Wikipedia:Selected anniversaries/November
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November 1: National Day in Algeria; Independence Day in Antigua and Barbuda (1981); All Saints' Day in Catholicism; World Vegan Day
- 1512 – Italian Renaissance painter Michelangelo finished repainting the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel (pictured) in fresco.
- 1520 – Portuguese maritime explorer Ferdinand Magellan led the first European expedition to navigate the Strait of Magellan, the passage immediately south of mainland South America, connecting the Pacific and the Atlantic Oceans.
- 1755 – A massive earthquake and subsequent tsunami destroyed Lisbon, and killed at least 60,000 people in Portugal and Morocco.
- 1928 – As part of the reforms implemented under the leadership of Turkish President Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the current 29-letter Turkish alphabet, used for the Turkish language, was established, replacing the Ottoman Turkish alphabet.
- 1963 – The Arecibo Observatory, with the world's largest single-dish radio telescope, officially opened in Arecibo, Puerto Rico.
More events: October 31 – November 1 – November 2
November 2: All Souls' Day in Western Christianity; Day of the Dead in Mexico
- 1795 – French Revolution: Under the terms of a new constitution that was ratified during the aftermath of the Reign of Terror and the subsequent Thermidorian Reaction, the Directory succeeded the National Convention as the executive government of France.
- 1917 – British Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour (pictured) issued the Balfour Declaration, proclaiming British support for the establishment of a Jewish homeland in Palestine.
- 1936 – BBC Television Service launched the world's first regular, public all-electronic television service with a high level of image resolution which became known as high-definition television.
- 1947 – American industrialist and aviator Howard Hughes flew Spruce Goose, the largest flying boat ever built, on its maiden flight from the coast of Long Beach, California, USA.
- 2000 – Expedition 1: American astronaut William Shepherd and Russian cosmonauts Sergei Krikalev and Yuri Gidzenko became the first resident crew to arrive at the International Space Station.
More events: November 1 – November 2 – November 3
November 3: Independence Day in Panama (1903), Dominica (1978) and the Federated States of Micronesia (1986); Culture Day in Japan
- 1793 – French playwright, journalist and outspoken feminist Olympe de Gouges (pictured) was guillotined for her revolutionary ideas.
- 1838 – The Times of India, the world's largest circulated English language daily broadsheet newspaper, was founded as the The Bombay Times and Journal of Commerce.
- 1848 – A new constitution drafted by Johan Rudolf Thorbecke was proclaimed, severely limiting the powers of the monarchy of the Netherlands.
- 1948 – The Chicago Tribune newspaper published the erroneous headline "Dewey Defeats Truman" shortly after incumbent U.S. President Harry S. Truman upset heavily favored Governor of New York Thomas Dewey in the U.S. presidential election.
- 1957 – The Soviet Union launched the Sputnik 2 spacecraft, carrying Laika the Russian space dog as the first living creature from Earth to enter orbit.
More events: November 2 – November 3 – November 4
November 4: Election Day in the United States (2008); Flag Day in Panama; Unity Day in Russia
- 1852 – Count Cavour (pictured) became prime minister of the Kingdom of Piedmont-Sardinia, which soon expanded to become the Kingdom of Italy.
- 1869 – Nature, one of the oldest and most reputable general purpose scientific journals, was first published.
- 1890 – London's City & South London Railway, the first deep-level underground railway in the world, opened, running a distance of 5.1 km (3.2 mi) between the City of London and Stockwell.
- 1979 – Hundreds of Iranian students supporting Iran's post-revolutionary regime seized the U.S. embassy in Tehran, beginning a 444-day hostage crisis.
- 1995 – Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was mortally wounded by Yigal Amir while at a peace rally at the Kings of Israel Square in Tel Aviv.
More events: November 3 – November 4 – November 5
November 5: Guy Fawkes Night in the United Kingdom and some Commonwealth countries
- 1605 – The Gunpowder Plot: Thomas Knyvet arrested explosives expert Guy Fawkes (pictured) and foiled Robert Catesby's plot to destroy the Houses of Parliament in London during the State Opening.
