Wikipedia:Selected anniversaries/November

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November 1: Samhain and Beltane in the Northern and Southern Hemispheres, respectively; Rajyotsava (Formation Day) in Karnataka, India (1956)

• 1214 – Byzantine–Seljuk wars: Seljuq Turks captured the important port city of Sinope.
• 1921 – Frances Kyle was called to the Bar of Ireland, becoming the first female barrister in Ireland or Great Britain.
• 1941 – American photographer Ansel Adams (pictured) shot Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico, one of his most famous photographs.
• 1944 – World War II: An American F-13 Superfortress made the first flight by an Allied aircraft over Tokyo since the Doolittle Raid in April 1942.
• 1963 – Lê Quang Tung, loyalist head of the South Vietnam Special Forces, was executed in a U.S.-backed coup against president Ngô Đình Diệm following a period of religious unrest.

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November 2

• 619 – Emperor Gaozu of Tang allowed the assassination of a khagan of the Western Turkic Khaganate by Eastern Turkic rivals, one of the earliest events in the Tang campaigns against the Western Turks.
• 1932 – The Australian military began a "war against emus" (man with dead emu pictured), flightless native birds blamed for widespread damage to crops in Western Australia.
• 1960 – In the trial R v Penguin Books Ltd, publisher Penguin Books was acquitted of obscenity for the publication of Lady Chatterley's Lover by D. H. Lawrence.
• 2007 – In Tbilisi, Georgia, tens of thousands of people demonstrated against the allegedly corrupt government of president Mikheil Saakashvili.

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November 3: Culture Day in Japan

• 1793 – French Revolution: Playwright, journalist and outspoken feminist Olympe de Gouges was guillotined.
• 1898 – The Fashoda Incident ended with French forces withdrawing after several months of military stalemate with the British in Fashoda (now in South Sudan).
• 1948 – The Chicago Daily Tribune published the erroneous headline "Dewey Defeats Truman" (pictured) in its early morning edition shortly after incumbent U.S. president Harry S. Truman officially upset the heavily favored governor of New York Thomas Dewey in the presidential election.
• 1957 – The Soviet Union launched Sputnik 2, carrying the space dog Laika as the first living creature to enter orbit around Earth.

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November 4: Constitution Day in the Dominican Republic (2024); Election Day in the United States (2025); National Unity and Armed Forces Day in Italy

• 1890 – The City and South London Railway (carriage pictured), the first deep-level underground railway in the world, officially opened, running 3.2 mi (5.1 km) between the City of London and Stockwell.
• 1912 – The keel of USS Nevada was laid down, beginning construction on the United States Navy's first "super-dreadnought".
• 1938 – The Hlinka Guard and Slovakian police began the deportation of several thousand Jews from the country.
• 1964 – Ruhollah Khomeini was arrested by SAVAK, the Iranian secret police, and exiled to Turkey.
• 2016 – The Paris Agreement, under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, came into effect.

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November 5: Guy Fawkes Night in Great Britain and some Commonwealth countries, Guru Nanak Gurpurab (Sikhism, 2025)

• 1138 – Lý Anh Tông was enthroned as the emperor of Đại Việt at the age of two, beginning a 37-year reign.
• 1943 – World War II: An unknown aircraft dropped four bombs on Vatican City, which maintained neutrality during the war.
• 1995 – Aline Chrétien (pictured) thwarted André Dallaire's attempt to assassinate her husband, Canadian prime minister Jean Chrétien, by locking the bedroom door in 24 Sussex Drive, their official residence in Ottawa.
• 2003 – American serial killer Gary Ridgway pleaded guilty to 48 counts of first-degree murder.
• 2013 – The Indian Space Research Organisation launched the Mars Orbiter Mission, India's first interplanetary probe.

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November 6: Gustavus Adolphus Day in Estonia, Finland and Sweden

• 1217 – King Henry III of England issued the Charter of the Forest, re-establishing the rights of access of free men to royal forests.
• 1794 – French Revolutionary Wars: Two British ships were intercepted by a French squadron, leading to the French seizure of HMS Alexander.
• 1868 – Red Cloud (pictured), a Native American leader of the Oglala Lakota tribe, signed the Treaty of Fort Laramie, ending Red Cloud's War and establishing the Great Sioux Reservation.
• 1917 – First World War: Canadian forces captured Passendale, Belgium, after three months of fighting against the Germans at the Battle of Passchendaele.
• 1988 – Two earthquakes occurring 12 minutes apart struck Yunnan near the China–Myanmar border, killing more than 730 people.

