dublin, Ireland, Irish Republican Army member Thomas McMahon is sentenced to life in prison for the assassination of Lord Mountbatten.
1980 - A series of earthquakes in southern Italy kills approximately 4,800 people.
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 while en route from Athens to Cairo. When the plane lands in Malta, Egyptian commandos storm the hijacked jetliner, but 60 people die in the raid.
1990 - The first all woman expedition to the south pole (3 Americans, 1 Japanese and 12 Russians), sets off from Antarctica on the 1st leg of a 70 day, 1287 kilometre ski trek.
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 123.
1996 - The Republic of Angola officially joins the World Trade Organization.
1998 - Agreement between Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen and his rival, prince Norodom Ranariddh.
2001 - Convention on Cybercrime is signed in Budapest, Hungary.
2003 - Georgian president Eduard Shevardnadze resigns following weeks of mass protests over flawed elections.
2003 - A total solar eclipse occurs and was visible from a corridor in the Antarctic region. A partial eclipse was seen from the much broader path of the Moon's penumbra, including the southern tip of South America and most of Australia.
2005 - Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, elected president of Liberia, is the first woman to lead an African country.
2007 - MS Explorer, a cruise liner carrying 154 people, sank in the Antarctic Ocean south of Argentina after hitting an iceberg near the South Shetland Islands.
800 - Charlemagne arrives at Rome to investigate the alleged crimes of Pope Leo III.

Monday, November 21, 2011

Historical Events on 22 Nov

Historical Events on 22 Nov

1573 - The Brazilian city of Niterói is founded.
1574 - Discovery of the Juan Fernández Islands off Chile.
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 Lieutenant Robert Maynard.
1830 - Charles Grey, (2nd Earl Grey), became Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.
1864 - American Civil War: Sherman's March to the Sea: Confederate General John Bell Hood invades Tennessee in an unsuccessful attempt to draw Union General William T. Sherman from Georgia.
1922 - Egyptology: Howard Carter, assisted by Lord Carnarvon, opens the tomb of Tutankhamun.
1928 - First execution of Ravel's Boléro in Paris.
1935 - The China Clipper took off from Alameda, California in an attempt to deliver the first airmail cargo across the Pacific Ocean (the airplane later reached its destination, Manila, and delivered over 110,000 pieces of mail).
1940 - World War II: Following the Italian invasion, Greek troops advances into Albanian soil and capture Korytsa.
1940 - Philip Murray succeeds founder John L. Lewis as president of the Congress of Industrial Organizations.
1942 - World War II: Battle of Stalingrad - General Friedrich Paulus sends Adolf Hitler a telegram saying that the German 6th army was surrounded.
1943 - Lebanon gained independence from France.
1943 - World War II: War in the Pacific - U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, and Chinese leader Chiang Kai-Shek meet in Cairo, Egypt, to discuss ways to defeat Japan (see Cairo Conference)
1963 - In Dallas, Texas, US President John F. Kennedy is killed and Texas Governor John B. Connally is seriously wounded by an assassin, identified as Lee Harvey Oswald, who was later captured and charged with the murder of police officer J. D. Tippit. That same
1967 - UN Security Council Resolution 242 is adopted by the UN Security Council, establishing a set of the principles aimed at guiding negotiations for an Arab-Israeli peace settlement.
1972 - Vietnam War: The United States loses its first B-52 Stratofortress of the war.
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.
1976 - Adolfo Suárez is elected Prime Minister of Spain.
1977 - First three nodes of the ARPAnet are connected, in what would eventually become the Internet.
1977 - British Airways inaugurates a regular London to New York City supersonic Concorde service.
1986 - Mike Tyson defeats Trevor Brubick to become youngest Heavyweight champion in boxing history.
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 Rene Moawad, killing him.
1990 - Margaret Thatcher resigns as the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.
1995 - Toy Story is released as the first feature-length film created completely using computer-generated imagery.
2002 - In Nigeria, more than 100 people are killed at an attack aimed at the contestants of the Miss World contest.
2003 - In Tbilisi, Georgia, opponents of President Eduard Shevardnadze seize the parliament building and demand the president's resignation.
2004 - The Orange Revolution begins in Ukraine, resulting from the presidential elections.
2005 - Angela Merkel becomes the first female Chancellor of Germany.
498 - Kofi Aseidu- After the death of Anastasius II, Symmachus is elected Pope in the Lateran Palace, while Laurentius is elected Pope in Santa Maria Maggiore.