- 1688 – Glorious Revolution: Protestant Prince William of Orange landed at Brixham in Devon, on his way to depose his father-in-law King James II, the last Catholic monarch of England.
- 1838 – The collapse of the Federal Republic of Central America began with Nicaragua seceding from the union.
- 1872 – American Suffragette Susan B. Anthony voted in the U.S. presidential election for the first time in Rochester, New York. She was later fined US$100 for her participation, which she never paid, and the government never pursued her for nonpayment.
- 1917 – St. Tikhon of Moscow was elected Patriarch of Moscow and of the Russian Orthodox Church.
More events: November 4 – November 5 – November 6
November 6: Constitution Day in the Dominican Republic (1844) and Tajikistan (1994); Gustavus Adolphus Day in Sweden
- 1860 – Abraham Lincoln (pictured) became the first Republican Party candidate to win the U.S. presidential election.
- 1935 – Before the Institute of Radio Engineers in New York, American electrical engineer and inventor Edwin Howard Armstrong presented his study on using frequency modulation for radio broadcasting.
- 1962 – The United Nations General Assembly adopted Resolution 1761, condemning South Africa's apartheid policies.
- 1975 – Demonstrators in Morocco began the Green March to Spanish Sahara, calling for the "return of the Moroccan Sahara."
- 1999 – Although opinion polls had clearly suggested that the majority of the electorate favoured republicanism, the Australian republic referendum was defeated, keeping the British monarch as the country's head of state.
More events: November 5 – November 6 – November 7
- 1665 – The London Gazette, the oldest surviving English newspaper, was first published as the Oxford Gazette.
- 1811 – American forces led by Indiana Territory Governor William Henry Harrison defeated the forces of Shawnee leader Tecumseh's growing American Indian confederation at the Battle of Tippecanoe near present-day Battle Ground, Indiana.
- 1885 – Construction of the Canadian Pacific Railway, the first transcontinental railroad across Canada, concluded with financier and politician Sir Donald Smith driving in the "last spike" (pictured) in Craigellachie, British Columbia.
- 1917 – Vladimir Lenin led a Bolshevik insurrection against the Provisional Government of Alexander Kerensky, starting the Bolshevik Revolution, the second phase of the overall Russian Revolution.
- 1987 – Zine El Abidine Ben Ali deposed and replaced Habib Bourguiba as President of Tunisia, declaring him medically unfit for the duties of the office.
More events: November 6 – November 7 – November 8
November 8: St. Demetrius' Day in Republika Srpska
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- 1519 – Spanish conquistador Hernán Cortés entered Tenochtitlan where Aztec tlatoani Moctezuma II welcomed him with great pomp as would befit a returning god.
- 1520 – Stockholm Bloodbath: Following a successful invasion of Sweden by Danish forces under Christian II of Denmark, scores of Swedish leaders were executed despite Christian's promise of general amnesty.
- 1895 – German physicist Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen (pictured) produced and detected electromagnetic radiation in a wavelength range that is known today as X-rays.
- 1923 – Adolf Hitler, Erich Ludendorff and other members of the Kampfbund started the Beer Hall Putsch, a failed attempt to seize power in Germany.
- 1987 – A Provisional Irish Republican Army bomb exploded during a Remembrance Sunday ceremony in Enniskillen, Northern Ireland, killing at least eleven people and injuring sixty-three others.
More events: November 7 – November 8 – November 9
November 9: Muhammad Iqbal's Day in Pakistan; Inventor's Day in Germany, Austria and Switzerland; Schicksalstag in Germany
- 1872 – The Great Boston Fire began, eventually destroying over 750 buildings and causing US$73.5 million in damages in Boston, Massachusetts.
- 1918 – German Emperor William II abdicated, Prince Maximilian of Baden (pictured) resigned as Chancellor, and Philipp Scheidemann proclaimed the Weimar Republic.