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November 7

• 1723 – O Ewigkeit, du Donnerwort, BWV 60, a dialogue cantata by Johann Sebastian Bach for Leipzig, was first performed.
• 1837 – American abolitionist Elijah Parish Lovejoy was murdered by a pro-slavery mob in Alton, Illinois, during an attack to destroy his printing press and abolitionist materials.
• 1934 – The first specimens of the tufted jay (pictured) to be scientifically described were collected in Mexico.
• 1949 – Oil was discovered in the Caspian Sea off the coast of Azerbaijan, leading to the construction of Neft Daşları, the world's first offshore oil platform.
• 1987 – Singapore's first Mass Rapid Transit line opened, with train services running between Yio Chu Kang and Toa Payoh.
• 1991 – Magic Johnson announced his retirement from professional basketball due to HIV infection.

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November 8: Intersex Day of Remembrance

• 1644 – The Shunzhi Emperor (portrait shown), the third emperor of the Qing dynasty, was enthroned in Beijing after the collapse of the Ming dynasty as the first Qing emperor to rule over China.
• 1965 – Vietnam War: In the Battle of Gang Toi, one of the earliest battles between the two sides, Viet Cong forces repelled an Australian attack.
• 1966 – Former Massachusetts attorney general Edward Brooke became the first African American elected to the United States Senate since Reconstruction.
• 1974 – British peer Lord Lucan disappeared without a trace, a day after allegedly murdering Sandra Rivett, his children's nanny.
• 2006 – Israeli artillery shelled a row of houses in the Gaza Strip town of Beit Hanoun, killing at least 19 Palestinians and wounding more than 40 others.

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November 9

• 1888 – Mary Jane Kelly, widely believed to be the fifth and final victim of the notorious unidentified serial killer Jack the Ripper, was murdered in London.
• 1914 – World War I: Off the Cocos (Keeling) Islands, the Australian light cruiser Sydney sank Emden, the last active German warship in the Indian Ocean, at the Battle of Cocos.
• 1939 – World War II: A covert Sicherheitsdienst operation captured two British agents of the Secret Intelligence Service near Venlo in the Netherlands.
• 1989 – East German official Günter Schabowski mistakenly announced the immediate opening of the inner German border, resulting in the fall of the Berlin Wall that night (border crossing pictured).
• 2019 – Pakistani prime minister Imran Khan inaugurated the Kartarpur Corridor, a visa-free border crossing connecting the Gurdwara Darbar Sahib to the India–Pakistan border.

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November 10

• 1599 – At the culmination of a Swedish civil war, supporters of the deposed King Sigismund III Vasa were publicly executed in the Åbo Bloodbath.
• 1969 – The children's television series Sesame Street (puppeteer pictured) premiered in the United States.
• 1975 – SS Edmund Fitzgerald (pictured) sank in Lake Superior with the loss of 29 lives.
• 2006 – Nadarajah Raviraj, a prominent Sri Lankan Tamil politician and human rights lawyer, was assassinated in Colombo.
• 2009 – A skirmish occurred between South Korean and North Korean naval ships off Daecheong Island in the Yellow Sea.

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November 11: Armistice Day (known as Remembrance Day in the Commonwealth of Nations and Veterans Day in the United States); Singles' Day in China and Southeast Asia

• 1778 – American Revolutionary War: British forces and their Iroquois allies attacked a fort and the village of Cherry Valley, New York, killing 14 soldiers and 30 civilians.
• 1813 – War of 1812: British–Canadian forces repelled an American attack at the Battle of Crysler's Farm, forcing the United States to give up their attempt to capture Montreal.
• 1934 – The Shrine of Remembrance (pictured), a memorial to all Australians who have served in war, opened in Melbourne.
• 1999 – The House of Lords Act was given royal assent, removing most hereditary peers from the British House of Lords.
• 2008 – After 30 years in power, Maumoon Abdul Gayoom was succeeded by Mohamed Nasheed as president of the Maldives.

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November 12

• 1944 – Second World War: In Operation Catechism, the Royal Air Force sank the German battleship Tirpitz (video featured) near Tromsø, Norway, killing about 1,000 sailors on board.
• 1956 – Suez Crisis: During an invasion of Rafah, Israeli soldiers shot and killed an estimated 111 Palestinian refugees and local inhabitants.
• 1970 – The Oregon Highway Division unsuccessfully attempted to destroy a rotting beached sperm whale near Florence, Oregon, with dynamite.
• 1991 – Indonesian forces opened fire on student demonstrators protesting the occupation of East Timor in the capital Dili, killing at least 250 people.
• 2014 – The European Space Agency's lander Philae touched down on 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko, becoming the first spacecraft to land on a comet.

