529 BC – The international day of Cyrus the Great, king of Persia, who declared the first charter of human rights in the world also known as Cyrus Cylinder.
312 – Constantine the Great enters Rome after his victory at the Battle of the Milvian Bridge, stages a grand adventus in the city, and is met with popular jubilation. Maxentius’ body is fished out of the Tiber and beheaded.
439 – The Vandals under the leadership of Gaiseric occupy Carthage
1390 – First trial for witchcraft in Paris leading to the death of three people.
1618 – English adventurer, writer, and courtier Sir Walter Raleigh is beheaded for allegedly conspiring against James I of England.
1682 – William Penn lands at what is now Chester Pennsylvania
1656 – Edmund Halley, astronomer (Halley’s Comet) [NS=Nov 8] Born
1792 – Mount Hood (Oregon) is named after the British naval officer Alexander Arthur Hood by Lt. William E. Broughton who spotted the mountain near the mouth of the Willamette River.
1844 – Albert von Rothschild, Austrian banker Is Birthed
1863 – Eighteen countries meet in Geneva and agree to form the International Red Cross.
1863 – American Civil War: Battle of Wauhatchie – Forces under Union General Ulysses S. Grant repel a Confederate attack led by General James Longstreet. Union forces thus open a supply line into Chattanooga, Tennessee.
1877 – Nathan Bedford Forrest, American general (b. 1821) died.
1886 – The first ticker tape parade takes place in New York City when office workers spontaneously throw ticker tape into the streets as the Statue of Liberty is dedicated.
1888 – Lord Salisbury grants Cecil Rhodes charter for British South Africa Company
1897 – Joseph Goebbels, German politician, Chancellor of Germany (d. 1945) was birthed
1901 – In Amherst, Massachusetts nurse Jane Toppan is arrested for murdering the Davis family of Boston with an overdose of morphine.
1901 – Capital punishment: Leon Czolgosz, the assassin of U.S. President William McKinley, is executed by electrocution. Sulfuric acid was poured into Czolgosz’s coffin so that his body would be completely disfigured
1911 – Joseph Pulitzer, Hungarian-American publisher, lawyer, and politician, founded Pulitzer, Inc. (b. 1847) died.
1929 – The New York Stock Exchange crashes in what will be called the Crash of ’29 or “Black Tuesday”, ending the Great Bull Market of the 1920s and beginning the Great Depression.
1938 – Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, President of Liberia – Born
1940 – Secretary of War Henry L Stimson drew 1st number-158-in 1st peacetime military draft in US history
1941 – The Holocaust: In the Kaunas Ghetto over 10,000 Jews are shot by German occupiers at the Ninth Fort, a massacre known as the “Great Action”.
1942 – The Holocaust: In the United Kingdom, leading clergymen and political figures hold a public meeting to register outrage over Nazi Germany’s persecution of Jews.
1944 – Denny Laine, English singer-songwriter and guitarist (The Moody Blues, Ginger Baker’s Air Force, and Wings) was born
1945 – Mick Gallagher, English keyboard player and songwriter (The Animals, The Blockheads, and Skip Bifferty) was born.
1945 – First ball point pen goes on sale, 57 years after it is patented
1949 – David Paton, Scottish guitarist (Pilot, The Alan Parsons Project, Bay City Rollers, and Camel) was born
1949 – James Williamson, American guitarist, songwriter, and producer (The Stooges) was born.
1955 – Kevin DuBrow, American singer-songwriter (Quiet Riot) (d. 2007) was born.
1955 – Roger O’Donnell, English keyboard player (The Cure and Thompson Twins) was born.
1957 – Dan Castellaneta, American voice actor, Best known as the voice of Homer Simpson was Born
1957 – Israel’s prime minister David Ben-Gurion and five of his ministers are injured when a hand grenade is tossed into Israel’s parliament, the Knesset.
1958 – Boris Pasternak refuses Nobel prize for literature ( Doctor Zhivago – (1958), a novel which takes place between the Russian Revolution of 1905 and the Second World War. Given its independent-minded stance on the socialist state, Doctor Zhivago was rejected for publication in the USSR. At the instigation of Giangiacomo Feltrinelli, Doctor Zhivago was smuggled to Milan and published in 1957. Pasternak was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1958, an event which both humiliated and enraged the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. It forced him to refuse to accept the prize. His descendants accepted it in his name in 1988. )
1960 – In Louisville, Kentucky, Cassius Clay (who later takes the name Muhammad Ali) wins his first professional fight.
1961 – Randy Jackson, American singer-songwriter and dancer (The Jackson 5) was born.
1964 – A collection of irreplaceable gems, including the 565 carat (113 g) Star of India, is stolen by a group of thieves (among them is “Murph the surf”) from the American Museum of Natural History in New York City.
1965 – Mehdi Am Barka, Moroccan socialist leader, murdered in Paris
1969 – The first-ever computer-to-computer link is established on ARPANET, the precursor to the Internet.
1969 – Supreme Court orders end to all school desegregation “at once”
1971 – Winona Ryder, [Horowitz], Mn, actress (Heathers, Edward Scissorhand) Born
1971 – Duane Allman, American singer-songwriter and guitarist (The Allman Brothers Band, Hour Glass, Derek and the Dominos, and The Allman Joys) (b. 1946) died.
1972 – The three surviving perpetrators of the Munich massacre are released from prison in exchange for the hostages of hijacked Lufthansa Flight 615.
1975 – ‘Yorkshire Ripper’ Peter Sutcliffe kills first victim, Wilma McCann
1983 – Johnny Lewis, Los Angeles, California, actor (Sons of Anarchy: Kip “Half-Sack” Epps, Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem), (d. 2012) born
1985 – Major General Samuel K. Doe is announced the winner of the first multiparty election in Liberia.
1991 – The American Galileo spacecraft makes its closest approach to 951 Gaspra, becoming the first probe to visit an asteroid.
1994 – Francisco Martin Duran fires over two dozen shots at the White House (Duran is later convicted of trying to kill US President Bill Clinton).
1996 – James Leo Herlihy, author (Midnight Cowboy), commits suicide at 66
1998 – Apartheid: In South Africa, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission presents its report, which condemns both sides for committing atrocities.
1998 – While en route from Adana to Ankara, a Turkish Airlines flight with a crew of 6 and 33 passengers is hijacked by a Kurdish militant who orders the pilot to fly to Switzerland. The plane instead lands in Ankara after the pilot tricked the hijacker into thinking that he was landing in the Bulgarian capital of Sofia to refuel.
1998 – Space Shuttle Discovery blasts off on STS-95 with 77-year old John Glenn on board, making him the oldest person to go into space.
2004 – In Rome, European heads of state sign the Treaty and Final Act establishing the first European Constitution.
2004 – The Arabic-language news network Al Jazeera broadcasts an excerpt from a 2004 (an ALLEGED) Osama bin Laden video in which the terrorist leader first admits direct responsibility for the September 11, 2001 attacks and references the 2004 U.S. presidential election.
2007 – Argentina elects its first female president, Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner.
2008 – Delta Air Lines merges with Northwest Airlines, creating the world’s largest airline and reducing the number of US legacy carriers to 5.
2011 – Jimmy Savile, British media personality / Pedophile (b. 1926) Dies
2011 – Record-breaking snowstorm in the northeastern United States leaves nearly 2 million residents without power for more than 36 hours.
2012 – Publishing companies Penguin and Random House merge to form the world’s largest publisher
2012 – Hurricane Sandy hits the east coast of the United States, killing 148 directly and 138 indirectly, while leaving nearly $70 billion in damages and causing major power outages.