- 1953 – Cambodia gained independence from France and became a constitutional monarchy under King Norodom Sihanouk.
- 1967 – French comic book heroes Valérian and Laureline first appeared in the pages of Pilote magazine.
- 2005 – Suicide bombers attacked three hotels in Amman, Jordan, killing a total of about 60 people and injuring at least 115 others.
More events: November 8 – November 9 – November 10
- 1444 – The Ottoman Empire under Sultan Murad II defeated the Polish and Hungarian armies under Władysław III of Poland and John Hunyadi at the Battle of Varna near Varna, Bulgaria in the final battle of the Crusade of Varna.
- 1871 – "Dr. Livingstone, I presume?" – Journalist and explorer Henry Morton Stanley located missing missionary and explorer David Livingstone (pictured) in Ujiji, near Lake Tanganyika in present-day Tanzania.
- 1928 – Hirohito was crowned the 124th Emperor of Japan.
- 1969 – The children's television series Sesame Street debuted on the National Educational Television network in the United States.
- 1995 – Playwright and environmental activist Ken Saro-Wiwa and eight others from the Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People were executed by the Nigerian military government.
More events: November 9 – November 10 – November 11
November 11: Independence Day in Poland (1918) and Angola (1975); St. Martin's Day in the Netherlands; Remembrance Day in the Commonwealth; Armistice Day in Europe; Veterans Day in the United States
- 1880 – Australian bank robber and bushranger Ned Kelly was hanged in Melbourne.
- 1889 – The U.S. territory of Washington officially became the 42nd U.S. state as the State of Washington.
- 1918 – Germany and the Allies signed an armistice treaty in a railway carriage in France's Compiègne Forest (delegations pictured), ending World War I on the Western Front.
- 1965 – Ian Smith, Premier of the British Crown Colony of Southern Rhodesia, issued the Unilateral Declaration of Independence, a move that the British government and the United Nations condemned as illegal.
- 1975 – The Australian constitutional crisis came to a head as Prime Minister Gough Whitlam was dismissed from office by Governor-General Sir John Kerr.
- 2004 – Mahmoud Abbas was elected Chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization after Yasser Arafat died from an unknown illness.
More events: November 10 – November 11 – November 12
November 12: Birth of Bahá'u'lláh, a holy day in the Bahá'í Faith
- 1028 – Future Byzantine empress Zoe married Romanus Argyrus according to the wishes of the dying Constantine VIII.
- 1893 – Mortimer Durand, Foreign Secretary of British India, and Abdur Rahman Khan, Amir of Afghanistan, signed the Durand Line Agreement, establishing what is now the international border between Afghanistan and modern-day Pakistan.
- 1927 – Leon Trotsky (pictured) was expelled from the Communist Party, leaving Joseph Stalin in undisputed control of the Soviet Union.
- 1936 – The San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge, connecting San Francisco and Oakland, California across San Francisco Bay, opened to traffic.
- 1970 – The Oregon Highway Division attempted to destroy a rotting beached sperm whale near Florence, Oregon with explosives, leading to the exploding whale incident.
More events: November 11 – November 12 – November 13
- 1002 – St. Brice's Day massacre: King Ethelred II ordered the massacre of all Danes in England.
- 1642 – First English Civil War: The Royalist army engaged the much larger Parliamentarian army at the Battle of Turnham Green near Turnham Green, Middlesex.
- 1954 – Great Britain defeated France at the Parc des Princes in Paris to win the first Rugby League World Cup.
- 1970 – The Bhola tropical cyclone hit the densely populated Ganges Delta in East Pakistan (now Bangladesh), killing an estimated 500,000 people.
- 1982 – The Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Constitution Gardens in Washington, D.C. was dedicated.
- 1985 – The volcano Nevado del Ruiz (pictured) erupted, causing a volcanic mudslide that buried Armero, Colombia and killed approximately 23,000 people.
