Historic Event
1468 Duke of Burgundy Charles the Bold occupies and plunders Liège
Appointment of Interest
1661 Robert Hooke appointed Curator of Experiments to the Royal Society, England
- 1673 Dutch troops under William of Orange occupy Bonn
- 1682 Swedish king Charles XI establishes absolute monarchy
- 1723 Ambrose Godfrey patents a gunpowder fueled fire extinguisher system in England
- 1727 France & Bavaria renew secret treaty
- 1775 General Washington forbids recruiting officers from enlisting black troops
- 1793 The 1st Mayor of Paris and astronomer Jean Sylvain Bailly, is guillotined during the Reign of Terror
- 1799 Andrew Ellicott makes the first known record of a meteor shower observation in the U.S, from a ship off the coast of Florida Keys
- 1813 Allied troops occupy Zwolle, Netherlands
- 1823 Great North Holland Canal (Amsterdam) opens
- 1833 The great Leonid Meteor shower recorded
- 1847 Sir James Young Simpson, a British physician, is the first to use chloroform as an anaesthetic
- 1859 Jules Leotard performs 1st Flying Trapeze circus act (Paris) He also designed garment that bears his name
- 1873 Bay District Race Track in San Francisco opens
Ben-Hur Turns Author Into a Soldier of Fortune
1880 Best selling American novel "Ben-Hur: A Tale of The Christ" by soldier Lew Wallace is published
- 1885 Montreal & Britannia Football Clubs (QRFU) defeat Ontario Combined Team (ORFU) 3-0 in CRFU Championship game
Historic Publication
1890 Mabel Loomis Todd publishes the first edition of "Poems by Emily Dickinson"
- 1892 Pudge Heffelfinger receives $500 to become first professional football player in the Allegheny Athletic Association's 4-0 win over the Pittsburgh Athletic Club
- 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.
- 1894 Lawrence Hargrave, Australian aeronautical pioneer and inventor of the box kite, linked four huge box kites together and flew - but remained attached to the ground by piano wire
- 1899 British troops reach Durban, Natal
- 1900 Exposition Universelle (World's Fair) in Paris closes after 50 million visitors - Art Nouveau style dominates
- 1905 (November 12 & November 13) Norway holds a referendum in favor of monarchy over republic.
- 1906 C W Gregory (NSW v Qld) starts day at 48*, is 366* at stumps
Historic Event
1908 Andrew Fisher assumes the position of prime minister for what turns out to be a short-lived second Labour government, Australia
Historic Event
1909 Mackenzie King takes his seat in the House of Commons as Minister of Labour
- 1910 1st possible movie stunt: man jumps into the Hudson river from a burning balloon
Historic Event
1912 British explorer Robert Falcon Scott's diary & body found in Antarctica
- 1912 Spanish Prime Minister José Canalejas y Méndez is assassinated by an anarchist book shopping in Madrid
- 1914 Turks sultan Jamal Pasja declares a German holy war
- 1915 Britain annexes Gilbert & Ellice archipelago in the Western Pacific
- 1915 Theodore W. Richards is 1st American to win Nobel Prize in Chemistry
- 1918 Emperor Karl of Austria-Hungary abdicates, Austria becomes a republic
- 1919 Ross & Keith Smith start a 1 month flight from London to Australia
Election of Interest
1920 Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis elected 1st baseball commissioner by team owners
- 1920 The Dalmatian coast between Italy and Yugoslavia is ceded to Yugoslavia
- 1921 Washington Conference for Limitation of Armaments
- 1922 The Sigma Gamma Rho Sorority is founded on the campus of Butler University in Indianapolis, Indiana
- 1923 Dr Hjalmar Schacht is appointed special commissioner to deal with the currency problem in Germany; by November 1924 the currency will have been restored
Coup d'état
1923 In Germany, Adolf Hitler is arrested for attempt to seize power during "Beer Hall Putsch" coup
Historic Event
1927 Leon Trotsky is expelled from the Soviet Communist Party, paving the way for Joseph Stalin to consolidate complete power
- 1927 Notre Dame's Fighting Irish changes blue jerseys for green
- 1928 British steamer "Vestris" capsizes & sinks off Virginia, kills 110
Music History