Sunday, November 20, 2011

Historical Events on 21 Nov

Historical Events on 21 Nov

1272 - Following Henry III of England's death on November 16, his son Prince Edward becomes King of England.
1620 - Plymouth Colony settlers sign the Mayflower Compact (November 11, O.S.).
164 BC - Judas Maccabaeus, son of Mattathias of the Hasmonean family, restores the Temple in Jerusalem. Events commemorated each year by the festival of Hanukkah.
1783 - In Paris, Jean-François Pilâtre de Rozier and François Laurent, Marquis 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.
1791 - Colonel Napoléon Bonaparte is promoted to full general and appointed Commander-in-Chief of the Armies of the French Republic.
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 massacre: Port Arthur, Manchuria falls to the Japanese, a decisive victory of the First Sino-Japanese War.
1905 - Albert Einstein's paper, "Does the Inertia of a Body Depend Upon Its Energy Content?", is published in the journal "Annalen der Physik". This paper reveals the relationship between energy and mass. This leads to the mass-energy equivalence formula E 
1916 - HMHS Britannic sinks in the Aegean Sea after a mine explodes, killing 30 people.
1920 - Bloody Sunday during the Anglo-Irish War.
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 were 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 was not usable by general vehicles until 1943).
1953 - Authorities at the British Natural History Museum announce that the "Piltdown Man" skull, held to be one of the most famous fossil skulls in the world, was a hoax.
1962 - The Chinese People's Liberation Army declares a unilateral cease-fire in the Sino-Indian War.
1964 - The Verrazano-Narrows Bridge opens to traffic (at the time it was the world's longest suspension bridge).
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 Sato agree in Washington, D.C. on the return of Okinawa to Japanese control in 1972. Under the terms of the agreement, the U.S. is to retain its rights to bases on the island, but these are to be nu
1970 - Vietnam War: Operation Ivory Coast - A joint Air Force and Army team raids the Son Tay prison 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.
1974 - The Birmingham Pub Bombings by the IRA kill 21 people. The Birmingham Six were sentenced to life in prison for this but subsequently acquitted.
1977 - Minister of Internal Affairs Hon Allan Highet announces that 'the national anthems of New Zealand shall be the traditional anthem "God Save the Queen" and the poem "God Defend New Zealand", written by Thomas Bracken, as set to music by John Joseph Woods,
1979 - The United States Embassy in Islamabad, Pakistan is attacked by a mob and set alight, killing four. (see: Foreign relations of Pakistan)
1980 - A deadly fire breaks out at the MGM Grand Hotel in Las Vegas, Nevada (now Bally's Las Vegas). 87 people are killed and more than 650 are injured in the worst disaster in Nevada history.
1980 - Lake Peigneur drained into an underlying salt deposit. A misplaced Texaco oil probe was drilled into the Diamond Crystal Salt Mine, causing water to flow down into the mine, eroding the edges of the hole. The resulting whirlpool sucked the drilling platfo
1985 - United States Navy intelligence analyst Jonathan Pollard is arrested for spying (he was caught giving Israel classified information on Arab nations and was eventually sentenced to life in prison).
1986 - Iran-Contra Affair: National Security Council member Oliver North and his secretary start to shred documents implicating them in the sale of weapons to Iran and channeling the proceeds to help fund the Contra rebels in Nicaragua.
1988 - Canadian federal election, 1988 - Canadians re-elect the Progressive Conservative government of Brian Mulroney after an election campaign fought mainly over the issue of the Canada-United States Free Trade Agreement.
1990 - Charter of Paris for a New Europe refocusses the efforts of the Conference for Security and Co-operation in Europeon post-Cold War issues.
1995 - The Dayton Peace Agreement is initialled at the Wright Patterson Air Force Base, near Dayton, Ohio, ending three and a half years of war in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The agreement was formally ratified in Paris, on December 14 that same year.
1995 - The Dow Jones Industrial Average closes above 5,000 (5,023.55) for the first time.
1996 - A propane explosion at the Humberto Vidal shoe store and office building in San Juan, Puerto Rico kills 33.
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, unleashing massive protests and controversy over the election's integrity.
2004 - The island of Dominica is hit by the most destructive earthquake in its history. The northern half of the island receives the most damage, especially the town of Portsmouth. It is also felt in neighboring Guadeloupe, where one person is killed as a result
2004 - The Paris Club agrees to write off 80% (up to $100 billion) of Iraq's external debt.
2006 - Anti-Syrian Lebanese Minister and MP Pierre Gemayel is assassinated in suburban Beirut.