- 2000 – Joseph Estrada became the first President of the Philippines to be impeached after he was accused of taking a sum of 400 million pesos in bribes from illegal gambling sources.
More events: November 12 – November 13 – November 14
November 14: Children's Day in India; Day of the Colombian Woman in Colombia; World Diabetes Day
- 1228 – Frederick of Isenberg was executed for the murder of his cousin Engelbert of Berg, the Archbishop of Cologne.
- 1817 – Bolívar's War: Colombian seamstress Policarpa Salavarrieta (pictured) was executed by firing squad by the Spanish in Bogotá for working as a spy for the revolutionary forces in New Granada.
- 1889 – Nellie Bly, reporter for the New York World, departed on her successful attempt to travel Around the World in Eighty Days, eventually completing her journey in only seventy-two days.
- 1940 – World War II: Coventry Cathedral and much of the city centre of Coventry, England were destroyed by the German Luftwaffe during the Coventry Blitz.
- 1971 – NASA's Mariner 9 reached Mars, becoming the first spacecraft to orbit another planet.
- 1990 – Germany and Poland signed the German-Polish Border Treaty, confirming their border at the Oder-Neisse line, which was originally defined by the Potsdam Agreement in 1945.
- 2003 – Astronomers Michael E. Brown, Chad Trujillo, and David L. Rabinowitz discovered the trans-Neptunian object 90377 Sedna.
More events: November 13 – November 14 – November 15
November 15: Republic Day in Brazil (1889); Shichigosan in Japan
- 655 – Penda of Mercia was defeated by Oswiu of Northumbria at the Battle of the Winwaed in what is modern-day Yorkshire.
- 1889 – A military coup led by Field Marshal Deodoro da Fonseca overthrew Emperor Pedro II and declared Brazil a republic.
- 1920 – The first general assembly of the League of Nations was held in Geneva, Switzerland, with 42 founding members.
- 1971 – Intel released the 4004 4-bit central processing unit (pictured), the world's first commercially available microprocessor, capable of executing approximately 60,000 instructions per second.
- 1985 – Northern Ireland peace process: British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, and the Irish Taoiseach Garret FitzGerald signed the Anglo-Irish Agreement, giving the Irish Government an advisory role in Northern Ireland's government.
- 1988 – The Soviet Buran spacecraft, a reusable vehicle built in response to NASA's Space Shuttle program, was launched, unmanned, on her first and only space flight.
More events: November 14 – November 15 – November 16
- 1384 – Though she was only a ten-year old girl, Jadwiga (pictured) was crowned "King of Poland".
- 1532 – Sapa Inca Atahualpa was captured by Conquistador Francisco Pizarro at the Battle of Cajamarca in Cajamarca, Peru.
- 1885 – After a five-day trial following the North-West Rebellion, Louis Riel, Canadian rebel leader of the Métis and "Father of Manitoba", was executed by hanging for high treason.
- 1979 – The first line of Bucharest Metro, the M1 Line, opened from Timpuri Noi to Semănătoarea in Bucharest, Romania.
- 2002 – The first case of the respiratory disease Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) was recorded in Guangdong, China.
More events: November 15 – November 16 – November 17
November 17: International Students' Day
- 1558 – Elizabeth I (pictured) became Queen of England and Ireland, marking the start of the Elizabethan era.
- 1855 – Explorer David Livingstone became the first European to see Victoria Falls, one of the largest waterfalls in the world, on what is now the Zambia–Zimbabwe border.
- 1869 – The Suez Canal, linking the Mediterranean Sea with the Red Sea, was inaugurated in an elaborate ceremony.
- 1950 – Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama, was enthroned as Tibet's head of state at the age of fifteen.
- 1969 – Cold War: Representatives from the Soviet Union and the United States met in Helsinki to begin SALT I negotiations aimed at limiting the number of strategic weapons on both sides.
