• 1444 - Battle of Varna: The crusading forces of King Vladislaus III of Varna (aka Ulaszlo I of Hungary and Wladyslaw III of Poland) are crushed by the Turks under Sultan Murad II and Vladislaus is killed.
• 1520 - Danish King Christian II executes dozens of people in the Stockholm Bloodbath after a successful invasion of Sweden.
• 1619 - René Descartes has the dreams that inspire his Meditations on First Philosophy.
• 1674 - Anglo-Dutch War: As provided in the Treaty of Westminster, Netherlands cedes New Netherlands to England.
• 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 was founded.
• 1847 - The passenger ship Stephen Whitney is wrecked thick fog off the southern coast of Ireland, killing 92 of the 110 on board. The disaster results in the construction the Fastnet Rock lighthouse.
• 1865 - Major Henry Wirz, the superintendent of a prison camp in Andersonville, Georgia, is hanged, becoming the only American Civil War soldier executed for war crimes.
• 1871 - Henry Morton Stanley locates missing explorer and missionary, Dr. David Livingstone in Ujiji, near Lake Tanganyika saying "Dr. Livingstone, I presume?"
• 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.
• 1918 - The Western Union Cable Office in North Sydney, NS received a top-secret coded message from Europe(that would be sent to Ottawa, ON and Washington, DC) that said on November 11, 1918 all fighting would cease on land, sea and in the air.
• 1919 - The first national convention of the American Legion is held in Minneapolis, Minnesota (convention ended on November 12).
• 1924 - Dion O'Banion, leader of the North Side Gang is assassinated in his flower shop by members of Johnny Torrio's gang, sparking the bloody gang war of the 1920s in Chicago.
• 1928 - Michinomiya Hirohito is crowned the 124th Emperor of Japan, Emperor Showa.
• 1928 - Playing against Army at Yankee Stadium, Notre Dame football coach Knute Rockne gives what is considered the greatest locker room speeches of all time by saying "Win one for the Gipper." The Fighting Irish would win the game 12-6.
• 1938 - The death of the founder of the Republic of Turkey, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk
• 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 agreement to an armistice with the Allies in North Africa.
• 1944 - Ammunition ship USS Mount Hood (AE-11) exploded at Seeadler Harbour, Manus, Admiralty Islands
• 1945 - Heavy battle in Surabaya between Indonesian nationalists and returning colonialists after World War II, celebrated as Heroes' Day (Hari Pahlawan).
• 1951 - 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 - The Hope Diamond was 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.
• 1970 - Soviet Lunar probe Lunokhod 1 launched.
• 1971 - In Cambodia, Khmer Rouge forces attack the city Phnom Penh and its airport, killing 44, wounding at least 30 and damaging nine airplanes.
• 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.
• 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 was repealed in December 1991 with Resolution 4686).
• 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 - WorldCom and MCI Communications announce a $37 billion merger (the largest merger in US history at the time).
• 2006 - Sri Lankan Tamil Parliamentarian Nadarajah Raviraj assassinated in Colombo.
• 2007 - ¿Por qué no te callas? incident between King Juan Carlos of Spain and Venezuela's president Hugo Chávez.

Births