31st of December

Today is the 365th day of the year, widely known as New Year's Eve.  It is the last day of the year.

406 - Vandals, Alans, and Suebians, cross the Rhine River beginning an invasion of Gaul.

1225 - The Ly Dynasty of Vietnam ends after 216 years of reign, by the enthronement of the boy emperor Train Thai Tong, husband of the last Ly monarch, Ly Chieu Hoang.  This begins the Tran Dynasty.

1600 - The British East India Company is chartered.

1687 - The first Huguenots set sail from France to the Cape of Good Hope.

1759 - Arthur Guinness signs a 9,000 year lease at 45 pounds per year, and starts brewing Guinness.

1857 - Queen Victoria chooses Ottawa, Canada, then a small logging town, as the capital of Canada.

1862 - Abraham Lincoln signs an act that admits West Virginia to the Union, thus dividing Virginia in two.

1879 - Thomas Edison demonstrates incandescent lighting to the public for the first time in Menlo Park, New Jersey.

1904 - The first New Year's Eve celebration is held in Times Sqaure, then known as Longacre Square, in New York City.

1923 - The chimes of Big Ben are broadcast on radio for the first time by the BBC.

1946 - President Harry S. Truman officially proclaims the end of hostilities in World War II.

1951 - The Marshall Plan expires after distributing more than $13.3 billion in foreign aid to rebuild Europe.

1955 - The General Motors Corporation becomes the first U.S. corporation to make over $1 billion in a year.

1983 - The AT&T Bell System is broken up by the United States Government.

1991 - All official Soviet Union institutions have ceased operations by this date and the Soviet Union is officially dissolved.

1992 - Czechoslovakia is peacefully dissolved in what is dubbed the Velvet Divorce, resulting in the creation of the Czech Republic and Slovakia as separate countries.

1999 - Boris Yeltsin, the first president of Russia resigns, leaving Prime Minister Vladimir Putin as the acting President.

2004 - The official opening of Taipei 101, the tallest skyscraper at that time in the world, standing at a height of 509 meters or 1,670 feet.

30th of December

It is the 364th day of the year, with only 1 day remaining until the end of the year.

1853 - The United States buys land from Mexico, in order to facilitate railroad building in the Southwest.

1862 - The ironclad USS Monitor, sinks off Cape Hatteras, North Carolina.

1924 - Edwin Hubble makes the announcement claiming the existence of other galaxies.

1948 - The Cole Porter Broadway musical, Kiss Me Kate, opens at the New Century Theatre and becomes the first show to win the Best Musical Tony Award.  It will have over 1,077 performances.

1977 - For the second time, Ted Bundy escapes from his cell in Glenwood Springs, Colorado.

1981 - In the 39th game of his 3rd NHL season Wayne Gretsky, scores 5 goals giving him 50 on the year.  This sets a new NHL record previously held by Maurice Richard and Mike Bossy who earlier had each scored 50 goals in 50 games.

29th of December

Today is the 363rd day of the year, with only 2 day remaining until the new year.

1778 - 3,500 British soldiers under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Archibald Campbell capture Savannah, Georgia.

1812 - The USS Constitution under the command of Captain William Bainbridge, captures the HMS Java off the coast of Brazil, after a three hour battle.

1835 - The Treaty of New Echota is signed, ceding all the lands of the Cherokee east of the Mississippi River to the United States.

1845 - The United States annexes the Mexican state of Texas, following the Manifest Destiny doctrine.  For others, the Republic of Texas, which had been independent since the Texas Revolution of 1836, is admitted as the 28th state of the Union.

1890 - United States soldiers kill more than 200 Oglala Lakota people with four Hotchkiss guns in the Wounded Knee Massacre.

1939 - The first flight of the Consolidated B-24.

1940 - The Luftwaffe fire-bombs London, England killing almost 200 civilians.

1997 - Hong Kong begins to kill all the nation's 1.25 million chickens, in order to stop the spread of a potentially deadly influenza strain.

1998 - Leaders of the Khmer Rouge apologize for the 1970s genocide in Cambodia that claimed over 1 million lives.

28th of December

It is the 362nd day of the year, with only 3 days remaining.

1065 - Westminster Abbey is consecrated.

1612 - Galileo Galilei becomes the first astronomer to observe the planet Neptune, although he mistakenly cataloged it as a fixed star.

1832 - John C. Calhoun, becomes the first Vice President of the United States to resign.

1835 - Osceola leads his Seminole warriors in Florida into the Second Seminole War against the U.S. Army.

1846 - Iowa is admitted as the 29th U.S. state.

1867 - The United States claims Midway Atoll, the first territory annexed outside Continental limits.

1895 - The Lumiere brothers perform for their first paying audience at the Grand Cafe in Boulevard des Capucines, marking the debut of the cinema.

1895 - Wilhelm Rontgen publishes a paper detailing his discovery of a new type of radiation, which will later be known as x-rays.

1908 - An earthquake rocks Messina, Sicily killing over 75,000 people.

1944 - Maurice Richard becomes the first player to score eight points in one game of National Hockey League ice hockey.

1945 - Congress officially recognizes the Pledge of Allegiance.

1958 - Known as the Greatest Game Ever Played, Baltimore Colts defeat the New York Giants in the firt ever NFL sudden death overtime game at New York's Yankee Stadium.

1990 - Probotector for the NES game platform system is released.

2000 - United States retail giant Montgomery Ward, announces it is going out of business after 128 years.

27th of December

It is the 361st day of the year and there are only 4 days remaining.

1512 - The Spanish Crown issues the Laws of Burgos, governing the conduct of settlers with regards to native Indians in the New World.

1831 - Charle Darwin embarks on his journey aboard the HMS Beagle, during which he will begin to formulate the theory of evolution.

1932 - Radio City Music Hall opens in New York City.

1939 - Erzincan. Turkey is hit by an earthquake, killing 30,000 people.

1968 - Apollo 8 splashes down in the Pacific Ocean, ending the first orbital manned mission to the moon.

1978 - Spain becomes a democracy after nearly 40 years of dictatorship.

26th of December

Today is the 360th day of the year, with only 5 days remaining.

1776 - The British are defeated at the Battle of Trenton during the American Revolution.

1799 - Four thousand people attend George Washington's funeral, where Henry Lee declares him as "first in war, first in peace and first in the hears of his countrymen."

1846 - Trapped in snow in the Sierra Nevada mountain range and without food, members of the Donner Party resort to cannibalism.

1861 - Confederate diplomatic envoys James Mason and John Slidell, are freed by the U.S. government, thus heading off a possible war between the United States and Britain.

1862 - Four nuns serving as volunteer nurse on board USS RED ROVER are the first female nurses on a Navy hospital ship.

1862 - The largest mass-hanging in U.S. history took place in Mankato, Minnesota, 38 Native Americans die.

1898 - Marie and Pierre Curie announce the isolation of radium.

1919 - Babe Ruth of the Boston Red Sox, is sold to the New York Yankees by owner Harry Frazee.

1933 - FM radio is patented.

1941 - President Franklin Roosevelt signs a bill establishing the fourth Thursday in November as Thanksgiving Day in the United States.

1944 - Patton's Third Army breaks the encirclement of surrounded U.S. forces at Bastogne, Belgium.

1972 - 120 American B-52 Stratofortress bombers attacked Hanoi, including 78 launched from Andersen Air Force Base in Guam, the largest single combat launch in Strategic Air Command history.

1982 - Time Magazines Man of the Year, is for the first time a non-human, the personal computer.

1996 - Sadly, six-year-old beauty queen JonBenet Ramsey, is found beaten and strangled in the basement of her family's home in Boulder, Colorado.

2004 - An earthquake creates a tsunami causing devastation in Sri Lanka, India, Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia, the Maldives, and many other areas around the rim of the Indian Ocean, killing over 230,000 people including over 1700 on a moving train.

25th of December

Today is the 359th day of the year, with only 6 days remaining until the new year.

800 - Coronation of Charlemagne as Holy Roman Emperor in Rome.

1066 - William the Conqueror is crowned king of England, at Westminster Abbey, London.

1776 - George Washington and his army cross the Delaware River to attack the Kingdom of Great Britain's Hessian mercenaries in Trenton, New Jersey.

1818 - The first performance of "Silent Night" takes place in the church of St. Nikolaus in Obendorf, Austria.

1868 - President Andrew Johnson grants unconditional pardon to all Civil War Confederate soldiers.

1914 - Known as the Christmas truce, German and British troops on the Western Front temporarily cease fire.

1941 - Admiral Chester W. Nimitz arrives at Pearl Harbor, to assume command of the U.S. Pacific Fleet.

1974 - Marshall Fields drives a vehicle through the gates of the White House, resulting in a four-hour standoff.

1991 - Mikhail Gorbachev resigns as President of the Soviet Union, which dissolved the next day.  Ukraine referendum is finalized and Ukraine officially leaves the USSR.

2007 - In some odd occurrence, a tiger at the San Francisco Zoo escapes from its enclosure, and attacks three people, killing one.

24th of December

Today is the 358th day of the year, with only one week (7 days) remaining until the end of the year.

1814 - The Treaty of Ghent is signed, ending the War of 1812.

1865 - The Ku Klux Klan is formed, founded by veterans of the Confederate Army.

1914 - The Christmas truce begins during the fighting of First World War.

1943 - General Dwight D. Eisenhower becomes the Supreme Allied Commander.

1968 - The crew of the USS Pueblo, is released by North Korea, after being held for 11 months of suspicion of spying.

1968 - The crew of Apollo 8 enters into orbit around the moon.  They performed 10 lunar orbits and broadcast live TV pictures that became the famous Christmas Eve broadcast, one of the most watched programs in history.

1980 - Witnesses report the first of several sightings of unexplained lights near RAF Woodbirdge in Rendlesham Forest, Suffolk, England, an incident called "Britain's Roswell."

23rd of December

Today is the 357th day of the year, with only 8 days remaining until the new year.

1783 - George Washington resigns as commander-in-chief of the Continental Army at the Maryland State House in Annapolis.

1823 - A Visit from St. Nicholas, also known as The Night Before Christmas, is published anonymously.

1893 - The opera Hansel und Gretel by Engelbert Humperdinck is first performed.

1937 - It is the first flight of the Vickers Wellington bomber.

1947 - The transistor is first demonstrated at Bell Laboratories.

1970 - The North Tower of the World Trade Center in Manhattan, New York City is topped out at 1,368 feet, making it one of the tallest buildings in the world.

1972 - The 16 survivors of the Andes flight disaster are rescued after 73 days, having survived cannibalism.

1986 - Voyager, piloted by Dick Rutan and Jeana Yeager, lands at Edwards Air Force Base in California, becoming the first aircraft to fly non-stop around the world without aerial or ground refueling.