Saturday, November 19, 2011

Historical Events on 20 Nov

Historical Events on 20 Nov

1194 - Palermo is conquered by Emperor Henry VI.
1407 - A truce between John the Fearless, Duke of Burgundy and Louis of Valois, Duke of Orléans is agreed under the auspices of John, Duke of Berry. Orléans would be assassinated three days later by Burgundy.
1695 - Zumbi, the last of the leaders of Quilombo dos Palmares in early Brazil, is executed.
1700 - Great Northern War: Battle of Narva - King Charles XII of Sweden defeats the army of Tsar Peter the Great at Narva.
1789 - New Jersey becomes the first U.S. state to ratify the Bill of Rights.
1820 - An 80-ton sperm whale attacks 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 was in part inspired by this story).
1861 - Secession ordinance is filed by Kentucky's Confederate government.
1910 - Mexican Revolution: Francisco I. Madero issues the Plan de San Luis Potosi, denouncing President Porfirio Díaz, declaring himself president, and 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.
1917 - Ukraine is declared a republic.
1923 - Rentenmark replaces the Papiermark as the official currency of Germany at the exchange rate of one Rentenmark to One Trillion (One Billion on the long scale) Papiermark
1936 - Jose Antonio Primo de Rivera, founder of the Falange is killed by a republican execution squad.
1940 - World War II: Hungary, Romania and Slovakia join 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 at Westminster Abbey in London.
1952 - Slánský trials - a series of Stalinist and anti-Semitic show trials in Czechoslovakia.
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 - Vietnam War: Eleven men comprising a Long Range Patrol team from F Company, 58th Infantry, 101st Airborne are surrounded and nearly wiped out by North Vietnamese army regulars from the 4th and 5th Regiment. The seven wounded survivors are rescued after se
1969 - Vietnam War: The Cleveland Plain Dealer publishes explicit photographs of dead villagers from the My Lai massacre in Vietnam.
1974 - The United States Department of Justice files its final anti-trust suit against AT&T. This suit later leads to the break up of AT&T and its Bell System.
1975 - Francisco Franco, Caudillo of Spain dies after 36 years in power. He died on the 39th anniversary of the death of Jose Antonio Primo de Rivera.
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 in the Kaaba. The Saudi government received help from French special forces to put down the uprising.
1984 - SETI is founded.
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.
1992 - In England, a fire breaks out in the Private Chapel of Windsor Castle, rages for 15 hours, and seriously damages the northwest side of the building (an investigation found that the fire was ignited after a spotlight came into contact with a curtain over a
1993 - An Avioimpex Yak 42D crashes near Ohrid, Macedonia. The aircraft was on a flight from Geneva, Switzerland to Skopje, but had been diverted to Ohrid due to poor weather conditions at the Skopje airport. On landing the aircraft crashed into Mount Trojani ne
1993 - Savings and Loan scandal: 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.
1994 - The Angolan government and UNITA rebels sign the Lusaka Protocol in Zambia, ending 19 years of civil war (localized fighting resumed the next year).
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 module of the International Space Station, Zarya, is launched.
2001 - In Washington, D.C., U.S. President George W. Bush dedicates the United States Department of Justice headquarters building as the Robert F. Kennedy Justice Building, honoring the late Robert F. Kennedy on what would have been his 76th birthday.
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.
284 - Diocletian was chosen as Roman Emperor.
762 - Bögü, Khan of the Uyghurs, conquers Lo-Yang, capital of the Chinese Empire.

Friday, November 18, 2011

Historical Events on 19 Nov

Historical Events on 19 Nov

1493 - Christopher Columbus goes ashore on an island he first saw the day before. He names it San Juan Bautista (later renamed Puerto Rico).
1794 - The United States and the Kingdom of Great Britain sign Jay's Treaty, which attempts to clear up some of the lingering problems left over from the American Revolutionary War.
1816 - Warsaw University is established.
1847 - The second Canadian railway line, the Montreal and Lachine Railway, is opened.
1863 - American Civil War: U.S. President Abraham Lincoln delivers the Gettysburg Address at the military cemetery dedication ceremony at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania.
1881 - A meteorite lands near the village of Großliebenthal, southwest of Odessa, Ukraine.
1916 - Samuel Goldwyn and Edgar Selwyn establish Goldwyn Pictures (the company later became one of the most successful independent filmmakers).
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.
1944 - World War II: U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt announces the 6th War Loan Drive, aimed at selling $14 billion USD in war bonds to help pay for the war effort.
1946 - Afghanistan, Iceland and Sweden join the United Nations.
1950 - US General Dwight D. Eisenhower becomes supreme commander of NATO-Europe
1955 - National Review publishes its first issue.
1959 - Ford Motor Company announces the discontinuation of the unpopular Edsel.
1961 - Michael Rockefeller, son of New York governor Nelson Rockefeller, disappears in the jungles near Atsj, Papua New Guinea.
1967 - The establishment of TVB, the first wireless commercial television station in Hong Kong.
1969 - Football player Pelé scores his 1,000th goal.
1969 - Apollo program: Apollo 12 astronauts Pete Conrad and Alan Bean land at Oceanus Procellarum ("Ocean of Storms") and become the third and fourth humans to walk on the Moon.
1976 - Jaime Ornelas Camacho takes office as the first President of the Regional Government of Madeira, Portugal.
1977 - Egyptian President Anwar Sadat becomes the first Arab leader to officially visit Israel, when he meets with Israeli prime minister Menachem Begin and speaks before the Knesset in Jerusalem, seeking a permanent peace settlement.
1977 - Transportes Aereos Portugueses Boeing 727 crashes in Madeira islands killing 130.
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 - A series of explosions at the PEMEX petroleum storage facility at San Juan Ixhuatepec in Mexico City ignites a major fire and kills about 500 people.
1985 - Cold War: In Geneva, U.S. President Ronald Reagan and Soviet Union leader Mikhail Gorbachev meet for the first time.
1985 - Pennzoil wins a $10.53 billion USD verdict 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
1988 - Serbian communist represent and future Serbian and Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic publicly declared that Serbia was under attack from Albanian separatism in Kosovo as well as internal treachery within Yugoslavia and foreign conspiracy to destroy Se
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.
1994 - In Great Britain, 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 - The case of the Port Arthur massacre comes to trial.
1996 - Lt. Gen. Maurice Baril of Canada arrives in Africa to lead a multi-national policing force in Zaire.
1997 - In Des Moines, Iowa, Bobbi McCaughey gives birth to septuplets in the second known case where all seven babies were born alive. They would go on to become the first set of septuplets to survive infancy, with all seven alive in 2007.
1998 - 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 $71.5 million USD.
1999 - Shenzhou 1: The People's Republic of China launches its first Shenzhou spacecraft.
1999 - In Istanbul, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe ends a two-day summit by calling for a political settlement in Chechnya and adopting a Charter for European Security.