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November 13

• 1002 – King Æthelred II (pictured) ordered the massacre of all Danes in England.
• 1914 – Zaian War: Zaian Berber tribesmen routed French forces at the Battle of El Herri in Morocco.
• 1963 – A man wielding a dagger was subdued as he was about to attack Sanzō Nosaka, the chairman of the Japanese Communist Party.
• 1966 – Arab–Israeli conflict: In response to a Fatah landmine incident, the Israeli military conducted a large cross-border assault on the Jordanian-controlled West Bank village of Samu.
• 1974 – Ronald DeFeo Jr. killed six members of his family in Amityville, New York, events that later inspired the book The Amityville Horror and a subsequent media franchise.

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November 14: World Diabetes Day; Dobruja Day in Romania

• 1941 – Second World War: After suffering torpedo damage the previous day, the British aircraft carrier HMS Ark Royal sank as she was being towed to Gibraltar for repairs.
• 1969 – Apollo 12 (pictured) launched from the Kennedy Space Center, later becoming the second crewed flight to land on the Moon.
• 1990 – Music producer Frank Farian admitted that the German R&B duo Milli Vanilli did not sing the vocals on their album Girl You Know It's True.
• 1992 – In poor conditions caused by Cyclone Forrest, Vietnam Airlines Flight 474 crashed near Nha Trang, killing 30 people.
• 2003 – Astronomers Michael E. Brown, Chad Trujillo, and David L. Rabinowitz discovered the trans-Neptunian object Sedna.

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November 15

• 1760 – The chapel of the newly constructed Castellania in Valletta, Malta, was consecrated.
• 1859 – Sponsored by Greek businessman Evangelos Zappas, the first modern revival of the Olympic Games took place in Athens.
• 1889 – Brazilian emperor Pedro II was overthrown in a coup led by Deodoro da Fonseca (pictured), while the country was proclaimed a republic.
• 1922 – During a general strike in Guayaquil, Ecuador, police and military fired into a crowd, killing at least 300 people.
• 1959 – Two men murdered a family in Holcomb, Kansas; the events became the subject of Truman Capote's non-fiction novel In Cold Blood, a pioneering work of the true crime genre.

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November 16

• 534 – The second edition of the Code of Justinian, a codification of Roman law by Byzantine emperor Justinian I (pictured), was published.
• 1532 – Spanish conquest of Peru: Conquistador Francisco Pizarro orchestrated a surprise attack in Cajamarca, capturing the Inca emperor, Atahualpa.
• 1914 – World War I: Austro-Hungarian forces launched an assault against Serbian defensive positions at the Kolubara river, beginning the Battle of Kolubara.
• 1944 – World War II: Operation Queen commenced with one of the heaviest Allied tactical bombings of the war, attacking German targets in the Rur valley.
• 1959 – The Sound of Music, a musical by Rodgers and Hammerstein based on The Story of the Trapp Family Singers, opened on Broadway at the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre.

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November 17

• 1796 – French Revolutionary Wars: French forces won the Battle of Arcole in a manoeuvre to cut the Austrians' line of retreat.
• 1968 – NBC controversially cut away from an American football game between the Oakland Raiders and New York Jets to broadcast Heidi, causing viewers in the Eastern United States to miss the game's dramatic ending.
• 1989 – Walt Disney Pictures released The Little Mermaid to theatres, beginning the Disney Renaissance.
• 1997 – Sixty-two people were killed by Islamist terrorists outside Deir el-Bahari (temple pictured) in Luxor, one of Egypt's top tourist attractions.
• 2009 – Administrators at the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit discovered that their servers had been hacked, and thousands of emails and files on climate change had been stolen.

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November 18

• 1809 – Napoleonic Wars: In the Bay of Bengal, a French frigate squadron captured three ships carrying recruits for the armies of the East India Company.
• 1956 – At the Polish embassy in Moscow, a phrase in an address by Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev was translated into English as "We will bury you", prompting Western envoys to leave the room.
• 1999 – Texas A&M University's Aggie Bonfire collapsed (aftermath pictured), killing 12 people and injuring 27 others, and causing the university to officially declare a hiatus on the 90-year-old annual event.
• 2014 – Two Palestinian men attacked the praying congregants of a synagogue in Jerusalem with axes, knives, and a gun, resulting in eight deaths, including the attackers themselves.