2002 - a MQ-1 Predator is shot down by an Iraqi MiG-25, making it the first time in history that an aircraft and an unmanned drone had engaged in combat.

22nd of December

Today is the 356th day of the year, with only 9 days remaining until the end of the year.

1807 - The Embargo Act, forbidding trade with all foreign countries, is passed by the U.S. Congress, at the urging of President Thomas Jefferson.

1808 - Ludwig von Beethoven conducts and performs in concert at the Theater an der Wien, Vienna with premiere of his Fifth and Sixth Symphony's, Fourth Piano Concerto and Choral Fantasy, both performed by him.

1809 - The Non-Intercourse Act, lifts the Embargo Act, except for the United Kingdom and France.

1864 - Savannah, Georgia falls to General William Tecumseh Sherman, concluding his March to the Sea.

1885 - Ito Hirobumi, a samurai, became the first Prime Minister of Japan.

1937 - The Lincoln Tunnel opens to traffic in New York City.

1942 - Adolf Hitler signs the order to develop the V-2 rocket as a weapon.

1944 - German troops demand the surrender of United States troops at Bastogne, Belgium, prompting the famous one word reply by General Anthony McAuliffe, "Nuts!"

1956 - Colo is born, he is the first gorilla to be bred in captivity.

1964 - It is the first flight of the SR-71 Blackbird.

1989 - Berlin's Brandenburg Gate re-opens after nearly 30 years, effectively ending the division of East and West Germany.

21st of December

It is the 355th day of the year, with only 10 days remaining until the new year.

1620 - William Bradford an the Pilgrims and on what is now known as Plymouth Rock in Massachusetts.

1861 - Public Resolution 82, containing a provision for a Navy Medal of Valor, is signed into law by President Abraham Lincoln.

1913 - Arthur Wynne's word cross, the first crossword puzzle, is published in the New York World.

1937 - Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, the world's first full-length animated feature, premieres at the Carthay Circle Theater.

1967 - Louis Washkansky, the first man to undergo a heart transplant, dies in Cape Town, South Africa, after living for 18 days after the procedure.

1968 - Apollo 8 is launched from Kennedy Space Center in Florida.  The crew performs the first ever Trans Lunar Injection and become the first humans to leave Earth's gravity.

1994 - Mexican volcano, Popocatepetl, dormant for 47 years, erupts gases and ash.

20th of December

Today is the 354th day of the year, with only 11 days remaining.

69 - Vespasian, formerly a general under Nero, enters Rome to claim the title of emperor.

1192 - Richard the Lionheart is captured and imprisoned by Leopold V of Austria on his way home to England after signing a treaty with Saladin ending the Third Crusade.

1803 - The Louisiana Purchase is completed at a ceremony in New Orleans.

1860 - South Carolina becomes the first state to secede from the United States.

1917 - Cheka, the first Soviet secret police is founded.

1924 - Adolf Hitler is released from Landsberg Prison.

1941 - It is the first battle of the American Volunteer Group, better known as the "Flying Tigers" in Kunming, China.

1946 - An earthquake and subsequent tsunami in Nankaid, Japan, killing over 1,300 people and destroy over 38,000 homes.

1951 - The EBR-1 in Arco, Idaho, becomes the first nuclear power plant to generate electricity.  The electricity powered four light bulbs.

1968 - The Zodiac killer, kills Betty Lou Jenson and David Faraday in Vallejo, California.

1989 - The United States sends troops into Panama in order to overthrow the government of Manuel Noriega.  This is also the first combat use of purpose-designed stealth aircraft.

1996 - NeXT merges with Apple Computer, starting the path to Mac OS X.

2005 - U.S. District Court Judge John E. Jones III rules against mandating the teaching of intelligent design in the court case, Kitzmiller Vs. Dover Area School District.

2007 - Elizabeth II becomes the oldest ever monarch of the United Kingdom, surpassing Queen Victoria, who lived for 81 years, 7 months, and 29 days.

19th of December

It is the 353rd day of the year, with only 12 days remaining.

211 - Publius Septimius Geta, co-emperor of Rome, is lured to come without his bodyguards to meet his brother Caracalla to discuss a possible reconciliation.  When he arrives the Praetorian Guard murders him and he dies in the arms of his mother Julia Domna.

1606 - The Susan Constant, the Godspeed, and the Discovery departed England.  They are carrying settlers who will found Jamestown, Virginia, the first of section of the thirteen colonies.

1777 - George Washington's Continental Army goes into winter quarters at Valley Forge, Pennsylvania.

1912 - William H. Van Schaick, captain of the steamship General Slocum which caught fire and killed over 1,000 people, is pardoned by President William Howard Taft after three-and-a-half-years in Sing Sing prison.

1924 - The last Rolls-Royce Silver Ghost is sold in London, England.

1946 - The start of the First Indochina War.

1972 - The last manned lunar flight, Apollo 17, returns to Earth.

1998 - The United States House of Representatives forwards articles I and III of impeachment against President Bill Clinton to the Senate.

18th of December

It is the 352nd day of the year and only 13 days remaining.

218 BC - The Battle of the Trebia occurs as Hannibal's Carthaginian forces defeat those of the Roman Republic.

1271 AD - Kublai Kahn renames his empire Yuan, officially marking the beginning of his dynasty of Mongolia and China.

1777 - The United States celebrates its first Thanksgiving, marking the recent victory by the Americans over General John Burgoyne in the Battle of Saratoga.

1787 - New Jersey becomes the third state to ratify the United States Constitution.

1878 - Jack Kehoe , the last of the Molly Maguires is executed in Pennsylvania.

1888 - Richard Wetherill and his brother-in-law discover the ancient Indian ruins of Cliff Palace in Mesa Verde.

1898 - Gaston de Chasseloup-Laubat sets the first officially recognized land speed record of 39.245 mph in a Jeantaud electric car.

1916 - The Battle of Verdun ends when German forces under Chief of Staff Erich Von Falkenhayn are defeated by the French and British, and suffer 337,000 casualties.

1918 - The House of Representatives approves the Eighteenth Amendment to enact Prohibition.

1944 - 77 B-29 Superfortress and 200 other aircraft of the U.S. Fourteenth Air Force bomb Hankow, China that holds a Japanese support base/

1958 - Project SCORE, the world's first communications satellite, is launched.

1972 - President Richard Nixon announces that the United States will engage North Vietnam in Operation Linebacker II, a series of Christmas bombings.

17th of December

It is the 351st day of the year, with only 14 days (two weeks) remaining until the end of the year.

546 - The Ostrogoths of King Totila conquer Rome by bribing the Byzantine garrison.

1577 - Francis Drake sails from Plymouth, England on a secret mission to explore the Pacific Coast of the Americas, he is assigned this by Queen Elizabeth I.

1777 - France formally recognizes the United States of America as a country.

1790 - This marks the discovery of the Aztec calendar stone.

1862 - General Ulysses S. Grant issues General Order No.11, expelling Jews from Tennessee, Mississippi, and Kentucky.

1903 - The Wright Brothers make their first powered and heavier-than-air flight in the Wright Flyer at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina.

1935 - This is the first flight of the Douglas DC-3 airplane.

1944 - Known as the Malmedy massacre, American 285th Field Artillery Observation POW's are hot by Waffen-SS Kampfgruppe Peiper.

1947 - The first flight of the Boeing b-47 Stratojet strategic bomber.

1957 - The United States successfully launches te first Atlas intercontinental ballistic missile at Cape Canaveral, Florida.

1969 - Project Blue Book occurs, as the United States Air Force closes its study of UFOs, stating that sighting are generated as a result of "A mild form of mass hysteria, individuals who fabricate such reports to perpetrate a hoax or seek publicity, psychopathological persons, and misidentification of various conventional objects."

1989 - The first episode of the television series The Simpsons, airs in the United States.  It is called "Simpsons Roasting on an Open Fire."

2009 - MV Danny F II sinks off the coast of Lebanon, resulting in the deaths of 44 people and over 28,000 animals.

16th of December

Today is the 350th day of the year, with only 15 days remaining until the new year.

1497 - Vasco da Gama rounds the Cape of Good Hope, the point where Bartolomau Dias had previously turned back to Portugal.

1653 - Oliver Cromwell becomes the Lord Protector of the Commonwealth of England, Scotland, and Ireland.

1707 - It i the last recorded eruption of Mount Fuji in Japan.

1773 - Members of the Sons of Liberty, disguised as Mohawk Indians, dump crates of tea into Boston harbor as a protest against the Tea Act.  It will famously become known as the Boston Tea Party.

1863 - Joseph E. Johnston replaces Braxton Bragg as commander of the Army of Tennessee.

1907 - The Great White Fleet, the nickname of the United States Navy, begins its circumnavigation of the world.

1914 - German battleships under Franz von Hipper, bombard the English ports of Hartlepool and Scarborough.

1920 - The Haiyuan earthquakes, magnitude 8.5 rocks the Gansu province in China, killing an estimated 200,000 people.

1930 - Bank robber Herman Lamm and members of his crew are killed by a posse of 200, following a botched bank robbery in Clinton, Indiana.

1942 - Heinrich Himmler orders that Roma candidates for extermination be deported to Auschwitz.

1944 - The Battle of the Bulge begins with the surprise offensive of three German armies through the Ardennes forest.

1947 - William Shockley, John Bardeen, and Walter Brattain, build the first practical point-contact transistor.

1950 - President Harry Truman, declares a state of emergency, after Chinese troops enter the fight with communist North Korea during the Korean War.

1965 - General William Westmoreland sends U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara a request for 243,000 more men by the end of 1966.

1972 - Henry Kisinger announces that North Vietnam has left private peace negotiations in Paris.

1978 - Cleveland, Ohio becomes the first post-Depression era city to default on its loans, owing $14 million to local banks.

1985 - In New York City, Paul Castellano and Thomas Bilotti, are shot dead on the order of John Gotti, who assumes leadership of the Gambino family.

1997 - Strangely enough, an episode of Pokemon, entitled Denno Senshi Porygon, airs in Japan inducing seizures in 685 Japanese children.

15th of December

Today is the 349th day of the year, with only 16 days remaining until the new year.

1791 - The United States Bill of Rights becomes law when ratified by the Virginia General Assembly.

1864 - In the Battle of Nashville, Union forces under George H. Thomas almost completely destroy the Army of the Tennessee under John Bell Hood.

1914 - The Serbian Army recaptures Belgrade from the invading Austro-Hungarian Army.

1933 - The Twenty-first Amendment to the Constitution officially becomes effective, repealing the Eighteenth Amendment that prohibited the sale, manufacture, and transportation of alcohol.

