1120 – The White Ship sinks in the English Channel, drowning William Adelin, son and heir of Henry I of England.
1177 – Baldwin IV of Jerusalem and Raynald of Chatillon defeat Saladin at the Battle of Montgisard.
1357 – Charles IV issues letter of protection of Jews of Strasbourg Alsace
1487 – Elizabeth of York is crowned Queen of England.
1491 – The siege of Granada, last Moorish stronghold in Spain, begins.
1667 – A deadly earthquake rocks Shemakha, in the Caucasus, killing 80,000 people.
1744 – Austrian forces pillage & kill Jews of Prague
1753 – Robert Townsend, a.k.a. “Culper, Jr.”, American revolutionary spy (d. 1838) was born.
1783 – American Revolutionary War: The last British troops leave New York City three months after the signing of the Treaty of Paris.
1792 – Farmer’s Almanac first published
1817 – First sword swallower in US performs (NYC)
1834 – Delmonico’s, one of NY’s finest restaurants, provides a meal of soup, steak, coffee & half a pie for 12 cents
1835 – Andrew Carnegie, Dunfermline, Scottish/American industrialist/philanthropist, Birthed
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 result from the disaster.
1841 – 35 survivors of the mutiny on the slave ship Amistad return to Africa
1846 – Carrie Nation, American activist (d. 1911) was born.
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
1867 – US Congress commission looks into “impeachment” of President Andrew Johnson
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.
1897 – Spain grants Puerto Rico autonomy
1900 – Rudolf Höss, German SS officer (d. 1947) was birthed.
1913 – The Irish Volunteers founded in Dublin to “secure the rights and liberties common to all the people of Ireland”
1914 – Joe DiMaggio, American baseball player and coach (d. 1999) was born.
1915 – Albert Einstein presents the field equations of general relativity to the Prussian Academy of Sciences.
1920 – 1st Thanksgiving Parade (Phila
1936 – In Berlin, Germany and Japan sign the Anti-Comintern Pact, agreeing to consult on measures “to safeguard their common interests” in the case of an unprovoked attack by the Soviet Union against either nation. The pact is renewed on the same day five years later with additional signatories.
1940 – Percy Sledge, soul singer (When A Man Loves A Woman) Born
1941 – Adm. Harold R. Stark, U.S. chief of naval operations, tells Adm. Husband E. Kimmel, commander of the U.S. Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor, that both President Roosevelt and Secretary of State Cordell Hull think a Japanese surprise attack is a distinct possibility.
1941 – German Jews in Netherlands declared stateless (lose of nationality)
1944 – Ben Stein, American actor, Commentator, Born
1944 – The United States Army and Navy ruled that there would be no court marshal for Rear Admiral Husband E. Kimmel. Kimmel was on board as commander at the time that the Japanese had attacked Pearl Harbor. This resulted in the return of the Admiral to his position in the Navy before he boarded that Pearl Harbor ship. In later years, effort was made to establish Kimmel as one of the “last victims of Pearl Harbor”-a motion rejected by at least two U.S. presidents.
1947 – Red Scare: The “Hollywood Ten” are blacklisted by Hollywood movie studios.
1949 – Luther “Bill” Robinson, “Bojangles” famed tap dancer, dies at 71
1952 – Agatha Christie’s murder-mystery play The Mousetrap opens at the Ambassadors Theatre in London. It will become the longest continuously-running play in history.
1952 – Korean War: After 42 days of fighting, the Battle of Triangle Hill ends as American and South Korean units abandon their attempt to capture the “Iron Triangle”.
1953 – Earthquake and tsunami strike Honshu, Japan
1957 – US President Dwight Eisenhower suffers a mild stroke, impairing his speech
1960 – John F. Kennedy Jr., American lawyer, journalist, and publisher, co-founded George Magazine (d. 1999) was born.
1960 – Three of the four Mirabal sisters, opponents of the dictatorship of Rafael Trujillo of the Dominican Republic, are assassinated.