1931 Jean Sibelius and Ashton's ballet "Lady of Shalott" premieres in London
- 1931 Maple Leaf Gardens opens in Toronto - Chic Blackhawks beat Leafs, 2-1
- 1932 24 killed at Lancashire mine explosion
- 1933 1st NFL football game on a Sunday at Philadelphia's Baker Bowl - sporting events on Sunday had been illegal on Sundays; Eagles tie Chicago Bears, 3-3
- 1933 1st NFL football game on a Sunday at Pittsburgh's Forbes Field - sporting events on Sunday had been illegal on Sundays; Pirates lose to Brooklyn Dodgers 32-0
- 1933 First known photo of so-called Loch Ness monster is taken by Hugh Gray
- 1933 Nazis receive 92% of vote in German parliamentary elections
- 1935 Egas Moniz performs the first modern brain surgery on the frontal lobes to treat mental disorders, at Santa Marta Hospital in Lisbon, Portugal
- 1936 1st ever TV Gardening show "In Your Garden" shown on BBC television
Nobel Prize
1936 Nobel Prize for literature awarded to American playwright Eugene O'Neill
- 1936 Oakland Bay Bridge opens
- 1936 St Louis Browns sold to Donald L Barnes & William O DeWitt
Historic Event
1938 Hermann Goering announces he wants Madagascar as a Jewish homeland
- 1939 Jews in Lodz, Poland, ordered to wear a yellow star of David
- 1940 Blizzard strikes North American midwest, 154 die (69 on boat on Great Lakes)
- 1941 Alma Heflin, 1st female test pilot for commercial aircraft - Piper Corporation, Lock Haven, Pennsylvania
- 1941 Germany's drive to take Moscow halted
- 1941 Radio stations WOV-AM & WNEW-AM in NYC swaps call letters
- 1942 WWII Naval Battle of Guadalcanal begins between Allied and Japanese forces in Solomon Islands
- 1943 Landwacht (NSB-political party) forms in Netherlands
- 1944 RAF sinks German battleship Tirpitz at Tromso Fjord, Norway
- 1945 Nobel Peace Prize awarded to American politician Cordell Hull (for establishing the UN)
- 1946 A branch of the Exchange National Bank in Chicago, Illinois opens the first ten drive-up teller windows
- 1946 Walt Disney's "Song Of South" released
- 1947 KPO-AM in San Francisco CA changes call letters to KNBC (now KNBR)
- 1947 Schilderijenvervalser Han of Meegeren to 1 years jail sentenced
Historic Event
1948 Japanese Prime Minister Hideki Tojo sentenced to death by war crimes tribunal
- 1948 The first mobile betatron (particle accelerator) begins operation at the U.S. Naval Ordnance Laboratory, White Oak, Maryland
- 1950 Gene Roberts sets NFL NY Giant rushing record (218 yds) vs Chic Cards
- 1951 "Paint Your Wagon" opens at Shubert Theater NYC for 289 performances
- 1952 Philadelphia A's pitcher Bobby Shantz wins AL MVP
- 1952 White Sox place Jim Rivera on 1 year probation after cleared of rape
Historic Event
1953 David Ben-Gurion, resigns as Prime Minister of Israel
- 1953 US district Judge Grim, rules NFL can black out TV home games
- 1954 Ellis Island, immigration station in NY Harbor is closed
Historic Event
1954 Lee Kuan Yew and others form the People's Action Party (PAP) in Singapore to work towards self-rule in Singapore
- 1955 1st West German officers sworn in
Hall of Fame
1955 Eddie Arcaro, Earl Sande and George Woolf inaugural inductees in (Horse) Racing Hall of Fame
Coup d'état
1960 Coup against South Vietnamese President Ngô Đình Diệm fails
- 1960 Mercury-Redstone 1 test launch fails at 10 cm altitude
- 1964 Jean becomes Grand Duke of Luxembourg
- 1964 Paula Murphy sets female land speed record 226.37 MPH
Election of Interest
1965 Ferdinand Marcos elected 10th President of the Philippines
- 1965 General strike in Morocco against disappearance of Ben Barka
- 1965 Mad Dog Vachon beats Crusher in Denver, to become NWA champ
- 1965 Venera 2 launched by Soviet Union toward Venus
- 1966 18-year-old US High schooler Robert Smith kills 5 people at Arizona's Rose-Mar Beauty College for fame
A Selfie in Space
1966 Buzz Aldrin takes the first 'space selfie', a photo of himself performing extravehicular activity in space during the Gemini program
- 1966 Dick The Bruiser beats Mad Dog Vachon in Omaha, to become NWA champ
- 1966 Dodgers complete an 18-game tour of Japan with a 9-8-1 record
- 1967 Packers' Travis Williams returns 2 kickoffs for TDs against Browns, setting largest margin of Browns defeat (48), winning 55-7