1939 - Gone with the Wind, receives its premiere at Loew's Grand Theatre in Atlanta, Georgia.

1941 - German troops murder over 15,000 Jews at Drobitsky Yar, a ravine southeast of the city of Kharkiv, Ukraine.

1945 - General Douglas MacArthur orders that Shinto be abolished as the state religion of Japan.

1965 - Gemini 6A, crewed by Wally Schirra and Thomas Stafford, is launched from Cape Kennedy, Florida.  Four orbits later, it achieves the first space rendezvous, with Gemini 7.

1973 - John Paul Getty III, grandson of American billionaire, is found alive near Naples, Italy.  He is found after being kidnapped by an Italian gang on July 10.

2000 - The third reactor at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant is shut down.

2001 - The Leaning Tower of Pisa reopens after 11 years and $27 million to fortify it, without fixing its famous lean.

2005 - Introduction of the F-22 Raptor into United States Air Force active service.

2006 - Marks the first flight of the F-25 Lightning II.

14th of December

It is the 348th day of the year, with only 17 days remaining until the new year.

1287 - The Zuider Zee sea wall in the Netherlands collapses, known as St. Lucia's flood, kills over 50,000 people.

1542 - Princess Mary Stuart, become Mary, Queen of Scots.

1819 - Alabama becomes the 22nd state admitted to the Union.

1903 - The Wright brothers make their first attempt to fly at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina.

1911 - Roald Amundsen's team, comprising himself, Olav Bjaaland, Helmber Hanssen, Sverre Hassel, and Oscar Wisting, become the first to reach the South Pole.

1947 - The National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing, NASCAR, is founded in Daytona Beach, Florida.

1962 - NASA's Mariner 2, becomes the first spacecraft to fly by Venus.

2006 - American spy satellite USA-193 is launched.  Its mission is still classified.

2008 - President George W. Bush makes his fourth and final trip to Iraq as president, and is almost struck by two shoes thrown at him by Iraqi journalist Muntadhar al-Zaidi during a news conference in Baghdad.

13th of December

It is the 347th day of the year, with only 18 days remaining.

1545 - The Council of Trent begins, with a meeting of the Roman Catholic Church.

1577 - Sir Francis Drake set out from Plymouth, England, on his round-the-world voyage.

1636 - The Massachusetts Bay Colony organizes three militia regiments to defend the colony against the Pequot Indians.  This organization is recognized today as the founding of the United States National Guard.

1809 - Dr. Ephraim McDowell performed the first ovariotomy, removing a 22 pound tumor.

1862 - At the Battle of Fredericksburg, General Robert E. Lee defeats Union Major General Ambrose Burnside.

1938 - The Neuengamme concentration camp opens in the Bergedorf district of Hamburg, Germany.

1962 - NASA Relay 1 is launched as the first active repeater communications satellite in orbit.

1972 - Eugene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt begin the third and final extra-vehicular activity or moonwalk of Apollo 17.

2003 - Former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, is captured near his home town of Tikrit, as part of Operation Red Dawn.

12th of December

It is the 346th day of the year, with only 19 days remaining until the new year.

1098 - The massacre of Ma'arrat al-Numan occurs during the First Crusade.  They breach the town's walls and kills about 20,000 inhabitants.  After finding themselves with insufficient food, they resort to cannibalism.

1787 - Pennsylvania becomes the second state to ratify the United States Constitution.

1935 - The Lebensborn Project, a Nazi reproduction program, is founded by Heinrich Himmler.

1941 - Fifty-four Japanese A6M Zero fighters raid Batangas Field, Phillipines.  Jesus Villamor and four Filipino fighter pilots fend them off.

1941 - F4F Wildcats sink 4 major Japanese ships off of Wake island.

1941 - Adolf Hitler announces extermination of the Jews at a meeting in the Reich Chancellery.

1963 - Kenya gains its independence from the United Kingdom.

1985 - Arrow Air Flight 1285, crashes after takeoff in Gander, Newfoundland killing 256, including 236 members of the United States Army's 101st Airborne Division.

2000 - The United States Supreme Court releases its final decision on Bush Vs. Gore.

11th of December

It is the 345th day of the year and there are only 20 days remaining.

361 - Julian the Apostate becomes sole Emperor of the Roman Empire.  He rules from Constantinople and tries to restore paganism.

1819 - Indiana becomes the 19th state of the United States of America.

1941 - Germany and Italy declare war on the United States, following the Americans' declaration of war on Japan.  The U.S. then declares war on Germany and Italy in retaliation.

1946 - The United Nations International Children's Emergency Fund, UNICEF, is established.

1964 - Che Guevara speaks at the United Nations General Assembly in New York City.

2001 - The People's Republic of China decides to join the World Trade Organization.

2008 - Bernard Madoff, is arrested and charged with securities fraud in $50 billion Ponzi scheme.

10th of December

Today is the 344th day of the year, with only 21 days remaining until the end of the year.

1520 - Martin Luther burns his copy of the papal bull Exsurge Domine outside Wittenberg's Elster Gate.

1684 - Isaac Newton's derivation of Kepler's laws from his theory of gravity, contained in the paper, De motu corporum in gyrum, is read to the Royal Society by Edmund Halley.

1817 - Mississippi becomes the 20th state admitted to the Union.

1864 - Major General William T. Sherman's Union Army troops reach the outer Confederate defenses of Savannah, Georgia.

1868 - The first traffic lights are installed, outside the Palace of Westminster in London.  They use semaphore arms and are illuminated at night by red and green gas lamps.

1884 - Mark Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, is published for the first time.

1898 - The Treaty of Paris is signed, officially ending the conflict.

1901 - The first Nobel prizes are awarded.

1906 - President Theodore Roosevelt wins the Nobel Peace Prize, becoming the first American to win a Nobel Prize.

1935 - The Downtown Athletic Club Trophy, later renamed the Heisman Trophy, is awarded to halfback Jay Berwanger of the University of Chicago.

1965 - The Grateful Dead's first concert performance under their new name.

9th of December

It is the 343rd day of the year, with only 22 days remaining until the end of the year.

1851 - The first YMCA in North America is established in Montreal, Quebec.

1861 - The Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War is established by Congress.

1872 - In Louisiana, P. B. S. Pinchback becomes the first serving African-American governor of a U. S. state.

1888 - Statistician Herman Hollerith installs his computing device at the United States War Department.

1940 - British and Indian troops under the command of Major-General Richard O'Connor attack Italian forces near Sidi Barrani in Egypt.  The event is codenamed Operation Compass.

1946 - The Subsequent Nuremberg Trials, begin with the Doctors' Trial, prosecuting doctors alleged to be involved in human experimentation.

1950 - Harry Gold is sentenced to 30 years in jail for helping Klaus Fuchs pass information about the Manhattan Project to the Soviet Union.  His testimony is later instrumental in the prosecution of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg.

1953 - General Electric announces that all communist employees will be discharged from the company.

1961 - The trial of Nazi Adolf Eichmann in Israel, ends with verdicts of guilty on 15 criminal charges, including crimes against humanity, against the Jewish people, and membership of an outlawed organization.

1965 - A fireball is seen from Michigan to Pennsylvania, witnesses report something crashing in the woods near Pittsburgh.  It is known as the Kecksburg UFO incident.  In 2005, NASA admits that it examined the object.

1979 - The eradication of smallpox virus is certified, making it the first and to date, the only human disease driven to extinction.

2008 - Rod Blagojevich, the Governor of Illinois, is arrested by federal officials for a number of alleged crimes including attempting to sell the United States Senate seat, being vacated by Barack Obama.

8th of December

Today is the 342nd day of the year with only 23 days remaining.

1941 - President Franklin Roosevelt declares the previous day to be "a date which will live in infamy," after which the U.S. and the Republic of China declare war against Japan.

1980 - English musician John Lennon, is murdered by Mark David Chapman, a mentally unstable fan, in front of The Dakota apartment building in New York City.

7th of December

It is the 341st day of the year, with only 24 days remaining until the end of the year.

1776 - Marquis de Lafayette attempts to enter the American military as a major general.

1787 - Delaware becomes the first state to ratify the United States Constitution.

1869 - American outlaw Jesse James, commits the first confirmed bank robbery in Gallatin, Mississippi.

1917 - The United States declares war on Austria-Hungary.

1941 - The Imperial Japanese Navy attacks the United States Pacific Fleet and its defending Army Air Forces and Marines at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, causing a declaration of war to come.

1946 - A fire at the Winecoff Hotel in Atlanta, Georgia kills 119 people, the deadliest hotel fire in history.

1963 - Instant replay is used for the first time, in an Army-Navy game by it inventor, Tony Verna.

1972 - Apollo 17, the last moon mission is launched.  The crew takes the famous photograph known as The Blue Marble, as they leave the Earth.

1982 - In Texas, Charles Brooks Jr., becomes the first person to be executed by lethal injection in the United States.

1988 - In Armenia, the Spitak earthquake kills nearly 25,000, injures 15,000, and leaves 400,000 homeless.

1999 - The Recording Industry Association of America, files a lawsuit against the Napster file-sharing client alleging copyright infringement.

6th of December

It is the 340th day of the year, with only 25 days remaining until the new year.

1768 - The first edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica is published.

1849 - American abolitionist Harriet Tubman escapes from slavery.

1865 - The Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution is ratified, banning slavery.

1877 - The first edition of the Washington Post is published.

1877 - Thomas Edison, using his new phonograph, makes on of the earliest recordings of a human voice, reciting Mary Had a Little Lamb.

1884 - The famous Washington Monument is finally completed.

1897 - London becomes the world's first city to host licensed taxicabs.

1917 - In Canada, a munitions explosion kills more than 1,900 people and destroys part of the City of Halifax, Nova Scotia.

1947 - The Everglades National Park in Florida is dedicated.

1967 - Adrian Kantrowitz, performs the first human heart transplant in the United States.

2006 - NASA reveals photographs taken by Mars Global Surveyor, suggesting the presence of liquid water on Mars.

5th of December

It is the 339th day of the year with only 26 days remaining.

63 BC - Cicero delivers his fourth and final Catiline Orations.

771 AD - The great Charlemagne, becomes the sole King of the Franks after the death of his brother, Carloman.

1775 - At Fort Ticonderoga, Henry Knox begin his historic transport of artillery to Cambridge, Massachusetts.

1776 - At the College of William and Mary, Phi Beta Kappa is founded and becomes the first American college fraternity.

1847 - Jefferson Davis is elected to the U.S. Senate, his first political post.

1848 - In a message before Congress, President James Polk confirms that large amounts of gold have been discovered in California.

1932 - German-born Swiss physicist Albert Einstein, is granted and American visa.