Wednesday, November 16, 2011

Historical Events on 17 Nov

Historical Events on 17 Nov

1183 - Battle of Mizushima.
1292 - (O.S.) John Balliol becomes King of Scotland.
1511 - Spain and England ally against France.
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.
1659 - Peace of the Pyrenees is signed between France and Spain.
1777 - Articles of Confederation was submitted to the states for ratification.
1796 - Napoleonic Wars: Battle of Arcole - French forces defeat the Austrians in Italy.
1800 - The United States Congress holds its first session in Washington, DC.
1812 - Napoleonic Wars: Battle of Krasnoi.
1820 - Captain Nathaniel Palmer becomes the first American to see Antarctica (the Palmer Peninsula was later named after him).
1827 - The Delta Phi fraternity, America's oldest continuous social fraternity, was founded at Union College in Schenectady, New York.
1831 - Ecuador and Venezuela were separated from Greater Colombia.
1855 - David Livingstone becomes the first European to see Victoria Falls in what is now present-day Zambia-Zimbabwe.
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.
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 in an elaborate ceremony.
1871 - The National Rifle Association is granted a charter by the state of New York.
1876 - Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky's patriotic Slavonic March made its premiere in Moscow to a warm reception by the Russian people.
1878 - First assassination attempt against Umberto I of Italy.
1903 - The Russian Social Democratic Labor Party splits into two groups; the Bolsheviks (Russian for "majority") and Mensheviks (Russian for "minority").
1903 - Dahomey (Benin) becomes a French protectorate.
1905 - The Eulsa Treaty is signed between Japan and Korea.
1911 - The Omega Psi Phi fraternity, the first African-American fraternity at a historically black college or university, is founded at Howard University in Washington, D.C.
1919 - King George V of the United Kingdom proclaims Armistice Day (later Remembrance Day). The idea was first suggested by Edward George Honey.
1922 - Former Ottoman sultan Mehmed VI goes into exile in Italy.
1933 - United States recognizes Soviet Union.
1939 - The Rome-Rio de Janeiro air connection is created.
1939 - Nine Czech students are executed as a response to anti-Nazi demonstrations prompted by the death of Jan Opletal; in addition, Czech universities are shut down and over a thousand Czech students sent to concentration camps.
1950 - Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama, was enthroned as Tibet's head of state at the age of fifteen.
1953 - The remaining human inhabitants of the Blasket Islands, Kerry, Ireland are evacuated to the mainland.
1962 - President John F. Kennedy dedicates Dulles International Airport, serving the Washington, D.C. region.
1967 - Vietnam War: Acting on optimistic reports he was given on November 13, US President Lyndon B. Johnson tells his nation that, while much remained to be done, "We are inflicting greater losses than we're taking...We are making progress."
1968 - Alexandros Panagoulis is condemned to death for attempting to assassinate Greek dictator George Papadopoulos.
1969 - Cold War: Negotiators from the Soviet Union and the United States meet in Helsinki to begin SALT I negotiations aimed at limiting the number of strategic weapons on both sides.
1970 - Douglas Engelbart receives the patent for the first computer mouse.
1970 - Vietnam War: Lieutenant William Calley goes on trial for the My Lai massacre.
1970 - Luna program: 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 was released by the orbiting Luna 17 spacecraft.
1973 - Watergate scandal: In Orlando, Florida, US 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.
1974 - Aliança Operário-Camponesa (Worker-Peasant Alliance) founded in Portugal, as a front of PCP(m-l).
1983 - The Zapatista Army of National Liberation is founded.
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.
1997 - In Luxor, Egypt, 62 people are killed by 6 Islamic militants outside the Temple of Hatshepsut, known as Luxor massacre (The police then kill the assailants).
2000 - A catastrophic landslide in Log pod Mangartom, Slovenia, kills 7, 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.
2004 - Kmart Corp. announces it is buying Sears, Roebuck and Co. for $11 billion USD and naming the newly merged company Sears Holdings Corporation.
2005 - Italy's choice of national anthem, Il Canto degli Italiani, becomes official in law for the first time, almost 60 years after it was provisionally chosen following the birth of the republic.
2006 - Official naming of element 111, Roentgenium (Rg).
284 - Diocletian is proclaimed emperor by his soldiers.
473 - The future Zeno I is named associate emperor by Emperor Leo I.

