1202 – Fourth Crusade: Despite letters from Pope Innocent III forbidding it and threatening excommunication, Catholic crusaders begin a siege of the Catholic city of Zara (now Zadar, Croatia).
1580 – After a three-day siege, the English Army beheads over 600 Papal soldiers and civilians at Dún an Óir, Ireland.
1619 – René Descartes has the dreams that inspire his Meditations on First Philosophy.
1630 – Failed palace revolution in France against Richelieu
1766 – The last colonial governor of New Jersey, William Franklin, signs the charter of Queen’s College (later renamed Rutgers University).
1775 – The United States Marine Corps is founded at Tun Tavern in Philadelphia by Samuel Nicholas.
1836 – Louis Napoleon banished to America
1847 – The passenger ship Stephen Whitney is wrecked in thick fog off the southern coast of Ireland, killing 92 of the 110 on board. The disaster results in the construction of the Fastnet Rock lighthouse.
1871 – Henry Morton Stanley encounters David Livingstone at Ujiji, near Lake Tanganyika in Central Africa, with the immortal words ‘Dr Livingstone, I presume?’
1891 – 1st Women’s Christian Temperance Union (Prohibition) meeting held (in Boston)
1891 – Arthur Rimbaud, French poet/arms merchant (Saison en Enfer), dies of a bone cancer at 37
1898 – Beginning of the Wilmington Insurrection of 1898, the only instance of a municipal government being overthrown in US history.
1906 – Josef Kramer, German SS officer (d. 1945) was born.Dubbed “The Beast of Belsen” by camp inmates, he was a notorious German Nazi war criminal, directly responsible for the deaths of thousands of people.
1910 – The date of Thomas A. Davis’ opening of the San Diego Army and Navy Academy, though the official founding date is November 23, 1910.
1911 – Andrew Carnegie forms Carnegie Corporation (for scholarly & ahem…charitable works. IE: To protect his wealth! and to socially engineer the sheople)
1917 – New Bolshevik government under Lenin suspends freedom of press (temporary) during October Revolution
1918 – The Western Union Cable Office in North Sydney, Nova Scotia, receives a top-secret coded message from Europe (that would be sent to Ottawa and Washington, D.C.) that said on November 11, 1918, all fighting would cease on land, sea and in the air.
1919 – 1st observance of National Book Week
1919 – Mikhail Kalashnikov, Russian general and weapons designer, designed the AK-47 (d. 2013) was born.
1924 – Dean O’Banion, Irish-American mobster and rival of Al Capone (b. 1892) died.
1939 – Russell Means, American actor and activist (d. 2012) was born.
1940 – Walt Disney begins serving as an informer for the Los Angeles office of the FBI; his job is to report back information on Hollywood subversives.
1942 – World War II: Germany invades Vichy France following French Admiral François Darlan’s agreement to an armistice with the Allies in North Africa.
1944 – The ammunition ship USS Mount Hood explodes at Seeadler Harbour, Manus, Admiralty Islands, killing at least 432 and wounding 371.
1946 – Communists win many seats at French parliamentary election
1947 – Greg Lake, rock vocalist/bassist (King Crimson, ELP)Born
1950 – Nobel for literature awarded to William Faulkner
1950 – Bob Orton, Jr., American wrestler was born.
1951 – With the rollout of the North American Numbering Plan, direct-dial coast-to-coast telephone service begins in the United States.
1954 – U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower dedicates the USMC War Memorial (Iwo Jima memorial) in Arlington National Cemetery.
1958 – George Lowe, American voice actor and producer was born.
1958 – The Hope Diamond is donated to the Smithsonian Institution by New York diamond merchant Harry Winston.
1969 – National Educational Television (the predecessor to the Public Broadcasting Service) in the United States debuts the children’s television program Sesame Street.
1970 – Vietnam War: Vietnamization – For the first time in five years, an entire week ends with no reports of American combat fatalities in Southeast Asia.
1972 – DJ Ashba, American guitarist, songwriter, and producer (Guns N’ Roses, Sixx:A.M., BulletBoys, and Beautiful Creatures) was born.
1972 – Southern Airways Flight 49 from Birmingham, Alabama is hijacked and, at one point, is threatened with crashing into the nuclear installation at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory. After two days, the plane lands in Havana, Cuba, where the hijackers are jailed by Fidel Castro.
1973 – Newspapers in North Dakota report that over 35 copies of Kurt Vonnegut’s “Slaughterhouse Five” are burned. Many residents felt that the book was too pessimistic and it was not appropriate for school-aged children.
1975 – The 729-foot-long freighter SS Edmund Fitzgerald sinks during a storm on Lake Superior, killing all 29 crew on board.
1975 – United Nations Resolution 3379: United Nations General Assembly approves a resolution equating Zionism with racism (the resolution is repealed in December 1991 by Resolution 4686).
1976 – Utah Supreme Court approves execution of convicted murderer Gary Gilmore
1979 – Chris Joannou, Australian bass player (Silverchair) was born
1979 – A 106-car Canadian Pacific freight train carrying explosive and poisonous chemicals from Windsor, Ontario, Canada derails in Mississauga, Ontario, just west of Toronto, causing a massive explosion and the largest peacetime evacuation in Canadian history and one of the largest in North American history.
1983 – Bill Gates introduces Windows 1.0
1984 – The first Breeders’ Cup takes place at Hollywood Park Racetrack.
1989 – German citizens begin to bring the Berlin Wall down
1995 – In Nigeria, playwright and environmental activist Ken Saro-Wiwa along with eight others from the Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People (Mosop) are hanged by government forces.
1997 – Psychedelic Artist Peter Max pleads guilty to tax fraud & time served
2001 – An agreement is reached at talks in Marrakech, Morocco, on rules for implementation of the Kyoto climate change treaty
2006 – The National Museum of the Marine Corps in Quantico, Virginia is opened and dedicated by U.S. President George W. Bush, who announces that Marine Corporal Jason Dunham will receive the Medal of Honor.
2006 – Gerald Levert, American singer (b. 1966)Dies
2007 – ¿Por qué no te callas? incident between King Juan Carlos of Spain and Venezuela’s president Hugo Chávez.
2007 – Norman Mailer, American novelist, dies at 84
2008 – Over five months after landing on Mars, NASA declares the Phoenix mission concluded after communications with the lander were lost.
2008 – Miriam Makeba, South African singer and anti-apartheid activist (b. 1932)Dies
2009 – John Allen Muhammad, American spree killer (DC Sniper) (b. 1960)executed
2010 – Dino De Laurentiis, Italian film producer (b. 1919)Dies
2012 – 20 Syrian troops are killed by suicide bombings in Daara
2012 – Israeli “counter strike” on Palestinian militants in Gaza kills 5 and injure 30
2012 – The final US presidential election results are declared after Barack Obama wins Florida to defeate Mitt Romney 332-206 in Electoral College votes
2084 – Transit of Earth as seen from Mars