1933 - Prohibition in the United States ends, after Utah ratifies the Twenty-first Amendment to the Constitution.

1943 - U.S. Army Air Force begins attacking Germany's secret weapons bases in Operation Crossbow.

1945 - Flight 19 is lost in the Bermuda Triangle.

1952 - A cold fog descends upon London, combining with air pollution and killing at least 12,000 in the weeks and months that follow.

1955 - The American Federation of Labor and the Congress of Industrial Organizations merge together.

1964 - For his heroism in battle earlier in the year, Captain Roger Donlon is awarded the first Medal of Honor of the conflict in Vietnam.

2010 - The Harlem Globetrotters, play their famous, "four point game" against the Generals.

4th of December

Today is the 338th day of the year, with only 27 days remaining until the new year.

1563 - The final session of the Council of Trent is held.

1674 - Father Jacques Marquette founds a mission on the shores of Lake Michigan to minister to the Illiniwek, the mission would later grow into the city of Chicago, Illinois.

1864 - At Waynesboro, Georgia, forces under General Judson Kilpatrick prevent troops led by Confederate General Joseph Wheeler from interfering with the campaign of Sherman on his march toward the Atlantic Ocean.

1875 - Notorious New York City politician Boss Tweed, escapes from prison and flees to Cuba, from Spain.

1909 - The Montreal Canadiens ice hockey club, the oldest professional hockey franchise in the world, is founded as a charter member of the National Hockey Association.

1918 - President Woodrow Wilson, sails for the World War I peace talks in Versailles, becoming the first US President to travel to Europe while in office.

1943 - President Franklin Roosevelt closes down the Works Progress Administration, because of the high levels of wartime employment.

1954 - The first Burger King is opened in Miami, Florida.

1967 - U.S. and South Vietnamese forces engage Viet Cong  troops in the Mekong Delta.

1969 - Black Panther Party members Fred Hampton and Mark Clark are shot and killed in their sleep during a raid by 14 Chicago police officer.

1980 - English rock group Led Zeppelin officially disbands, following the death of drummer John Bonham that occurred in September.

1991 - Journalist Terry A. Anderson is released after 7 years in captivity as a hostage in Beirut.

1991 - Captain Mark Pyle pilots Clipper Goodwill, a Pan American World Airways Boeing 727-221ADV, to Miami International Airport ending 64 years of Pan Am operations.

1992 - President George H. W. Bush orders 28,000 U.S. troops to Somalia in Northeast Africa.

1998 - The Unity Module, the second module of the International Space Station, is launched.

2006 - An adult giant squid is caught on video for the first time by Tsunemi Kubodera near the Ogasawara Islands, 620 miles south of Tokyo.

3rd of December

Today is the 337th day of the year, with only 28 days remaining until the new year.

1818 - Illinois becomes the 21st state admitted to the Union.

1910 - Modern neon lighting is first demonstrated by Georges Claude at the Paris Motor Show.

1964 - Police arrest over 800 students at the University of California, Berkeley, following their takeover and sit-in at the administration building in protest, of the decision to forbid protests.

1973 - Pioneer 10 sends back the first close-up images of Jupiter.

1976 - An assassination attempt is made on Bob Marley.  He is shot twice, but plays a concert two days later.

1979 - In Cincinnati, Ohio, 11 fans are suffocated in a rush for seats on the concourse outside Riverfront Coliseum before a Who concert.

1999 - NASA loses radio contact with the Mars Polar Lander moments before it enters the Martian atmosphere.

2nd of December

Today is the 336th day of the year, with only 29 days remaining.

1775 - The USS Alfred become the first vessel to fly the Grand Union Flag, the precursor to the Stars and Stripes, the flag is hoisted by John Paul Jones.

1804 - At Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, Napoleon Bonaparte crowns himself Emperor of the French, the first one in a thousand years.

1823 - President James Monroe delivers a speech establishing American neutrality in future European conflicts.

1845 - President James K. Pol announces to Congress that the United States should aggressively expand into the West.

1859 - Militant abolitionist John Brown, is hanged for his raid on Harper's Ferry.

1927 - Following 19 years of Ford Model T production, the Ford Motor Company unveils the Ford Model A as its new automobile.

1942 - A team led by Enrico Fermi initiates the first self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction.

1954 - The United States Senate votes 65 to 22 to condemn Joseph McCarthy for conduct that tends to bring the Senate into dishonor and disrepute.

1961 - In a nationally broadcast speech, Cuban leader Fidel Castro declares that he is a Marxist-Leninist and that Cuba is going to adopt Communism.

1970 - The United States Environmental Protection Agency begins operations.

1993 - NASA launches the Space Shuttle Endeavour on a mission to repair the Hubble Space Telescope.

2001 - Enron files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.

1st of December

It is the 335th day of the year, with only 30 days remaining until the end of the year.

It is also the beginning of the twelfth month of the year.

1824 - Since no candidate received a majority of the total electoral college votes in the election, the United States House of Representatives is given the task of deciding the winner in accordance with the Twelfth Amendment to the Constitution.

1864 - In his State of the Union Address, President Abraham Lincoln reaffirms the necessity of ending slavery as ordered ten weeks earlier in the Emancipation Proclamation.

1885 - It is the first serving of the soft drink Dr. Pepper, at a drug store in Waco, Texas.

1913 - The Ford Motor Company introduces the first moving assembly line.

1941 - Fiorello La Guardia, Mayor of New York City, and Director of the Office of Civilian Defense, signs Administrative Order 9, creating the Civil Air Patrol.

1952 - The New York Daily News reports the news of Christine Jorgenson, the first notable case of sexual reassignment surgery.

1955 - Seamstress Rosa Parks, refuses to give up her bus seat to a white man and is arrested for violating the city's racial segregation laws, an incident which leads to the Montgomery Bus Boycott.

1969 - The first draft lottery in the United States is held since World War II.

1981 - The AIDS virus is officially recognized.

1982 - At the University of Utah, Barney Clark becomes the first person to receive a permanent artificial heart.

1990 - Channel Tunnel sections started from the United Kingdom and France meet 40 meters beneath the seabed.

2001 - Captain Bill Compton brings Trans World Airlines Flight 220, an MD-83, into St. Louis International Airport.  He brings an end to 76 years of TWA operations because the company would then be purchased by American Airlines.

30th of November

It is the 334th day of the year with only 31 days remaining.

1803 - In New Orleans, Louisiana, Spanish representatives officially transfer the Louisiana Territory to a French representative.  Almost 20 days later, France transfers the same land to the United States as the Louisiana Purchase.

1864 - At the Battle of Franklin, the Army of Tennessee led by General John Bell Hood mounts a dramatically unsuccessful frontal assault on Union positions commanded by John McAllister Schofield.  Hood would lose six general and almost one-third of his troops.

1902 - Second-in-command of Butch Cassidy's Wild Bunch gang. Kid Curry Logan, is sentenced to 20 years imprisonment with hard labor.

1908 - A mine explosion in the mining town of Marianna, Pennsylvania kills 154 people.

1934 - The steam locomotive Flying Scotsman, becomes the first to officially exceed 100 miles per hour.

1940 - Actress Lucille Ball marries Desi Arnaz in Greenwich, Connecticut.

1942 - Battle of Tassafaronga occurs, when a smaller squadron of Japanese destroyers led by Raizo Tanaka defeats a US cruiser force under Carleton H. Wright.

2954 - In Sylacauga, Alabama, the Hodges Meteorite crashes through a roof and hits a woman taking an afternoon nap in the only documented case of a human being hit by a rock from space.

1966 - Barbados claims its independence from the United Kingdom.

1972 - White House Press Secretary Ron Ziegler tells the press that there will be no more public announcements concerning troop withdrawals from Vietnam due to the fact that troop levels are now down to 27,000.

1982 - Michael Jackson's Thriller, the best-selling album of all time, is released.

1995 - This officially marks the end of Operation Desert Storm.

1998 - Exxon and Mobil sign a $73.7 billion agreement to merge, thus creating the world's largest company, Exxon-Mobil.

2004 - Longtime Jeopardy! champion, Ken Jennings of Salt Lake City, Utah finally loses, leaving him with $2,530,700, television's biggest game show winnings.

29th of November

It is the 333rd day of the year. with only 32 days remaining until the end of the year.

1777 - San Jose, California is founded as Pueblo de San Jose de Guadalupe.  It is the first civilian settlement in Alta California.

1781 - The crew of the British slave ship Zong, murders 133 Africans by dumping them into the sea in order to claim insurance.

1864 - Colorado volunteers led by Colonel John Chivington massacre at least 150 Cheyenne and Arapaho noncombatants inside Colorado Territory.  It is known as the Sand Creek Massacre.

1877 - Thomas Edison demonstrates his phonograph for the first time.

1890 - At West Point, New York, the Naval Academy defeats the Military Academy by a score of 24 to 0 in the first Army-Navy football game.

1910 - The first U.S. patent for inventing the traffic light system is issued to Ernest E. Sirrine.

1922 - After a long and arduous journey, Howard Carter decides to open the tomb of Pharoah Tutankhamun to the public.

1929 - U.S. Admiral Richard Byrd, becomes the first person to fly over the South Pole.

1934 - The Chicago Bears defeat the Detroit Lions 19 to 16, in the first nationally broadcast game.

1961 - Mercury-Atlas 5 Mission occurs, and Enos, a chimpanzee is launched into space.  The spacecraft orbited the Earth twice and splashed-down off the coast of Puerto Rico.

1963 - President Lyndon B. Johnson, establishes the Warren Commission in order to investigate the assassination of JFK.

1972 - Nolan Bushnell, the co-founder of Atari, releases Pong, the first commercially successful video game, in Andy Capp's Tavern in Sunnyvale, California.

28th of November

It is the 332nd day of the year, with only 33 days remaining until the end of the year.

1095 - On the last day of the Council of Clermont, Pope Urban II decides to appoint Bishop Adhemar of Le Puy and Count Raymond IV of Toulouse to lead the First Crusade to the Holy Land.

1582 - In Straford-upon-Avon, William Shakespeare and Anne Hathaway pay a 40 pound bond for their marriage license.

1729 - Natchez Indians massacre 138 Frenchmen, 35 French women and 56 children at Fort Rosalie, near the site of modern-day Natchez, Mississippi.

1814 - The Times, in London, is for the first time printed by automatic, steam powered presses built by the German inventors Friedrich Keonig and Andreas Friedrich Bauer, signaling the beginning of the availability of newspapers to a mass audience.

1862 - In the Battle of Cane Hill, Union troops under General John Blunt defeat General John Marmaduke's Confederates.

1895 - The first American automobile race takes place over 54 miles from Chicago's Jackson Park to Evanston, Illinois.  Frank Duryea wins in approximately 10 hours.

