694 – At the Seventeenth Council of Toledo, Egica, King of the Visigoths of Hispania, accuses Jews of aiding Muslims, sentencing all Jews to slavery.
1620 – Pilgrims aboard the Mayflower sight land at Cape Cod, Massachusetts.
1851 – Kentucky marshals abduct abolitionist minister Calvin Fairbank from Jeffersonville, Indiana, and take him to Kentucky to stand trial for helping a slave escape.
1857 – The Atlantic is founded in Boston, Massachusetts.
1867 – Tokugawa shogunate hands power back to the Emperor of Japan, starting the Meiji Restoration.
1872 – The Great Boston Fire of 1872. The conflagration began at 7:20 p.m. on November 9, 1872, in the basement of a commercial warehouse at 83-87 Summer Street. The fire was finally contained 12 hours later, after it had consumed about 65 acres of Boston’s downtown, 776 buildings and much of the financial district. Miraculously, only thirteen people died in the inferno
1906 – Theodore Roosevelt is the first sitting President of the United States to make an official trip outside the country. He did so to inspect progress on the Panama Canal.
1907 – The Cullinan Diamond is presented to King Edward VII on his birthday. The Cullinan Diamond was a large gem-quality diamond weighing 3,106.75 carats discovered at the Premier No. 2 mine in Cullinan, modern-day South Africa, on 26 January 1905.
1918 – Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany abdicates after the German Revolution, and Germany is proclaimed a Republic.
1921 – The Italian National Fascist Party comes into existence.
1960 – Robert McNamara is named president of Ford Motor Company, the first non-Ford to serve in that post. A month later, he resigned to join the administration of newly elected John F. Kennedy.
1967 – Apollo program: NASA launches the unmanned Apollo 4 test spacecraft atop the first Saturn V rocket from Cape Kennedy, Florida.
1967 – The first issue of Rolling Stone magazine is published.
1979 – Nuclear false alarm: The NORAD computers and the Alternate National Military Command Center in Fort Ritchie, Maryland detected purported massive Soviet nuclear strike. After reviewing the raw data from satellites and checking the early-warning radars, the alert is cancelled.
1985 – Garry Kasparov, 22, of the Soviet Union becomes the youngest World Chess Champion by beating fellow Soviet Anatoly Karpov.
1989 – Fall of the Berlin Wall. East Germany opens checkpoints in the Berlin Wall, allowing its citizens to travel to West Berlin.
http://www.rsc.org/periodic-table/video/110/Darmstadtium?videoid=lhvMqva3-7M
1994 – The chemical element darmstadtium is discovered.
2005 – Suicide bombers attacked three hotels in Amman, Jordan, killing at least 60 people.
Births
1731 – Benjamin Banneker, American farmer and author (d. 1806)
1853 – Stanford White, American architect and partner, co-founded McKim, Mead & White (d. 1906) Stanford White was an American architect and partner in the architectural firm McKim, Mead & White
1915 – André François, Romanian-French illustrator, painter, and sculptor
1915 – Sargent Shriver, American lieutenant, lawyer, and politician, 21st United States Ambassador to France (d. 2011)
1918 – Spiro Agnew, American soldier, lawyer, and politician, 39th Vice President of the United States (d. 1996)
1924 – Robert Frank, Swiss-American photographer and director. Robert Frank’s most notable work, the 1958 book titled ‘The Americans,’ earned Frank comparisons to a modern-day de Tocqueville for his fresh and nuanced outsider’s view of American society.
1928 – Anne Sexton, American poet and academic (d. 1974)
1936 – Mary Travers, American singer-songwriter (d. 2009)
Deaths
959 – Constantine VII, Byzantine emperor (b. 905)
1911 – Howard Pyle, American author and illustrator (b. 1853)
1924 – Henry Cabot Lodge, American historian and politician (b. 1850)
1940 – Neville Chamberlain, English businessman and politician, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (b. 1869)
1953 – Dylan Thomas, Welsh poet and author (b. 1914)
1970 – Charles de Gaulle, French general and politician, 18th President of France (b. 1890)
1988 – John N. Mitchell, American lieutenant, lawyer, and politician, 67th United States Attorney General (b. 1913)
2003 – Art Carney, American actor and comedian (b. 1918)