- 1968 KSEL (now KAMC) TV channel 28 in Lubbock, TX (ABC) begins broadcasting
- 1968 US Supreme Court: Epperson v. Arkansas, court declares unconstitutional Arkansas law banning teaching evolution in public schools
Historic Event
1969 Author Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn expelled from the Soviet Writers Union
Sports History
1969 Minnesota's Harmon Killebrew is voted AL MVP
- 1969 US army announces investigating William Calley for alleged massacre of civilians at Vietnamese village of My Lai in March, 19
- 1969 WJJY (now WJPT) TV channel 14 in Jacksonville, IL (ABC) 1st broadcast
- 1970 Cleveland Cavaliers 1st NBA victory (11th game), beating Portland 105-103
- 1970 Cyclone Bhola makes landfall in East Pakistan (Bangladesh) killing up to 500,000, making it the deadliest tropical cyclone ever recorded
- 1970 Scientists perform 1st artificial synthesis of a live cell
- 1970 The Northern Ireland Housing Executive (NIHE) is formed; the NIHE gradually took over control of the building and allocation of public sector housing in Northern Ireland
Sports History
1972 22nd NASCAR Sprint Cup: Richard Petty wins
- 1972 Charity concert for United Crusade (now United Way) in San Diego, California attracts nearly 52,000; performers include: J. Geils Band, Jesse Colin Young, Quicksilver Messenger Service, Foghat, and Dr. Hook and the Medicine Show
Music History
1973 Dmitri Shostakovich's 14th String Quartet premieres
- 1974 A salmon is discovered in the River Thames, England, for the first time since 1833
- 1974 South Africa suspended from UN General Assembly over racial policies
- 1975 25th NASCAR Sprint Cup: Richard Petty wins
- 1975 7h Rugby League World Cup: Australia beats England 25-0
- 1975 American Supreme Court Justice William O Douglas (77) retires after 36 years
Sports History
1975 NY Mets Tom Seaver wins his 3rd Cy Young Award
- 1977 France performs nuclear test at Mururoa atoll
- 1977 New Orleans elects 1st black mayor, Ernest "Dutch" Morial
- 1978 Gary William Friedman and Will Holt's musical "Platinum" opens at Mark Hellinger Theater, NYC; runs for 33 performances
- 1979 Tony Franklin of Philadelphia Eagles kicks 59-yard field goal
- 1979 US President Carter announces a halts to Iranian oil imports & freezes Iranian assets
- 1980 Baltimore's Steve Stone wins AL Cy Young Award
- 1980 US space probe Voyager I approaches 77,000-mi (124,000 km) of Saturn
- 1981 1st balloon crossing of Pacific is completed (Double Eagle V)
- 1981 2nd shuttle mission-1st time spacecraft launched twice (Columbia 2)
- 1981 Bill C Davis' "Mass Appeal" premieres in NYC
Sports History
1981 Billy Martin named AL Manager of Year (Oakland A's)
- 1981 Great Britain performs nuclear test
- 1981 Pilin Leon of Venezuela, crowned 31st Miss World
- 1982 Aaron Pryor scores a 14th round KO of Alexis Argüello in Miami to retain his WBA super lightweight boxing title in the first of 2 meetings between the Hall of Famers; The Ring’s 'Fight of the Decade'
Historic Event
1982 KGB Chief Yuri Andropov succeeds Leonid Brezhnev as leader of the Soviet Union
- 1982 US performs nuclear test at Nevada Test Site
- 1982 Zaheer Abbas gets his 100th 100 in Test Cricket for Pakistan v India, goes to 215
- 1983 4 die in a train crash in Marshall Texas
- 1983 NJ Devils 1st overtime game, lose to Calgary Flames 4-3
- 1984 NBC premiere of "Victims for Victims: The Theresa Saldana Story", fact based telepic of actress Saldana's near fatal attack and its aftermath
Music Single
1984 Paul McCartney releases single "We All Stand Together"
- 1984 Space shuttle astronauts snared a satellite 1st space salvage
Cricket History
1985 Richard Hadlee takes 15-123 for cricket match New Zealand v Australia at Brisbane
- 1985 Secretary in Ann Arbor Mich wounded by package bomb
- 1985 STS 61-B vehicle moves to launch pad
- 1986 France performs nuclear test
Sports History
1986 Roger Clemens wins AL Cy Young Award unanimously
- 1987 "Teddy & Alice" opens at Minskoff Theater NYC for 77 performances
- 1987 Heavy snow closes schools from DC to Maine