1919 - Lady Astor is elected as a Member of the Parliament of the United Kingdom.  She is the first woman to sit on the House of Commons.

1943 - President Franklin Roosevelt, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, and Soviet leader Joseph Stalin, meet in Tehran, Iran to discuss war strategy.

1984 - Over 250 years after their deaths, William Penn and his wife Hannah Callowhill Penn are made Honorary Citizens of the United States.

1991 - South Ossetia declares independence from Georgia.

27th of November

Today is the 331st day of the year, with only 34 days remaining until the new year.

176 - Emperor Marcus Aurelius grants his son Commodus, the rank of Imperator and makes him Supreme Commander of the Roman Legions.

1095 - Pope Urban II declares the First Crusade at the Council of Clermont.

1863 - Confederate cavalry leader John Hunt Morgan, and several of his men escape the Ohio Penitentiary and return safely to the South.

1868 - United States Army Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer, leads an attack on Cheyenne living on reservation land.

1895 - At the Swedish-Norwegian Club in Paris, France, Alfred Nobel signs his last will and testament, setting aside his estate to establish the Nobel Prize after he dies.

1901 - The United States Army War College is established.

1924 - In New York City, the first Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade is held.

1934 - Bank robber Baby Face Nelson, dies in a shootout with agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

1954 - Alger Hiss is released from prison after serving 44 months for perjury.

1963 - President Lyndon Johnson makes his first address to Congress after the death of John F. Kennedy five days prior.

1965 - The Pentagon tells Lyndon B. Johnson, that if planned operations are to succeed, the number of American troops in Vietnam has to be increased from 120,000 to 400,000.

1978 - In San Francisco, California city mayor George Moscone and city supervisor Harvey Milk are assassinated by former supervisor Dan White.

2005 - The first partial human face transplant is completed in Amiens, France.

26th of November

It is the 330th day of the year and there are only 35 days remaining.

1476 - Vlad III of Dracula defeats Basarab Laiota with the help of Stephen the Great and Stephen V Bathory and becomes the ruler of Wallachia for the third time.

1778 - In the Hawaiian island, Captain James Cook becomes the first European to visit Maui.

1789 - A national Thanksgiving Day is observed in the United States as recommended by President George Washington and approved by Congress.

1825 - At Union College in Schenectady, New York, a group of college students form Kappa Alpha Society, the first college social fraternity.

1863 - President Abraham Lincoln proclaims November 26 as a national Thanksgiving Day, to be celebrated annually on the final Thursday.  Since 1941, on the fourth Thursday.

1917 - The National Hockey League is formed, with the Montreal Canadiens, Montreal Wanderers, Ottawa Senators, Quebec Bulldogs, and Toronto Arenas are the first teams.

1922 - Howard Carter and Lord Carnarvon become the first people the enter the tomb of Pharoah Tutankhamn in over 3000 years.

1922 - Toll of the Sea, debts as the first general release film, to use two-tone Technicolor.

1944 - A German V-2 rocket hits Woolworth's shop on New Cross High Street, United Kingdom, killing a total of 168 shoppers.

1968 - United States Air Force helicopter pilot James P. Fleming, rescues an Army Special Force unit pinned down by Viet Cong fire.  He will later be awarded the Medal of Honor.

1983 - In London, 6,800 gold bars worth nearly 26 million pounds, are stolen from the Brinks-MAT vault at Heathrow Airport.

25th of November

Today is the 329th day of the year, with 36 days remaining until the new year.

1667 - A deadly earthquake rocks Shemakha in the Caucasus, killing 80,000 people.

1703 - The greatest windstorm ever recorded in the southern part of Great Britain, reaches its peak intensity.  Winds gust up to 120 mph and 9,000 people die.

1758 - British forces capture Fort Duquesne from French control.  Fort Pitt is built nearby and it grows into modern day Pittsburgh.

1783 - The last British troops leave New York City three months after the signing of the Treaty of Paris.

1839 - A cyclone slams India with high winds and a 40 foot storm surge, destroying the port city of Coringa.  The storm sweeps inland taking with it 20,000 ships and thousands of people.  It is estimated that 300,000 deaths result from this disaster.

1864 - A group of Confederate operatives calling themselves the Confederate Army of Manhattan starts fires in more than 20 locations in an unsuccessful attempt to burn down New York City.

1876 - In retaliation for the Battle of Little Bighorn, Army troops sack Chief Dull Knife's sleeping Cheyenne village at the headwaters of the Powder River.

1940 - Marks the first flight of the deHavilland Mosquito and the Martin B-26 Marauder.

1947 - The Hollywood Ten are blacklisted by the movie studios.  They include Herbert J. Biberman, Lester Cole, Edward Dmytryk, Ring Lardner Jr., John Howard Lawson, Albert Maltz, Samuel Ornitz, Adrian Scott, Dalton Thomas, and Alvah Bessie.

1963 - President John F. Kennedy is buried at Arlington National Cemetery where his eternal flame will burn and have thousands of people visit the site every year.

1975 - Suriname gains its independence from the Netherlands.

1984 - 36 top musicians gather in a Notting Hill studio to record Band Aid's Do They Know It's Christmas, in order to raise money for famine relief in Ethiopia.

1987 - Typhoon Nina pummels the Phillipines with category 5 winds of 165 mph and a surge that destroys entire villages.  At least 1,036 deaths are attributed to the storm.

24th of November

It is the 328th day of the year, with only 37 days remaining until the new year.

1835 - The Texas Provincial Government authorizes the creation of a horse-mounted police force called the Texas Rangers.

1859 - Charles Darwin publishes On the Origin of Species, the anniversary of what is sometimes called, Evolution Day.

1864 - Near Chattanooga, Tennessee, Union forces under U.S. Grant capture Lookout Mountain and begin to break the Confederate siege of the city led by General Braxton Bragg.

1932 - In Washington, D.C., the FBI Scientific Crime Detection Laboratory officially opens.

1943 - The USS Liscome Bay, is torpedoed near Tarawa and sinks, killing 650 men.

1944 - The first bombing raid against the Japanese capital of Tokyo, from the east and by land is carried out by 88 American aircraft.

1950 - A violent snowstorm, paralyzes the northeastern United States and the Appalachians, bringing winds up to 100 mph and sub-zero temperatures.  Pickens, West Virginia alone, records 57 inches of snow, and 323 people die as a result of this storm.

1963 - Lee Harvey Oswald is murdered by Jack Ruby in the basement of the Dallas police department headquarters.  The shooting just happens to be broadcast on live television.

1969 - The Apollo 12 command module splashes down safely in the Pacific Ocean, ending the mission and declaring it a success.

1971 - During a severe thunderstorm over Washington state, a hijacker calling himself D. B. Cooper, parachutes from a Northwest Orient Airlines plane with $200,000 in random money.  He has never been found.

1974 - Donald Johanson and Tom Gray, discover the 40% complete, Australopithecus afarensis skeleton, nicknamed Lucy, in the Awash Valley of Ethiopia.

23rd of November

It is the 327th day of the year with only 38 day remaining.

1499 - Pretender to the throne Perkin Warbeck is hanged for reportedly attempting to escape from the Tower of London.  He had invaded England two years earlier, claiming to be the lost son of King Edward IV.

1863 - The Battle of Chattanooga begins, while Union forces led by General U.S. Grant reinforce troops to counter-attack the Confederates.

1876 - Corrupt Tammany Hall leader Willaim Magear "Boss" Tweed, is delivered to authorities in New York City after being captured in Spain.

1889 - The first jukebox goes into operation at the Palais Royale Saloon in San Franciso, California.

1936 - The first edition of Life magazine is published.

1943 - Two important atolls, Tarawa and Makin, fall to american forces.

1963 - The BBC broadcasts the first ever episode of Doctor Who, which is the world's longest running science fiction drama.

1976 - Apneist Jacques Mayol, is the first man to reach a depth of 100 meters undersea without breathing equipment.

1980 - A series of earthquakes in South Italy kills approximately 4,800 people.

1990 - The first all woman expedition to the South Pole, consisting of 3 Americans, 1 Japanese, and 12 Russians, sets off from Antarctica on the 1st leg of a 70 day, 1287 kilometer ski trek.

22nd of November

It is the 326th day of the year, with only 39 day remaining until the end of the year.

1718 - Off the coast of North Carolina, British pirate Edward Teach, known as Blackbeard, is killed in battle with a boarding party led by Royal Navy Lieutenant Robert Maynard.

1858 - The city of Denver, Colorado is founded.

1864 - Confederate General John Bell Hood invades Tennessee in an unsuccessful attempt to draw Union General William T. Sherman from Georgia.

1869 - In Dumbarton, Scotland, the clipper Cutty Sark is launched.  It is one of the last clippers ever built, and the only one still surviving today.

1942 - During the Battle for Stalingrad, General Friedrich Paulus sends Adolf Hitler a telegram saying that the German 6th Army is completely surrounded.

1943 - Lebanon gains its independence from France.

1963 - In Dallas, Texas, U.S. President John F. Kennedy is assassinated and Texas Governor John B. Connally is seriously wounded.  Suspect Lee Harvey Oswald is later captured and charged with the murder of police officer J.D. Tippit.  Oswald is shot two days later by Jack Ruby while in police custody.

1969 - In American football, the University of Michigan upsets Ohio State University, 24 to 12.  It is Bo Scembechler's first season as Michigan's head coach and will set off the 10-year war between he and Woody Hayes.

1986 - Mike Tyson defeats Trevor Bercik, to become the youngest Heavyweight champion in boxing history.

1988 - In Palmdale, California, the first prototype B-2 Spirit stealth bomber is revealed.

1995 - Toy Story is released as the first feature-length film created completely using computer-generated imagery.

2005 - Angela Merkel becomes the first female Chancellor of Germany.

21st of November

It is the 325th day of the year, with only 40 days remaining.

164 BC - Judas Maccabaeus, son of Mattathias of the Hasmonean family, restores the Temple in Jerusalem.  This event is commemorated each year by the festival of Hanukkah.

1620 - Plymouth Colony settlers sign the Mayflower Compact.

1789 - North Carolina ratifies the United States Constitution and is admitted as the 12th U.S. state.

1861 - Confederate President Jefferson Davis, appoints Judah Benjamin his Secretary of War.

1877 - Thomas Edison announces his invention of the phonograph, a machine that can play and record sound.

1905 - Albert Einstein's paper is finally published by the Annalen der Physik.   It reveals the relationship between energy and mass, leading to the equivalence formula E=mc².

1920 - In Dublin, 31 people are killed in what became known as "Bloody Sunday."  This included fourteen British informants, fourteen Irish civilians, and three Irish Republican Army prisoners.