Tuesday, November 15, 2011

Historical Events on 16 Nov

Historical Events on 16 Nov

1384 - Jadwiga is crowned King of Poland, although she is a woman.
1491 - An auto de fe, 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.
1632 - The Battle of Lützen, where King Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden is killed.
1776 - American Revolution: The United Provinces (Low Countries) recognize the independence of the United States.
1776 - American Revolutionary War: Hessian mercenaries capture Fort Washington from the Patriots.
1805 - Napoleonic Wars: Battle of Schöngrabern - Russian forces under Bagration delay the pursuit by French troops under Murat.
1821 - American Old West: Missouri trader William Becknell arrives in Santa Fe, New Mexico over a route that became known as the Santa Fe Trail.
1849 - A Russian court sentences Fyodor Dostoevsky to death for anti-government activities linked to a radical intellectual group; his sentence is later commuted to hard labor.
1857 - Second relief of Lucknow. The most Victoria Crosses won in a single day with 24.
1863 - American Civil War: Battle of Campbell's Station near Knoxville, Tennessee. Confederate troops unsuccessfully attack Union forces.
1885 - Canadian rebel leader of the Métis and "Father of Manitoba", Louis Riel is executed for treason.
1907 - Indian Territory and Oklahoma Territory become Oklahoma and are 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.
1938 - LSD is first synthesized by Swiss chemist Dr. Albert Hofmann at the Sandoz Laboratories in Basel, Switzerland.
1940 - World War II: In response to Germany's leveling of Coventry, England two days before, the Royal Air Force bombs Hamburg.
1940 - Holocaust: In occupied Poland, the Nazis close off the Warsaw Ghetto from the outside world.
1943 - World War II: American bombers strike a hydro-electric power facility and heavy water factory in German-controlled Vemork, Norway.
1944 - Dueren, Germany is completely destroyed by Allied bombers.
1945 - UNESCO is founded.
1945 - Cold War: The United States Army secretly admits 88 German scientists and engineers to help in the development of rocket technology.
1965 - Venera program: The Soviet Union launches the Venera 3 space probe toward Venus, 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.
1979 - The first line of Bucharest Metro (Line M1) is opened from Timpuri Noi to Semanatoarea in Bucharest, Romania.
1988 - The Supreme Soviet of the Estonian SSR declares that Estonia was "sovereign" but stopped 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 - A death squad composed of El Salvadoran army troops kills six Jesuit priests and two others at Jose Simeon Canas University.
1989 - UNESCO adopts the Seville Statement on Violence at the twenty-fifth session of its General Conference.
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.
2000 - Bill Clinton becomes the first U.S. President to visit Vietnam since the end of the Vietnam War.
534 - A second and final revision of the Codex Justinianus is published.