- 1987 Ulla Weigerstorfer of Austria, 20, crowned 37th Miss World
- 1988 Japan beats MLB All-Star team 5-4 in Tokyo (Game 6 of 7)
- 1988 USSR performs nuclear test at Eastern Kazakh/Semipalitinsk USSR
- 1989 Brazil holds its 1st free presidential election in 29 years
- 1989 George Forrest's musical "Grand Hotel" opens at Martin Beck Theater, NYC; runs for 1018 performances and wins 5 Tony Awards
- 1990 "The Body Bag Game" - after Eagles coach Buddy Ryan threatens beating Redskins so badly "they'll have to be carted off in body bags" the Eagles defense score 3 touchdowns winning 28–14, knocking 8 Redskins out of the game
Historic Event
1990 The World Wide Web is first proposed by CERN computer scientists Tim Berners-Lee and Robert Cailliau [1]
Sports History
1991 Atlanta Brave Tom Glavine wins NL Cy Young Award
- 1991 Dili Massacre, Indonesian forces open fire on a crowd of protesters in Dili, East Timor, killing at least 250
Film & TV History
1991 US TV series "Full House" 100th episode, the twins are born
- 1992 British TV comedy "Absolutely Fabulous" written by Jennifer Saunders, starring Jennifer Saunders and Joanna Lumley first appears on the BBC
- 1992 NY Yankee pitcher Steve Howe is reinstated for 8th time
- 1995 25th NYC Women's Marathon won by Tegla Loroupe in 2:28:06
- 1995 26th NYC Marathon won by German Silva in 2:10:00
- 1995 45th NASCAR Sprint Cup: Jeff Gordon wins
Sports History
1995 German Benetton driver Michael Schumacher crashes in the season-ending Australian Grand Prix in Adelaide but claims second straight F1 World Drivers Championship by 33 points from Damon Hill
Cricket History
1995 Last day of Test cricket for New Zealand batsman Martin Crowe
- 1995 Marino breaks Tarkenton's NFL all-time passing yardage mark of 47,003
- 1995 NY MTA raises subway & bus fares from $1.25 to $1.50
- 1995 STS 74 (Atlantis 15), launches into orbit
- 1996 Saudi Arabian Flight 763 and Kazakhstan Airlines Flight 1907 collide in midair over Charkhi Dadri in India, killing 349 people, the third-deadliest aviation disaster in history
- 1996 Toronto's Pat Hentgen wins AL Cy Young Award
- 1997 Dick Vitale signs with ESPN through year 2004
- 1998 NY Islanders tie Detroit Red Wings 1-1, to end 10 game losing streak
- 1999 The Düzce earthquake strikes Turkey with a magnitude of 7.2 on the Richter scale.
- 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.
- 2001 Taliban forces abandon Afghanistan's capital Kabul, ahead of advancing Afghan Northern Alliance troops
- 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.
- 2003 With 501 km/h (311 mph) Shanghai Transrapid sets up a new world record for commercial railway systems.
- 2006 Belgian tennis star Justine Hénin-Hardenne wins WTA Tour Championship title decider in Madrid, Spain; beats defending champion Amélie Mauresmo 6-4, 6-3
- 2006 Former Soviet republic of South Ossetia holds a second referendum on independence from Georgia
Country Music Association Awards
2008 42nd Country Music Association Award: Kenny Chesney, Carrie Underwood & Brad Paisley win
Historic Event
2011 Silvio Berlusconi resigns as Prime Minister of Italy due, in large part, to the European sovereign debt crisis.
- 2012 Into the Silence by Wade Davis wins the 2012 Samuel Johnson Prize
Hall of Fame
2012 Joe Sakic, Mats Sundin, Pavel Bure and Adam Oates are inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame
Sports History
2012 Novak Đoković of Serbia wins his second season-ending ATP World Tour Finals tennis title beating 6-time champion Roger Federer 7-6, 7-5 in the final in London. England
- 2014 European Space Agency's Rosetta lands the Philae probe on the comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko
Historic Event
2015 Out Magazine names Barack Obama 'Ally of the Year', Obama becomes 1st sitting US President to pose for cover of a gay magazine
- 2015 Suicide bombings in Lebanon kill 43, Isis claim responsibility
Film & TV History
2016 Jackie Chan awarded honorary Oscar for his film achievements at 8th Annual Governors Awards ceremony
- 2017 7.3 earthquake hits near Halabjal, Iraq, on border with Iran, killing over 500 people, with 7,000 injured