1922 - Rebecca Latimer Felton of Georgia takes the oath of office, becoming the first female United States Senator.

1970 - A joint Air Force and Army team raids the Son Tay prison camp in an attempt to free American prisoners of war thought to be held there, in what is known a Operation Ivory Coast.

1980 - A deadly fire breaks out at the MGM Grand Hotel in Paradise, Nevada, now Bally's Las Vegas.  87 people are killed and more than 650 are injured in the worst disaster in Nevada history.

1985 - United States Navy intelligence analyst Jonathan Pollard is arrested for spying after being caught giving Israel classified information on Arab nations.  He is subsequently sentenced to life in prison.

1986 - National Security Council member Oliver North and his secretary start to shred documents implicating them in the sale of weapon to Iran an channeling the proceeds to help fund the Contra rebels in Nicaragua.

20th of November

It is the 324th day of the year, with only 41 days remaining until the end of the year.

1789 - New Jersey becomes the first U.S. state to ratify the Bill of Rights.

1820 - An 80-ton sperm whale attacks the Essex, a whaling ship from Nantucket, Massachusetts, two thousand miles from the western coast of South America.  This event partially inspired the novel Moby Dick.

1943 - The Battle of Tarawa begins, when United States Marines, land on the atoll in the Gilbert Islands and suffer heavy fire from Japanese shore and machine guns.

1945 - Trials against 24 Nazi war criminals start at the Palace of Justice at Nuremberg, Germany.

1962 - In response to the Soviet Union agreeing to remove its missiles from Cuba, John F. Kennedy ends the quarantine of the Caribbean antion.

1985 - Microsoft Windows 1.0 is released.

1992 - In England, a fire breaks out in Windsor Castle, damaging the structure and causing over 50 million pounds worth of damage.

1998 - The first module of the International Space Station, known as Zarya, is launched.

19th of November

Today is the 323rd day of the year with only 42 days remaining.

1095 - The Council of Clermont, called by Pope Urban II to discuss sending the First Crusade to the Holy Land begins.

1794 - The United States and kingdom of Great Britain sign Jay's Treaty.  This attempts to resolve some of the lingering problems left over from the American Revolutionary War.

1863 - President Abraham Lincoln delivers the Gettysburg Address at the dedication of the military cemetery
ceremony in Pennylvania.

1916 - Samuel Goldwyn and Edger Selwyn establish Goldwyn Pictures.

1930 - Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow commit their first robbery, the first in a long series of criminal acts.

1943 - Nazis liquidate Janowska concentration cap in Lemberg, western Ukraine.  They murder at least 6,000 Jews after a failed uprising and mass escape attempt.

1944 - Franklin Roosevelt announces the 6th War Loan Drive, aimed at selling $14 billion in war bonds to help pay for the war effort.

1950 - General Dwight D. Eisenhower becomes supreme commander of NATO-Europe.

1959 - The Ford Motor Company announces the discontinuation of the unpopular Edsel automobile.

1969 - Apollo 12 astronauts Pete Conrad and Alan Bean land at Oceanus Procellarum and become the third and fourth humans to walk on the moon.

1969 - Soccer player Pele, scores his 1,000th goal.

1985 - In Geneva, President Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev meet for the first time.

1985 - Pennzoil wins a $10.53 billion judgment against Texaco, in the largest verdict in history, stemming from Texaco executing a contract to buy Getty Oil after Pennzoil had entered into an unsigned, yet still binding, buyout contract with Getty.

1990 - Pop group Milli Vanilli are stripped of their Grammy Award because the duo did not sing on the Girl You Know It's True album.  Sessions musicians had provided all the vocals.

1998 - The United States Hose of Representatives Judiciary Committee begins impeachment hearings against President Bill Clinton.

1998 - Vincent van Gogh's, Potrait of the Artist Without Beard, sells at auction for $71.5 million.

18th of November

It is the 322nd day of the year, with only 43 days remaining until the new year.

1307 - It is estimated that William Tell shoots an apple off of his son's head.

1421 - A seawall at the Zuiderzee dike in the Netherlands breaks, flooding nearly 72 village and killing about 10,000 people.  This event will become known as the Sint-Elisabethsvloed.

1493 - Christopher Columbus first sights the island now known as Puerto Rico.

1730 - Frederick the Great, King of Prussia, is granted a royal pardon and released from confinement.

1865 - Mark Twain's short story The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County, is published in the New York Saturday Post.

1918 - Latvia declares its independence from Russia.

1928 - It is the release of animated short, Steamboat Willie, the first fully synchronized sounds cartoon, directed by Walt Disney and Ub Iwerks.  It features the third appearance of cartoon characters Mickey and Minne Mouse.  It is the former's official birthday.

1943 - During the Battle of Berlin, 440 Royal Air Force planes bomb the city, causing only light damage and killing 131.  The RAF loses 9 aircraft and 53 crew.

1961 - President John F. Kennedy decides to send 18,000 military advisers to South Vietnam.

1963 - The first push button telephone goes into service.

1987 - U.S. Congress issues its final report on the Iran-Contra affair.

1988 - President Ronald Reagan, signs a bill into legislation allowing the death penalty for drug traffickers.

1999 - In College Station, Texas, 12 people are killed and 27 injured at Texas A&M University.  The 59-foot-tall Aggie Bonfire, under construction for the annual football game against the University of Texas, collapses at 2:42 AM.

17th of November

Today is the 321st day of the year and there are only 44 days remaining.

284 - Diocletian is proclaimed Emperor by his troops, and would rule Rome for over 20 years.

1603 - English explorer and writer Sir Walter Raleigh goes on trial for treason.

1777 - The Articles of Confederation are submitted to the states for ratification.

1800 - The United States Congress holds its first session in Washington, D.C.

1820 - Captain Nathaniel Palmer becomes the first American to see Antarctia, a nearby Peninsula will later be named after him.

1856 - On the Sonoita River in present-day southern Arizona, the United States Army establishes Fort Buchanan in order to help control new land acquired by the Gadsdan Purchase.

1863 - Confederate forces led by General James Longstreet place the city of Knoxville, Tennessee under siege.

1869 - In Egypt, the Suez Canal is inaugurated, and now links the Mediterranean Sea with the Red Sea.

1871 - The National Rifle Association is granted a charter by the state of New York.

1911 - The Omega Psi Phi fraternity, the first African-American fraternity at an historically black ocollege or university, is founded at Howard University.

1947 - The U.S. Screen Actors Guild implements an anti-Communist loyalty oath.

1962 - President Kennedy dedicates the Dulles International Airport, serving the Washington, D.C. region.

1970 - Lieutenant William Calley goes on trial for the My Lai massacre.

1970 - Douglas Engelbart receives the patent for the first computer mouse.

1973 - In Orlando, Florida, President Richard Nixon tells 400 Associated Press managing editors, "I am not a crook."

1982 - Duk Koo Kim, dies unexpectedly from injuries sustained during a 14-round match against Ray Mancini in Las Vegas, Nevada, prompting reforms for the sport of boxing.

2004 - Kmart Corporation, announces that it is buying Sears, Roebuck, and Company for an estimated $11 billion and naming the newly merged company Sears Holding Corporation.

2007 - Brian May, guitarist and songwriter for the rock band Queen, is appointed Chancellor of Liverpool John Moores University.  He is also an avid astrophysicist.

16th of November

It is the 319th day of the year, with only 45 days remaining.

1821 - Missuori trader William Becknell arrives in Santa Fe, New Mexico over a route that became known as the Sante Fe Trail.

1863 - During the Battle of Campbell's Station near Knoxville, Tennessee, Confederate troops unsuccessfully attack Union forces.

1907 - Indian Territory and Oklahoma Territory are joined together to become the 46th U.S. state, Oklahoma.

1938 - LSD is first synthesized by Swiss chemist Dr. Albert Hofmann at the Sandoz Laboratories in Basel, Switzerland.

1940 - In occupied Poland, the Nazis close off the Warsaw Ghetto from the outside world.

1943 - American bombers strike a hydro-electric power facility and heavy water factory in German-controlled Vemork, Norway.

1945 - In operation Papercilip, the United States Army secretly admits 88 German scientists and engineers to help in the development of rocket technology.

1973 - President Richard Nixon signs the Trans-Alaska Pipeline Authorization Act into law, authorizing the construction of the Alaska Pipeline.

2000 - Bill Clinton becomes the first U.S. President to visit Vietnam since the end of the Vietnam War.

15th of November

It is the 318th day of the year, with only 46 days remaining until the new year.

1532 - Commanded by Francisco Pizarro, Spanish conquistadors under Hernando de Soto meet Inca leader Atahualpa for the first time, arranging a meeting on the city plaza the following day.

1533 - Francisco Pizzaro arrives in Cuzco, the capital of the Incan Empire.

1791 - The first U.S. Catholic college, Georgetown University, opens its doors.

1859 - The first modern revival of the Olympic Games takes place in Athens, Greece.

1864 - Union General William Tecumseh Sherman, burns Atlanta, Georgia and begins his famous March to the Sea.

1920 - First assembly of the League of Nations is held in Geneva, Switzerland.

1939 - In Washington, D.C., Franklin Roosevelt lays the cornerstone of the Jefferson Memorial.

1942 - This marks the first flight of the Heinkel He 219, German aircraft.

1943 - German SS leader Heinrich Himmler orders that Gypsies are to be put on the same level as Jews and sent to concentration camps.

1949 - Nathuram Godse and Narayan Apte are executed for assassinating Mahatma Ghandi.

1968 - The U.S. Air Force launches Operation Commando Hunt, a large-scale bombing campaign against the Ho Chi Minh trail.

1969 - In Columbus, Ohio, Dave Thomas opens the first Wendy's restaurant.

1971 - Intel releases the world's first commercial single-chip microprocessor, the 4004.

2007 - Cyclone Sidr hit Bangladesh, killing an estimated 5,000 people and destroyed the world's largest mangrove forest, Sundarbans.

14th of November

Today is the 318th day of the year, with only 47 days remaining.

1533 - Conquistadors from Spain, under the leadership of Francisco Pizarro arrive in Cajamarca, Inca Empire.

1770 - James Bruce discovers what he believes to the source of the Nile.

1862 - President Lincoln approves General Ambrose Burnside's plan to capture the Confederate capital at Richmond, Virginia.  It leads to the Battle of Fredericksburg.

1910 - Aviator Eugene Ely performs the first take off from a ship in Hampton Roads, Virginia.  He took of from a makeshift deck on the USS Birmingham in a Curtiss pusher.

1965 - The Battle of Ia Drang begins, it is the first major engagement between regular American and North Vietnamese forces.

1969 - NASA launches Apollo 12, the second manned mission to the surface off the moon.