Sunday, November 13, 2011

Historical Events on 14 Nov

Historical Events on 14 Nov

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.
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 seventy-two days.
1910 - Aviator Eugene Ely performs the first take off 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 - The Communist Party of Spain is founded.
1922 - The BBC begins radio service in the United Kingdom.
1923 - Kentaro Suzuki completes his ascent of Mount Iizuna.
1940 - World War II: In England, the city of 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 U-81 sustained on November 13.
1952 - First regular UK singles chart published by the New Musical Express.
1957 - The Apalachin Meeting outside Binghamton, New York is raided by law enforcement, and many high level Mafia figures are arrested.
1965 - Vietnam War: Battle of the 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".
1969 - Apollo program: NASA launches Apollo 12, the second manned mission to the surface of the Moon.
1970 - Southern Airlines Flight 932 crashes in the mountains near Huntington, West Virginia, killing 75, including members of the Marshall University football team.
1971 - Mariner program: Mariner 9 reaches Mars, becoming the first spacecraft to orbit another planet.
1971 - His Holiness Shenouda III is consecrated as the 117th Patriarch of Alexandria and the See of St. Mark, the Pope of the Coptic Orthodox Church.
1972 - The Dow Jones Industrial Average closes above 1,000 (1,003.16) for the first time.
1973 - In the United Kingdom, Princess Anne marries Captain Mark Phillips, in Westminster Abbey.
1975 - Spain abandons Western Sahara.
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 the Republic of Poland sign a treaty confirming the Oder-Neisse line as the border between Germany and Poland.
1991 - In Royal Oak, Michigan, a fired United States Postal Service employee goes on a shooting rampage, killing four and wounding five before committing suicide.
1991 - Cambodian Prince Norodom Sihanouk returns to Phnom Penh after thirteen years of exile.
1991 - American and British authorities announce indictments against two Libyan intelligence officials in connection with the downing of the Pan Am Flight 103.
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 takeover the capital Kabul.
2002 - Argentina defaults on an $805 million World Bank payment.
2002 - The United States House of Representatives votes not to create an independent commission to investigate the September 11 attacks.
2007 - the last direct-current distribution by Con Edison was shut down.

Saturday, November 12, 2011

Historical Events on 13 Nov

Historical Events on 13 Nov

1002 - English king Ethelred orders the killing of all Danes in England, known today as the St. Brice's Day massacre.
1160 - Marriage of Louis VII of France with Adele of Champagne.
1642 - At the Battle of Turnham Green of the First English Civil War the Royalist forces withdraw in face of the Parliamentarian army and fail to take London.
1775 - American Revolutionary War: Patriot revolutionary forces under Col. Ethan Allen attack Montreal, Quebec defended by British General Guy Carleton.
1841 - James Braid first sees a demonstration of animal magnetism, which leads to his study of the subject he eventually calls hypnosis.
1851 - The Denny Party lands at Alki Point, the first settlers of what would become Seattle, Washington.
1864 - The new Constitution of Greece is adopted.
1887 - Bloody Sunday clashes in central London.
1901 - The 1901 Caister Lifeboat Disaster.
1909 - Collier's magazine accuses U.S. Secretary of the Interior Richard Ballinger of questionable dealings in Alaskan coal fields.
1916 - Prime Minister of Australia Billy Hughes is expelled from the Labor Party over his support for conscription.
1927 - The Holland Tunnel opens to traffic as the first Hudson River vehicular tunnel linking New Jersey to New York City.
1941 - World War II: The aircraft carrier HMS Ark Royal is torpedoed by U 81, sinking the next 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 Battle of Guadalcanal.
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 - United States Supreme Court declares Alabama and Montgomery, Alabama laws requiring segregated buses illegal; thus ending the Montgomery Bus Boycott.
1961 - Vladimir Yefimovich Semichastny succeeds Aleksandr Nikolayevich Shelepin as head of the KGB.
1965 - The SS Yarmouth Castle burns and sinks 60 miles off Nassau with the loss of 90 lives.
1969 - Vietnam War: Anti-war protesters in Washington, DC 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. This is regarded as the 20th century's worst natural disaster.
1971 - The American space probe, Mariner 9, becomes the first spacecraft to orbit another planet successfully, swinging into its planned trajectory around Mars.
1982 - A boxing match held in Las Vegas, Nevada ends when Ray Mancini defeats Duk Koo Kim. Kim's death on November 17 led 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 Suarez is sworn in as Miami, Florida's first Cuban-born mayor.
1990 - In Aramoana, New Zealand, Resident David Gray shot dead 13 people, in what became known as the Aramoana Massacre.
1990 - The World Wide Web first began.
1994 - Voters in Sweden decide to join the European Union in a referendum.
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 Manuel B. Villar, Jr. passes the articles of impeachment against Philippine President Joseph Estrada.
2001 - Doha Round: The World Trade Organization ends a four-day ministerial conference in Doha, Qatar.
2001 - War on Terrorism: 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 - The oil tanker Prestige sinks off the Galician coast and causes a huge oil spill.
2007 - An explosion hits the south wing of the House of Representatives of the Philippines in Quezon City, killing four people, including Congressman Wahab Akbar, and wounding six.