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November 19: International Men's Day; World Toilet Day; Liberation Day in Mali (1968)

• 1794 – The United States and Great Britain signed the Jay Treaty, the basis for ten years of peaceful trade between the two nations.
• 1824 – Temenggong Abdul Rahman of Johor and Sultan Hussein Shah of Johor ceded the governance of Singapore to the British East India Company.
• 1969 – Playing for Santos against Vasco da Gama in Rio de Janeiro, Brazilian footballer Pelé (pictured) scored his thousandth goal.
• 1991 – Mexican singer Luis Miguel released the album Romance, which led to a revival of interest in bolero music.
• 2002 – The Greek oil tanker Prestige split in two and sank off the coast of Galicia after spilling 420 thousand barrels (17.8 million US gallons) of oil, in the worst environmental disaster in Spanish and Portuguese history.

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November 20: Transgender Day of Remembrance

• 284 – Diocletian became Roman emperor, eventually establishing reforms that ended the Crisis of the Third Century.
• 1739 – War of Jenkins' Ear: A British naval force arrived at the settlement of Portobello in the Spanish Main, capturing it the next day.
• 1969 – A group of Native American activists began a 19-month occupation (graffiti pictured) of Alcatraz Island in San Francisco Bay.
• 1979 – Armed insurgents attacked and took over the Masjid al-Haram in Mecca, declaring that one of their leaders was the Mahdi, the prophesied redeemer of Islam.
• 1994 – In accordance with the Lusaka Protocol, the Angolan government signed a ceasefire with UNITA rebels in a failed attempt to end the Angolan Civil War.

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November 21: Armed Forces Day in Bangladesh

• 1894 – First Sino-Japanese War: After capturing the Chinese city of Port Arthur, the Japanese army began a massacre of the city's soldiers and civilians.
• 1959 – American disc jockey Alan Freed (pictured), who popularized the term rock and roll, was fired from WABC-AM for his role in the payola scandal.
• 1964 – The Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge, connecting Staten Island and Brooklyn in New York City, opened to traffic as the longest suspension bridge in the world at the time.
• 2009 – An explosion in a coal mine in Heilongjiang, China, killed 108 miners.

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November 22

• 1574 – Juan Fernández, a Spanish explorer, discovered an archipelago that now bears his name off the coast of Chile.
• 1635 – Dutch colonial forces on Formosa launched a three-month pacification campaign against Taiwanese indigenous peoples.
• 1963 – John F. Kennedy was assassinated by Lee Harvey Oswald in Dallas; hours later, Lyndon B. Johnson was sworn in as the 36th president of the United States (pictured).
• 1971 – In Britain's worst mountaineering disaster, five teenage students and one of their leaders were found dead from exposure on the Cairngorm Plateau in the Scottish Highlands.

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November 23

• 1644 – In opposition to licensing and censorship during the English Civil War, John Milton's Areopagitica was published, arguing for the right to free expression.
• 1924 – The New York Times published evidence from Edwin Hubble (pictured) stating that the Andromeda Nebula, previously believed to be part of the Milky Way, is in fact another galaxy.
• 2003 – Rose Revolution: Eduard Shevardnadze resigned as President of Georgia following weeks of mass protests over disputed election results.
• 2009 – A crowd of people on their way to register Esmael Mangudadatu's candidacy for governor of Maguindanao, Philippines, were kidnapped and killed by supporters of his rival, resulting in 58 deaths.
• 2011 – Arab Spring: After months of protests in Yemen, President Ali Abdullah Saleh agreed to transfer power to Vice President Abdrabbuh Mansur Hadi.

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November 24: Feast day of the Vietnamese Martyrs (Catholicism)

• 1542 – Anglo-Scottish Wars: English forces captured about 1,200 Scots at the Battle of Solway Moss.
• 1859 – British naturalist Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species was first published, and sold out its initial print run on the first day.
• 1976 – A magnitude-7.3 earthquake struck eastern Turkey, destroying 80 per cent of buildings in the region and causing at least 4,000 casualties.
• 2009 – The Avdhela Project, an Aromanian digital library and cultural initiative, was launched in Bucharest, Romania.
• 2023 – Hibiscus Rising (pictured), a sculpture commemorating the life of David Oluwale, was unveiled in Leeds.