1995 - A budget standoff between Democrats and Republicans in the U.S. Congress forces the federal government to temporarily close national parks and museums and to run most government offices with skeleton staffs.

13th of November

Today is the 317th day of the year with 48 days remaining.

It has often been observed as the "Day of Love" as it is regarded as the day soulmates come together.

1841 - James Braid first sees a demonstration of animal magnetism, which leads to his study of the subject of hypnotism.

1927 - The Holland Tunnel opens to traffic as the first Hudson River vehicle tunnel linking New Jersey to New York City.

1947 - Russia completes, its now famous, AK-47, one of the first proper assault rifles.

1956 - The United States Supreme Court declares Alabama laws requiring segregated buses illegal, thus ending the Montgomery Bus Boycott.

1982 - The Vietnam Veterans Memorial is dedicated in Washington, D.C. after a march to its site by thousands of Vietnam War veterans.

1985 - The volcano Nevado del Ruiz erupts and melts a glaciar, causing a lahar (volcanic mudslide) that birues Armero, Colombia, killing approximately 23,000 people.

12th of November

It is the 316th day of the year with only 49 days remaining.

1439 - Plymouth, England becomes the first town incorporated by the English Parliament.

1847 - Sir James Young Simpson, a British physician, is the first to use chloroform as an anaesthetic.

1892 - William Pudge Heffelfinger, becomes the first professional American football player on record, participating in his first paid game for the Allegheny Athletic Association.

1927 - Leon Trotsky is expelled from the Soviet Communist Party, leaving Joseph Stalin in undisputed control of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.

1933 - Hugh Gray takes the first known photos of the Loch Ness Monster.

1944 - The Royal Air Force launches 29 Avro Lancaster bombers and sinks the German battleship Tirpitz, with 12,000 pounds of Tallboy bombs off of Tromsa, Norway.

1948 - In Tokyo, an international war crimes tribunal, sentences seven Japanese military and government officials, including Hideki Tojo, to death.

1969 - Independent investigative journalist Seymour Hersh breaks the My Lai story.

1980 - The NASA space probe Voyager I, makes its closest approach to Saturn and takes the first images of its rings.

1998 - U.S. Vice President Al Gore, signs the Kyoto Protocol, aimed to fight global warming.

2003 - Shanghai Transrapid sets up a new world speed record of 311 mph for commercial railway systems.

11th of November

Today is the 315th day of te year, with 50 days remaining until the end of the year.

1675 - Gottfried Leibniz demonstrates integral calculus, for the first time to find the area under the graph of y = f (x).

1831 - Nat Turner is hanged after inciting a violent uprising of slaves.

1839 - The Virginia Military Institute is founded in Lexington, Virginia.

1864 - General William T. Sherman begins burning Atlanta, Georgia to the ground in preparation for his march south.

1889 - Washington is admitted to the United States as the 42nd state.

1918 - Germany signs an armistice agreement with the Allies in a railroad car in the forest of Compiegne, France.  The fighting ends at 11:00 AM and this is honored with a two-minute silence.  The war officially ends when the Treaty of Versailles is signed the next year.

1926 - U.S. Route 66 is established.

1930 - Patent number US1781541 is awarded to Albert Einstein and Leo Szilard for their invention, the Einstein refrigerator.

1968 - Operation Commando Hunt is initiated.  The goal is to interdict men and supplies on the Ho Chi Minh trail, through Laos into South Vietnam.

1972 - The United States Army turns over the massive Long Binh military base to South Vietnam.

10th of November

It is the 314th day of the year with only 51 days remaining.

1619 - Rene Descartes has the dreams that eventually inspire his Meditations on First Philosophy.

1775 - The United States Marine Corp is founded at Tun Tavern in Philadelphia, by Samuel Nicholas.

1865 - Major Henry Wirz, the superintendent of a prison camp in Andersonville, Georgia, is hanged.  He becomes the only American Civil War solider executed for war crimes.

1871 - Henry Morton Stanley locates missing explorer and missionary, Dr. David Livingstone in Ujiji, near Lake Tanganyika.  He famously greets him with the words, "Dr. Livingstone, I presume?"

1944 - The ammunition ship USS Mount Hood, explodes at Seeadler Harbor, Manus, Admiralty Islands, killing at least 432 and wounding 371 individuals.

1951 - Direct dial coast-to-coast telephone service begins in the United States.

1954 - Dwight D. Eisenhower dedicates the Iwo Jima memorial or the USMC War Memorial in Arlington National Cemetery.

1958 - The Hope Diamond is donated to the Smithsonian Institution by merchant Harry Winston from New York.

1970 - For the first time in five years, an entire week ends with no reports of American combat fatalities in Southeast Asia.

1971 - In Cambodia, Khmer Rouge forces attack the city of Phnom Penh and its airport, killing 44, wounding at least 30 and damaging nine aircraft.

1997 - WorldCom and MCI Communication announce a $37 billion merger, the largest in U.S. history at the time.

9th of November

It is the 313th day of the year with only 52 days remaining until the end of the year.

694 - Egica, a king of the Visigoths of Hispania, accuses Jews of aiding Muslims, sentencing all Jews to slavery.

1494 - The famous Family de Medici, are expelled from the city of Florence, Italy.

1620 - Pilgrims aboard the Mayflower, sight land at Cape Cod, Massachusetts.

1862 - Union General Ambrose Burnside assumes command of the Army of the Potomac.

1888 - Jack the Ripper kills Mary Jane Kelly, his last known victim.

1906 - Theodore Roosevelt is the first sitting President to make an official trip outside the country.  He went to inspect progress on the Panama Canal.

1938 - Nazi German diplomat Ernst vom Rath, dies from the fatal gunshot wounds of Jewish resistance fighter Herschel Grynszpan, an act which the Nazis used as an excuse to instigate the national pogrom, known as Kristallnacht.

1960 - Robert McNamara is named president of Ford Motor Company, he leaves a month later to become Secretary of Defense.

1963 - At Miike coal mine in Japan, an explosion kills 458, and hospitalizes 839 with carbon monoxide poison.

1967 - The first issue of Rolling Stone Magazine is published.

1998 - Capital punishment in the United Kingdom is completely abolished for all crimes.

8th of November

Today is the 312th day of the year, with only 53 days remaining until the new year.

1519 - Hernan Cortez enter Tenochtitlan and Aztec ruler Moctezuma, welcomes him with a great celebration.

1793 - In Paris, the French Revolutionary government opens the Louvre, to the public as a museum.

1861 - The USS San Jacinto, stops the United Kingdom mail ship Trent, and arrests two Confederate envoys, sparking a diplomatic crisis between the two nations.

1889 - Montana is admitted as the 41st state to the United States.

1895 - While experimenting with electricity, Wilhelm Rontgen discovers the x-ray.

1917 - The People's Commissars give authority to Vladimir Lenin, Leon Trotsky, and Joseph Stalin.

1923 - In Munich, Adolf Hitler leads the Nazis in an unsuccessful attempt to overthrow the German government, known as the Beer Hall Putsch.

1933 - Franklin Roosevelt unveils the Civil Works Administration, an organization designed to create jobs for more than 4 million of the unemployed.

1939 - In Munich, Adolf Hitler narrowly escapes the assassination attempt of Georg Elser while celebrating the 16th anniversary of the Beer Hall Putsch.

1950 - United States Air force Lt. Russell J. Brown while piloting an F-80 Shooting Star, shoots down two North Korean MiG-15s in the first jet-to-jet dogfight in history.

1960 - John F. Kennedy defeats Richard M. Nixon, in one of the closest presidential elections of the twentieth century to become the 35th President of the United States.

1965 - The 173rd Airborne is ambushed by over 1,200 Viet Cong in Operation Hump during the Vietnam War.

1966 - Former Massachusetts Attorney General Edward Brooke, becomes the first African-American elected to the United States Senate since Reconstruction.

1966 - President Lyndon Johnson signs into law, an antitrust exemption, allowing the National Football League to merge with the American Football league.

1973 - The right ear of John Paul Getty III is delivered to a newspaper together with a ransom note, convincing his father to pay $2.9 million.

2004 - More than 10,000 United States troops and a small number of Iraqi army units, participate in a siege on the insurgent stronghold of Fallujah.

7th of November

Today is the 311th day of the year, with only 54 days remaining until the new year.

1665 - The London Gazette, the oldest surviving journal, is first published.

1775 - John Murray, the Royal Governor of the Colony of Virginia, starts the first mass emancipation of slaves by issuing Lord Dunmore's Offer, which offers freedom to slaves who abandoned their colonial masters in order to fight with him and the British government.

1811 - The Battle of Tippecanoe is fought, near present-day Battle Ground, Indiana.

1874 - A cartoon by Tomas Nast in Harper's Weekly, is considered the first important use of an elephant as a symbol for the United States Republican Party.

1908 - Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid are reportedly killed in San Vicente, Bolivia.

1910 - The first air freight shipment from Dayton, Ohio to Columbus, Ohio, is undertaken by the Wright Brothers and department store owner Max Moorehouse.

1916 - Jeannette Rankin is the first woman elected to the United States Congress.

1918 - An influenza epidemic, spreads to Western Samoa, killing 7,542 people by the end of the year, almost 20% of the population.

1933 - Fiorello H. La Guardia is elected the 99th mayor of New York City.

1941 - The Soviet hospital ship Armenia is sunk by German planes while evacuating refugees and wounded military and staff of several Crimean hospitals.  It is estimated that over 5,000 people perish.

1944 - President Franklin Roosevelt is elected for a record fourth term as President of the United States.

1967 - Carl B. Stokes, is elected as Mayor of Cleveland, Ohio.  He becomes the first African-American major of a major American city.

1991 - Basketball player Magic Johnson, announces that he is infected with HIV and retires from the National Basketball Association.

2000 - The Drug Enforcement Administration, discovers one of the country's largest LSD labs, inside a converted military missile silo in Wamego, Kansas.

6th of November

It is the 310th day of the year, with 55 days remaining until the end of the year.

1528 - Shipwrecked Spanish conquistador Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca, becomes the first known European to set foot in Texas.

1860 - Abraham Lincoln is elected the 16th President of the United States.

1861 - Jefferson Davis is elected president of the Confederate States of America.

1913 - Mohandas Gandhi, is arrested while leading a march of Indian miners in South Africa.

1935 - Parker Brothers, acquire the forerunner patents for the Monopoly board game, from Elizabeth Magie.

1944 - Plutonium is first produced at the Hanford Atomic Facility, and subsequently used in the Fat Man atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki, Japan.

1963 - After the coup, General Duong Van Minh, takes over leadership of South Vietnam.