1963 – A military coup supported by the army, navy and air force has deposed the government led by President George Papadopoulos. The coup was a bloodless affair and is supported by most ordinary Greeks as Papadopoulos was generally hated by the general population due to the repression and brutality of his regime.
1963 – Assassinated President John F Kennedy funeral takes place in Washington DC with over 800,000 mourners lining the streets standing in silence. The funeral was attended by statesmen representing counties around the globe. The service was held in St Matthew’s Cathedral and the president was laid to rest in Arlington Cemetery with a 21 gun salute.
1964 – Mark Lanegan, American musician (Screaming Trees) Born
1965 – Congo military coup under Gen Mobutu, Pres Kasavubu overthrown
1965 – Cris Carter, NFL wide receiver (Minnesota Vikings) Hall of Fame – Born
1966 – Jimi Hendrix Experience makes its London debut at Bag O’ Nails Club
1966 – Tim Armstrong, American singer-songwriter, guitarist, and producer (Rancid, The Transplants, Devils Brigade, Operation Ivy, Dance Hall Crashers) was born.
1968 – Upton Beall Sinclair, US author (Jungle), dies at 90
1969 – John Lennon returns OBE (Knighthood) to protest against UK’s support for Vietnam War
1970 – In Japan, author Yukio Mishima and two compatriots commit ritualistic suicide after an unsuccessful coup attempt.
1971 – Leader of the British Labour Party Harold Wilson proposes that Britain should work towards a withdrawal from Northern Ireland, with the consent of Protestants, after a period of 15 years; as part of the proposal the Republic of Ireland would rejoin the British Commonwealth
1971 – Christina Applegate, Hollywood, actress (Kelly-Married With Children) Born
1973 – Bloodless military coup ousts Greek Pres George Papadopoulos
1973 – Maximum speed limit cut to 55 MPH as an energy conservation measure
1974 – Nick Drake, rocker, dies of a drug overdose at 26
1974 – Irish Republican Army is outlawed in Britain following deaths of 21
1975 – A loyalist gang nicknamed the “Shankill Butchers” undertakes its first “cut-throat killing”; the gang was named for its late-night kidnapping, torture and murder (by throat slashing) of random Catholic civilians in Belfast
1976 – The Band’s farewell concert at SF’s Winterland Ballroom
1979 – Israel returns Alma oilfields in Gulf of Suez to Egypt
1979 – Pat Summerall and John Madden broadcast a game together for the first time, a pairing that would last 22 years and become one of the most well-known partnerships in TV sportscasting history
1980 – Sugar Ray Leonard defeats Duran regains WBC welterweight championship (No Mas fight)
1981 – Jack Albertson, actor (Chico & the Man), dies at 74
1981 – Pope John Paul II appoints Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger (the future Pope Benedict XVI) Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.
1981 – Barbara and Jenna Bush, twin daughters of U.S. President George W. Bush, Birthed
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.
1983 – World’s greatest robbery 25,000,000 pounds of gold, Heathrow, England
1984 – Thirty-six top musicians gather in a Notting Hill studio and record Band Aid’s “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” in order to raise money for famine relief in Ethiopia.
1986 – Amber Hagerman, American murder victim, inspired the AMBER Alert (d. 1996) was born.
1986 – Iran-Contra affair erupts, President Reagan reveals secret arm deal: U.S. Attorney General Edwin Meese announces that profits from covert weapons sales to Iran were illegally diverted to the anti-communist Contra rebels in Nicaragua.
1986 – Oliver North’s sect. Fawn Hall, smuggles documents out of his office
1988 – Chuck Berry pays $250 fine to resolve NYC assault charges
1993 – Anthony Burgess, novelist (Clockwork Orange), dies of cancer at 76
1993 – Failed bomb attack on Egyptian premier Atef Sedki, 1 dead
1998 – Flip Wilson, American actor and comedian (b. 1933)
1999 – The United Nations establishes the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women to commemorate the murder of three Mirabal sisters for resistance against the Rafael Trujillo dictatorship in the Dominican Republic.
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-controlled forces, are released.