Friday, November 11, 2011

Historical Events on 12 Nov

Historical Events on 12 Nov

1028 - Future Byzantine empress Zoe marries Romanus Argyrus according to the wishes of the dying Constantine VIII.
1439 - Plymouth, England, becomes the first town incorporated by the English Parliament.
1555 - The English Parliament re-establishes Catholicism.
1793 - Jean Sylvain Bailly, the first Mayor of Paris, is guillotined.
1847 - Sir James Young Simpson, a British physician, is the first to use chloroform as an anaesthetic.
1892 - William "Pudge" Heffelfinger becomes the first professional American football player, participating in his first paid game for the Allegheny Athletic Association.
1893 - The treaty of the Durand Line is signed between present day Pakistan and Afghanistan - the Durand Line has gained international recognition as an international border between the two sister nations.
1905 - (November 12 & November 13) Norway holds a referendum in favor of monarchy over republic.
1912 - The frozen bodies of Robert Scott and his men are found on the Ross Ice Shelf in Antarctica.
1918 - Austria becomes a republic.
1920 - Italy and the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes sign the Treaty of Rapallo.
1922 - The Sigma Gamma Rho Sorority is founded on the campus of Butler University in Indianapolis, Indiana.
1927 - Leon Trotsky is expelled from the Soviet Communist Party, leaving Joseph Stalin in undisputed control of the Soviet Union.
1933 - Hugh Gray takes the first known photos of the Loch Ness Monster.
1936 - In California, the San Francisco - Oakland Bay Bridge opens to traffic.
1938 - Hermann Göring announces Nazi Germany plans to make Madagascar the "Jewish homeland", an idea that actually was first considered by 19th century journalist Theodor Herzl.
1941 - The Soviet cruiser "Chervona Ukraina" is destroyed during the Battle of Sevastopol.
1941 - World War II: Temperatures around Moscow drop to -12 ° C and the Soviet Union launches ski troops for the first time against the freezing German forces near the city.
1942 - World War II: The Naval Battle of Guadalcanal between Japanese and American forces begins near Guadalcanal, which would last for three days.
1944 - World War II: The Royal Air Force launches 29 Avro Lancaster bombers in one of the most successful precision bombing attacks of war and sinks the German battleship Tirpitz, with 12,000 lb Tallboy bombs off Tromsø, Norway.
1946 - A branch of the Exchange National Bank in Chicago, Illinois opens the first ten drive-up teller windows.
1948 - In Tokyo, an international war crimes tribunal sentences seven Japanese military and government officials to death, including General Hideki Tojo, for their roles in World War II.
1969 - Vietnam War: My Lai Massacre - Independent investigative journalist Seymour Hersh breaks the My Lai story.
1970 - The Oregon Highway Division attempts to destroy a rotting beached Sperm whale with explosives, leading to the now infamous exploding whale incident.
1971 - Vietnam War: As part of Vietnamization, US President Richard M. Nixon sets February 1, 1972 as the deadline for the removal of another 45,000 American troops from Vietnam.
1978 - As Bishop of Rome Pope John Paul II took possession of his Cathedral Church, the Basilica of St. John Lateran
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 first images of its rings.
1981 - The Space Shuttle Columbia becomes the first spacecraft to be launched twice.
1982 - Lech Wałęsa, a Solidarity leader, is released from a Polish prison after eleven months.
1982 - In the Soviet Union, Yuri Andropov becomes the general secretary of the Soviet Communist Party's Central Committee, succeeding Leonid I. Brezhnev.
1990 - Tim Berners-Lee publishes a formal proposal for the World Wide Web.
1990 - Crown Prince Akihito is formally installed as Emperor Akihito of Japan, becoming the 125th Japanese monarch.
1991 - Dili Massacre, Indonesian forces open fire on a crowd of student protesters in Dili, East Timor.
1993 - Decree of President of Kazakhstan "About introducing national currency of Republic of Kazakhstan" is issued.
1996 - A Saudi Arabian Airlines Boeing 747 and a Kazakh Ilyushin Il-76 cargo plane collide in mid-air near New Delhi, killing 349.
1997 - Ramzi Yousef is found guilty of masterminding the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.
1998 - Daimler-Benz completes a merger with Chrysler to form Daimler-Chrysler.
1998 - Then Vice President of the United States Al Gore symbolically signs the Kyoto Protocol.
1999 - The Düzce earthquake strikes Turkey with a magnitude of 7.2 on the Richter scale.
2001 - 2001 Attack on Afghanistan: Taliban forces abandon Kabul, Afghanistan, ahead of advancing Afghan Northern Alliance troops.
2001 - In New York City, American Airlines Flight 587, an Airbus A300 on its way to the Dominican Republic, crashes minutes after takeoff from John F. Kennedy International Airport, killing all 260 on board and five on the ground.
2003 - With 501 km/h (311 mph) Shanghai Transrapid sets up a new world record for commercial railway systems.
2003 - Iraq war: In Nasiriya, Iraq, at least 23 people, among them the first Italian casualties of the 2003 Iraq war are killed in a suicide bomb attack on an Italian police base.
2006 - The former Soviet republic of South Ossetia holds a referendum on independence from Georgia.
764 - Tibetan troops occupy Chang'an, the capital of the Chinese Tang Dynasty, for fifteen days.