1971 - The United States Atomic Energy Commission, tests the largest underground hydrogen bomb, codenamed Cannikin, on Amchitka Island in the Aleutians.

5th of November

It is the 309th day of the year and there are only 56 days remaining.

1138 - Ly Anh Tong is enthroned as emperor of Vietnam at the age of two, starting a 37-year reign.

1605 - A conspiracy led by Robert Catesby to blow up the English Houses of Parliament is thwarted when Sir Thomas Knyvet, a just of the peace, finds Guy Fawkes in a cellar below the House of Lords.

1831 - Nat Turner, American slave leader, is tried, convicted, and sentenced to death in Virginia.

1862 - Abraham Lincoln removes George B. McClellan as commander of the Union Army for the second and final time.

1862 - In Minnesota, 303 Dakota warriors are found guilty of rape and murder of whites, and are sentenced to hang.  38 are executed and the rest are reprieved.

1872 - In defiance of the law, Susan B. Anthony votes for the first time, and is fined $100.

1895 - George B. Seldon is granted the first patent for an automobile.

1937 - Adolf Hitler holds a secret meeting and states his plans for acquiring "lebensraum" for the German people.

1970 - The United States Military Assistance Command in Vietnam reports the lowest weekly American soldier death toll in five years.  A total of twenty-four men.

2006 - Saddam Hussein, Barzan Ibrahim al-Tikriti , and Awad Hamed al-Bandar, are sentenced to death in the al-Dujail trial for the role in the massacre of 148 Shi'as in 1982.

4th of November

It is the 308th day of the year, with only 57 days remaining until the new year.

1864 - Confederate troops bombard a Union supply base and destroy millions of dollars in material at the Battle of Johnsonville.

1921 - the Sturmabteilung or the SA a paramilitary group is formed by Adolf Hitler.

1922 - In Egypt, British archaeologist Howard Carter and his men find the entrance to Pharaoh Tutankhamun's tomb in the Valley of the Kings.

1942 - Disobeying a direct order from Adolf Hitler, Field Marshal Erwin Rommel, leads his forces on a five-month retreat.

1952 - The United States government establishes the National Security Agency.

1960 - At the Kasakela Chimpanzee Community in Tanzania, Dr. Jane Goodall, observes chimpanzees creating tools, the first ever observation in non-human animals.

1970 - The United States turns control o the Binh Thu Ar Base in the Mekong Delta, over to South Vietnam.

1994 - First conference that focuses exclusively on the subject of the commercial potential of the World Wide Web.

2008 - Barack Obama becomes the first African-American to be elected President of the United States.

3rd of November

It is the 307th day of the year, with 58 days remaining.

1783 - The American Continental Army is disbanded.

1883 - Self-described Black Bart the poet, gets away with his last stagecoach robbery, but leaves a clue that eventually leads to his capture.

1911 - Chevrolet officially enters the automobile market in competition with Ford.

1913 - The United States introduces an income tax.

1918 - Austria-Hungary enters into an armistice with the Allies, and the Habsburg-ruled empire dissolves.

1943 - A total of 500 aircraft of the United States Air Force, devastate Wilhelmshafen harbor in Germany.

1957 - The Russians launch Sputnik 2, and on board is the first animal to enter orbit, a dog named Laika.

1964 - Washington, D.C. residents are allowed to vote in a presidential election for the first time.

1967 - The Battle of Dak To begins, during the conflict in Vietnam.

2nd of November

Today is the 306th day of the year, with 59 days remaining until the new year.

1783 - In Rocky Hill, New Jersey, General George Washington gives his "Farewell Address to the Army."

1889 - North and South Dakota are admitted as the 39th and 40th states in the United States.

1920 - KDKA in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania starts broadcasting as the first commercial radio station, stating the results of the presidential election.

1947 - In California, designer Howard Hughes, performs the only flight of the Spruce Goose of H-4 The Hercules, the largest fixed wing aircraft ever built.

1963 - South Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem is assassinated following a military coup.

1965 - Norman Morrison, a 31-year-old Quaker, sets himself on fire in front of the river entrance to the Pentagon, to protect the use o napalm in the Vietnam war.

1984 - Velma Barfield becomes the first woman executed in the United States since 1962.

1st of November

Today is the 305th day of the year and there are only 60 days remaining.

1512 - The ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, painted by Michelangelo, is exhibited to the public for the first time.

1520 - The Strait of Magellan is discovered, the passage immediately south of mainland South America, connecting the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans, is first navigated by Ferdinand Magellan during the first global circumnavigation voyage.

1604 - William Shakespeare's tragedy, Othello, is presented for the first time, at Whitehall Palace in London.

1755 - Lisbon, Portugal is destroyed by a massive earthquake and tsunami, killing between sixty and ninety thousand people.

1765 - The British Parliament enacts the Stamp Act on the thirteen colonies, in order to help pay for British military operations in North America.

1800 - John Adams, becomes the first President of the United States to live in the Executive Mansion.

1859 - The current Cape lookout, North Carolina lighthouse, is lit for the first time.  Its first order Fresnel lens cane be seen for about 19 miles in good conditions.

1861 - Abraham Lincoln replaces General Winfield Scott, with George B. McClellan as the commander of the Union Army.

1870 - The Weather Bureau, later renamed the National Weather Service, makes its first official meteorological forecast.

1897 - The first Library of Congress building opened its doors to the public.

1911 - The first dropping of a bomb from an airplane in combat, during the Italo-Turkish War.

1915 - Parris Island is officially designated a United States Marine Corp Recruit Depot.

1943 - In support of the landings on Bougainville by the 3rd Marine Division, United States carrier forces attack the huge Japanese base on Rabaul.

1951 - Operation Buster-Jangle occurs.  6,500 American soldiers are exposed to "desert rock" atomic explosions for training purposes in Nevada.  Participation is not voluntary.

1952 - The U.S. successfully detonates the first large hydrogen bomb, codenamed Mike in the Eniwetok atoll, located in the Marshall Islands in the central Pacific Ocean.  The explosion had a yield of 10 megatons.  It is called Operation Ivy.

1959 - Montreal Canadiens goaltender, Jacques Plante, wears a protective mask for the first time in NHL history.

1968 - The Motion Picture Association of America's film rating system is officially introduced, and originating with the ratings of G, M, R, and X.

1981 - Antigua and Barbuda, gain independence from the United Kingdom.

1982 - Honda becomes the first Asian automobile company to produce cars in the United States with the opening of their factory in Marysville, Ohio.  The Honda Accord is the first car produced there.

1993 - The Maastricht Treaty takes effect, formally establishing the European Union.

31st of October

Today is the 304th day of the year with only 61 days remaining until the new year.

1517 - Martin Luther nails his 95 theses on the door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg.

1861 - Citing failing health, General Winfield Scott, resigns as Commander of the United States Army.

1864 - Nevada is admitted as the 36th state to the Union.

1876 - An immense and destructive cyclone ravages India.  It is estimated to have killed 200,000 people.

1917 - The Battle of Beersheba occurs during the First World War.  It is the last successful cavalry charge in history.

1926 - Magician Harry Houdini, dies of gangrene and peritonitus that developed after his appendix ruptured.

1941 - After nearly 14 years of work, the monument of Mount Rushmore is completed.

1943 - An F4U Corsair accomplishes the first successful radar-guided interception.

1944- Erich Gostl, a member of the Waffen SS, is awarded the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross, To recognize extreme battlefield bravery, after losing his face and eyes during the Battle of Normandy.

1961 - In the Soviet Union, longtime leader Joseph Stalin's body is removed from the tomb that holds Vladamir Lenin.

1999 - Yachtsman Jesse Martin, returns to Melbourne, Australia, after 11 months of circumnavigating the world, solo, non-stop, and unassisted.

2002 - A federal grand jury in Houston, Texas, indicts former Enron Corporation chief financial officer Andrew Fastow, on 78 counts of wire fraud, money laundering, conspiracy, and obstruction of justice, related to the collapse of his ex-employer.

30th of October

Today is the 303rd day of the year, with only 62 days remaining.

1831 - In Southampton County, Virginia, escaped slave Nat Turner, is captured and arrested for leading the bloodiest slave rebellion in U.S. history.

1864 - Helena, Montana is founded, after four prospectors discover gold at the Last Chance Gulch.

1922 - Benito Mussolini is made the Prime Minister of Italy.

1938 - Orson Welles, broadcasts his radio play of The War of the Worlds, causing anxiety in some of the audience.

1941 - President Franklin Roosevelt, approves U.S. $1 billion in Lend-Lease aid to the Allied nations.

1942 - Lt. Tony Fasson, Able Seaman Colin Grazier, and canteen assistant Tommy Brown, from the HMS Petard board the U-559, retrieving material which would lead to the decryption of the German Enigma code.

1945 - Jackie Robinson of the Kansas City Monarchs, signs a contract for the Brooklyn Dodgers, to break the baseball color barrier.

1965 - Just miles from Da Nang, United States Marines repel an intense attack of wave after wave of Viet Cong forces.  They kill 56 guerillas and among the dead, is a sketch of Marine positions, found on the body of a 13-year-old boy who sold drinks to the Marines the day before.

1974 - The Rumble in the Jungle boxing match, between Muhammad Ali and George Foreman, takes place in Kinshasa, Zaire.

1987 - In Japan, Nintendo releases the first 16-bit home entertainment system, the TurboGrafix-16, known as a PC Engine.

29th of October

It is the 302nd day of the year, with only 63 days remaining until the new year.

1390 - It is the first trial for witchcraft in Paris, leading to the death of three people.

1618 - English adventurer and writer, Sir Walter Raleigh, is beheaded for allegedly conspiring against James I of England.

1863 - Eighteen countries meeting in Geneva, agree to form the International Red Cross.

1863 - Forces under U.S. Grant repel a Confederate attack of General James Longstreet, at the Battle of Wauhatchie.  This allows an open supply line into Chattanooga, Tennessee.

1901 - Leon Czolgosz, the assassin of William McKinley, is executed by electrocution.

1929 - The New York Stock Exchange crashes, in what would be called Black Tuesday, beginning the Great Depression.

1960 - In Louisville, Kentucky, Cassius Clay, later Muhammad Ali, wins his first professional fight.

1964 - A collection of irreplaceable gems, including the 565 carat Star of India, is stolen by a group of thieves from the American Museum of Natural History in New York City.

1969 - The first ever computer-to-computer link is established on ARPANET, the precursor to the internet.

1998 - Space Shuttle Discovery blasts off with 77-year old John Glenn on board, making him the odlest person to go into space.

2004 - The Arabic news network Al Jazeera, broadcasts an excerpt from a video of Osama bin Laden, in which the terrorist leader first admits he is responsible for September 11, and makes reference to the upcoming election.