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November 25: Evacuation Day in New York City (1783)

• 1759 – The second of two strong earthquakes struck the Levant and destroyed all the villages in the Beqaa Valley.
• 1795 – Stanisław II Augustus (pictured), the last king of Poland, was forced to abdicate after the Third Partition of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth.
• 1901 – Gustav Mahler's Symphony No. 4 premiered in Munich.
• 1952 – Korean War: After 42 days of fighting, the Battle of Triangle Hill ended as American and South Korean units abandoned their attempt to capture the "Iron Triangle".
• 1981 – A group of Conservative members of Parliament wrote a letter outlining their opposition to the economic policy of Margaret Thatcher, leading to speculation over a split from the party.

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November 26: Feast day of Saint Sylvester Gozzolini (Catholicism); Constitution Day in India (1949)

• 1842 – The University of Notre Dame (building pictured) was founded by Edward Sorin of the Congregation of Holy Cross as an all-male institution in the U.S. state of Indiana.
• 1942 – World War II: Josip Broz Tito and the Yugoslav Partisans convened the first meeting of the Anti-Fascist Council for the National Liberation of Yugoslavia at Bihać in northwestern Bosnia.
• 1977 – A speaker claiming to represent the "Intergalactic Association" interrupted a broadcast of Southern Television in South East England.
• 2011 – NASA launched the Mars Science Laboratory mission from Cape Canaveral, carrying the Curiosity rover on board.

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November 27: Thanksgiving in the United States (2025)

• 1835 – James Pratt and John Smith became the last people to be executed in England for sodomy.
• 1856 – William III (pictured) unilaterally revised the constitution of Luxembourg, greatly expanding his powers as grand duke.
• 1963 – President Lyndon B. Johnson delivered the "Let Us Continue" speech, in which he advocated for civil-rights legislation and national cohesion, to a joint session of the U.S. Congress five days after the assassination of John F. Kennedy.
• 2009 – Lady Gaga performed the first concert of The Monster Ball Tour, which became the highest-grossing tour in history for a debut headlining artist.

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November 28: Black Friday in the United States (2025); Bukovina Day in Romania

• 1443 – Having deserted the Ottoman army, Skanderbeg (pictured) arrived in the Albanian city of Krujë and, using a forged letter from Sultan Murad II to the governor of Krujë, became lord of the city.
• 1895 – The Chicago Times-Herald race, the first automobile race in the U.S., was held in Chicago.
• 1903 – SS Petriana struck a reef near Point Nepean, leading to Australia's first major oil spill and a debate over the White Australia policy.
• 2016 – LaMia Flight 2933 crashed near Medellín, Colombia, killing 71 people, many of whom were players from Chapecoense Football Club.

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November 29: Liberation Day in Albania

• 1781 – The crew of the British slave ship Zong, running low on water, began the killing of more than 130 enslaved African people by throwing them into the sea to claim insurance.
• 1810 – Napoleonic Wars: British troops rendezvoused at Grand Baie to launch an invasion of Isle de France, now known as Mauritius.
• 1924 – The Bronx County Bird Club was formed and would go on to lead the Audubon Society's Christmas Bird Count in the eastern US for three years in a row.
• 1963 – Five minutes after taking off from Montréal–Dorval, Trans-Canada Air Lines Flight 831 crashed in bad weather, killing all 118 people on board.
• 1972 – Atari announced the release of Pong (screenshot pictured), one of the first video games to achieve widespread popularity in both the arcade and home-console markets.
• 2012 – In resolution 67/19, the United Nations General Assembly voted to accord the status of a non-member observer state to Palestine.

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November 30: Saint Andrew's Day (Christianity)

• 1700 – Great Northern War: Swedish forces led by King Charles XII defeated the Russian army at the Battle of Narva.
• 1934 – Flying Scotsman (pictured) became the first steam locomotive officially to exceed 100 miles per hour (161 km/h).
• 1953 – Mutesa II, Kabaka of Buganda, was temporarily deposed and exiled to London by Andrew Cohen, the British governor of Uganda.
• 1954 – A meteorite crashed through a roof in Sylacauga, Alabama, and hit a sleeping woman in the first verified case of a human being injured by an extraterrestrial object.
• 1999 – A series of protests by anti-globalization activists against the World Trade Organization Ministerial Conference of 1999 in Seattle forced the cancellation of the opening ceremonies.

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