Thursday, November 10, 2011

Historical Events on 11 Nov

Historical Events on 11 Nov

1215 - The Fourth Lateran Council meets, defining the doctrine of transubstantiation, the process by which bread and wine are transformed 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.
1620 - In what is now Provincetown Harbor near Cape Cod, the Mayflower Compact is signed on the Mayflower, establishing the basic laws for the Plymouth Colony. (Old Style date; November 21 per New Style date.)
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 the Ukraine, Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth forces under the command of Jan Sobieski. defeat the Ottoman army. In this battle, rockets of Kazimierz Siemienowicz were successfully used.
1675 - Gottfried Leibniz demonstrated integral calculus for the first time to find the area under the graph of y = f(x) function.
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 - The F.H.C. Society, also known as the Flat Hat Club, was formed at Raleigh Tavern, Williamsburg, Virginia. It was the first college fraternity.
1778 - Cherry Valley Massacre: an attack by Loyalists and Seneca Indian forces on 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 - 8000 French troops attempted to slow the retreat of a vastly superior Russian and Austrian force.
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: Sherman's March to the Sea - Union General William Tecumseh Sherman begins burning Atlanta, Georgia to the ground in preparation for his march south.
1865 - Treaty of Sinchula is signed in which Bhutan ceded the areas east of the Teesta River to the British East India Company.
1880 - Australian Bushranger Ned Kelly is hanged at Melbourne Gaol.
1887 - Construction of the Manchester Ship Canal starts at Eastham.
1887 - Anarchist Haymarket Martyrs August Spies, Albert Parsons, Adolph Fischer and George Engel are executed.
1889 - Washington is admitted as the 42nd U.S. state.
1911 - Many cities in the U.S. Midwest broke their record highs and lows on the same day as a strong cold front rolls through. (see The 11/11/11 cold wave).
1918 - Emperor Charles I of Austria relinquishes power.
1918 - World War I ends: Germany signs an armistice agreement with the Allies in a railroad car outside of Compiègne in France. The war officially stops at 11:00 (The eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month).
1918 - Józef Piłsudski comes to Warsaw and assumes supreme military power in Poland. Poland regains its independence.
1919 - The Centralia Massacre in Centralia, Washington results the deaths of four members of the American Legion and the lynching of a local leader of the IWW.
1921 - The Tomb of the Unknowns is dedicated by US President Warren G. Harding at Arlington National Cemetery.
1924 - Prime Minister Alexandros Papanastasiou proclaims the first Greek Republic.
1926 - U.S. Route 66 is established.
1930 - Patent number US1781541 was awarded to Albert Einstein and Leó Szilárd for their invention, the Einstein refrigerator.
1933 - Dust Bowl: In South Dakota, a very strong dust storm strips topsoil from desiccated farmlands.
1940 - World War II: Battle of Taranto - The Royal Navy launches the first aircraft carrier strike in history, on the Italian fleet at Taranto.
1940 - The German cruiser Atlantis captures top secret British mail, and sends it to Japan.
1940 - Armistice Day Blizzard: An unexpected blizzard kills 144 in U.S. Midwest.
1942 - World War II: Nazi Germany completed their occupation of France.
1960 - A military coup against President Ngo Dinh Diem of South Vietnam was crushed.
1962 - Kuwait's National Assembly ratifies the Constitution of Kuwait.
1965 - In Rhodesia (modern-day Zimbabwe), the white-minority government of Ian Smith unilaterally declares independence.
1966 - NASA launches spaceship 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 was to interdict men and supplies on the Ho Chi Minh Trail, through Laos into South Vietnam.
1968 - A second republic is declared in the Maldives.
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 and commissions Malcolm Fraser as caretaker Prime Minister, and announces a general election to be held in early December.
1992 - The Church of England votes to allow women to become priests.
2000 - In Kaprun, Austria, 155 skiers and snowboarders die when a cable car catches fire in an alpine tunnel.
2001 - Journalists Pierre Billaud, Johanne Sutton and Volker Handloik are killed in Afghanistan during an attack on the convoy they were traveling on top off.
2004 - Yasser Arafat is confirmed dead by the Palestine Liberation Organization, of unidentified causes. Mahmoud Abbas is elected chairman of the PLO minutes later.
2004 - New Zealand Tomb of the Unknown Warrior dedicated at the National War Memorial, Wellington.
2006 - The New Zealand war memorial monument was unveiled by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II in London, United Kingdom, commemorating the loss of soldiers from the New Zealand Army and the British Army.
308 - The Congress of Carnuntum: Attempting to keep peace within the Roman Empire, the leaders of the Tetrarchy declare Maxentius and Licinius to be Augusti, while rival contender Constantine I is declared Caesar of Britain and Gaul.