1903 – The first successful gasoline-powered airplane flight took place near Kitty Hawk, NC. Orville and Wilbur Wright made the flight.
0546 – Gothic War (535-554): The Ostrogoths of King Totila conquer Rome by bribing the Byzantine garrison.
1206 – Crusader Wallon de Sarton presents Bishop of Amiens Richard de Gerberoy with purported skull of John the Baptist, stolen from Constantinople (Amiens cathedral later built to house it)
1398 – Tamerlane captures and sacks Delhi, defeating Sultan Nasir-u Din Mehmud’s armies by setting camels loaded with hay alight and charging them at the Sultan’s armored elephants
1538 – Pope Paul II excommunicates King Henry VIII of England
1637 – Shimabara Rebellion: Japanese peasants led by Amakusa Shiro rise against daimyo Matsukura Shigeharu
1718 – France, Britain and Austria declare war on Spain (War of the Quadruple Alliance 1718–1720)
1777 – France recognized American independence.
1790 – Discovery of the Aztec calendar stone, Also known as the Stone of the Five Eras, the sculpture was excavated in Mexico City.
1791 – A traffic regulation in New York City established the first street to go “One Way.”
1798 – 1st impeachment trial against a US senator (William Blount, Tennessee) begins
1807 – France issues the Milan Decree, which confirms the Continental System.
1821 – Kentucky abolishes debtors’ prisons
1862 – General Ulysses S. Grant issues order #11, expelling Jews from Tennessee
1875 – Violent bread riots in Montreal
1895 – Anti-Saloon League of America formed, Washington, D.C.
1900 – New Ellis Island Immigration station completed costing $1.5 million
1903 – The first successful gasoline-powered airplane flight took place near Kitty Hawk, NC. Orville and Wilbur Wright made the flight.
1914 – Jews are expelled from Tel Aviv by Turkish authorities
1923 – Greek king George II overthrown by army/republic
1925 – Col. William “Billy” Mitchell was convicted of insubordination at his court-martial.
1939 – The German pocket battleship Graf Spee was scuttled by its crew, bringing the World War II Battle of the Rio de la Plata off Uruguay to an end.
1941 – German troops led by Erwin Rommel begin retreating in North Africa
1944 – The U.S. Army announced the end of its policy of excluding Japanese-Americans from the West Coast which ensured that Japanese-Americans were released from detention camps.
1953 – The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) decided to approve RCA’s color television specifications.
1957 – The United States successfully test-fired the Atlas intercontinental ballistic missile for the first time.
1961 – Niteroi Circus in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil catches fire; 323 die after disgruntled employee sets fire to the tent
1967 – Harold Holt, Prime Minister of Australia, vanishes in mysterious circumstances while swimming near Melbourne
1969 – The U.S. Air Force closed its Project “Blue Book” by concluding that there was no evidence of extraterrestrial spaceships behind thousands of UFO sightings.
1970 – Workers returning to shipyard in Gdynia, Poland are met by soldiers who shoot at the crowd, killing at least 18, wounding hundreds
1973 – Thirty-one people were killed at Rome airport when Arab guerillas hijacked a German airliner.
1975 – Lynette Fromme was sentenced to life in prison for her attempt on the life of U.S. President Ford.
1976 – WTCG-TV, Atlanta, GA, changed its call letters to WTBS, and was uplinked via satellite. The station became the first commercial TV station to cover the entire U.S.
1978 – OPEC raises oil prices by 18% and agrees on a 14.5% petroleum price increase for 1979, to be implemented quarterly
1979 – Arthur McDuffie, a black insurance executive, was fatally beaten after a police chase in Miami, FL. Four white police officers were later acquitted of charges stemming from McDuffie’s death.
1986 – Wayne “Danke Schoen” Newton won a $19.2 million suit against NBC News. NBC had aired reports claiming a link between Newton and mob figures. The reports were proven to be false.
1986 – Davina Thompson became the world’s first recipient of a heart, lungs, and liver transplant.
1986 – Eugene Hasefus was pardoned and then released by Nicaragua. He had been convicted of running guns to the Contras.
1992 – U.S. President George H.W. Bush, Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney and Mexican President Carlos Salinas de Gortari signed the North American Free Trade Agreement.
1992 – Israel deported over 400 Palestinians to Lebanese territory in an unprecedented mass expulsion of suspected militants.
1996 – Peruvian guerrillas took hundreds of people hostage at the Japanese embassy in Lima. The siege ended on April 22, 1997, with a commando raid that resulted in the deaths of all the rebels, two commandos and one hostage.
1997 – U.S. President Clinton signed the No Electronic Theft Act. The act removed protection from individuals who claimed that they took no direct financial gains from stealing copyrighted works and downloading them from the Internet.
1998 – U.S. House Speaker-designate Bob Livingston admitted he’d had extramarital affairs.
1999 – The United Nations General Assembly passes resolution 54/134 designating November 25 as the annual International Day to Eliminate Violence Against Women
2002 – U.S. President George W. Bush ordered the Pentagon to have ready for use within two years a system for protecting American territory, troops and allies from ballistic missile attacks.
2002 – McDonald’s Corp. warned that they would report its first quarterly loss in its 47-year history.
2004 – U.S. President George W. Bush signed into law the largest overhaul of U.S. intelligence gathering in 50 years. The bill aimed to tighten borders and aviation security. It also created a federal counterterrorism center and a new intelligence director.
2007 – Republic of Lakotah asserts independence from the United States
2010 – Mohamed Bouazizi sets himself on fire, The Tunisian street vendor self-immolated as a protest against the economic conditions in Tunisia. He died 18 days after at the age of 26. His protest and death were a catalyst for the Tunisian revolution and similar revolutions and protests around the Arab world.
2010 – The beginning of the Arab Spring, The multi-country protests and demands for change in the Arab world are thought to have begun with street vendor Mohamed Bouazizi’s self-immolation in Tunisia. Bouazizi’s attempt and death 18 days later was the catalyst for the Tunisian Revolution which forced then-president Zine El Abidine Ben Ali to step down from his post.
2012 – 17 people are killed and 70 are injured by a blast in a market in the Khyber Agency, Pakistan
2014 – Sony Pictures cancels the release of “The Interview”, starring Seth Rogen, Lizzy Caplan, and James Franco, after a cyber attack on the studio
2015 – Libyan warring political factions sign a UN-brokered deal to form a unified government
2015 – Martin Shkreli, CEO of Turing Pharmaceuticals is arrested on fraud charges in New York by the FBI
2017 – Terrorist suicide attack on a Methodist church in Quetta, Pakistan kills nine
2018 – New reports to US Senate say Russian propaganda efforts on social media much more extensive than thought, including targeting African Americans
2018 – US poacher sentenced to watch the film “Bambi” repeatedly during year in prison, for killing hundreds of deer in Missouri
2019 – Former Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf sentenced to death in absentia for high treason
2020 – More than 300 school boys rescued after they were kidnapped from their school in Katsina state, northern Nigeria
REFERENCE: history.net, onthisday.com, thepeopleshistory.com, timeanddate.com, scopesys.com, on-this-day.com