- 1989 – A student demonstration in Prague was quelled by riot police, sparking the Velvet Revolution aimed at overthrowing the Czechoslovakian communist government.
- 1997 – Sixty-two people were killed by Islamic terrorists outside the Deir el-Bahri, one of Egypt's top tourist attractions, in Luxor.
More events: November 16 – November 17 – November 18
November 18: Independence Day in Latvia (1918); National Day in Oman (1940)
- 1307 – William Tell, a legendary marksman in Switzerland, is said to have successfully shot an apple on his son's head with a single bolt from his crossbow.
- 1626 – St. Peter's Basilica, one of four major basilicas of Rome, was consecrated on the anniversary of that of the previous church in 326.
- 1905 – Prince Carl of Denmark became Haakon VII (pictured), the first King of Norway after the personal union between Sweden and Norway was dissolved.
- 1928 – Walt Disney's Steamboat Willie, the first completely post-produced synchronized sound animated cartoon, was released.
- 1985 – Calvin and Hobbes, a comic strip by Bill Watterson featuring six-year old Calvin and his stuffed tiger Hobbes, was first published.
- 1987 – An underground fire killed 31 people at London's busiest underground station at King's Cross St Pancras.
- 1991 – Croatian War of Independence: Republic of Serbian Krajina forces captured the Croatian city of Vukovar, ending an 87-day siege.
More events: November 17 – November 18 – November 19
November 19: Liberation Day in Mali
- 1493 – Christopher Columbus became the first European to land on Puerto Rico, an island he named San Juan Bautista after John the Baptist.
- 1816 – The University of Warsaw, currently the largest university in Poland, was established as The Royal University of Warsaw after Warsaw was separated from Kraków, the oldest and most influential Polish academic centre.
- 1863 – American Civil War: U.S. President Abraham Lincoln delivered the Gettysburg Address (Lincoln's "Hay Draft" pictured) at the dedication of the Soldiers' National Cemetery in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. It is one of the most quoted speeches in United States history.
- 1941 – World War II: The Australian light cruiser HMAS Sydney and the German auxiliary cruiser HSK Kormoran destroyed each other off the coast of Western Australia in the Indian Ocean.
- 1969 – Playing for Santos against Vasco da Gama at Estádio do Maracanã in Rio de Janeiro, Brazilian football player Pelé scored his 1000th goal on a penalty kick.
- 1999 – Shenzhou 1, China's first unmanned test flight of the Shenzhou spacecraft, was launched from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in Alxa League, Inner Mongolia.
More events: November 18 – November 19 – November 20
November 20: Zumbi Day in Brazil; Revolution Day in Mexico; Teacher's Day in Vietnam
- 284 – Diocletian became Roman Emperor, eventually establishing reforms that brought an end to the Crisis of the Third Century.
- 1700 – Great Northern War: Swedish forces led by King Charles XII (pictured) defeated the Russian army of Tsar Peter the Great in the Battle of Narva.
- 1902 – While discussing how to promote the newspaper L'Auto during a lunch meeting in Paris, sports journalists Henri Desgrange and Géo Lefèvre came up with the idea of holding a cycling race that became known as the Tour de France.
- 1910 – Francisco I. Madero promulgated the San Luis Plan, starting a revolt against President Porfirio Díaz that marked the beginning of the Mexican Revolution.
- 1945 – The Nuremberg Trials against 24 leading Nazis involved in the Holocaust and various war crimes during World War II began in Nuremberg, Germany.
- 1998 – Zarya, the first module of the International Space Station, was launched on a Proton rocket from Baikonur Cosmodrome, Kazakhstan.
More events: November 19 – November 20 – November 21
- 1272 – Edward I (statue pictured) became King of England, succeeding his father Henry III who died five days earlier.
- 1783 – Jean-François Pilâtre de Rozier and François Laurent d'Arlandes made the first successful untethered flight by humans in a hot air balloon, which was constructed by the Montgolfier brothers.
- 1920 – Irish War of Independence: On Bloody Sunday in Dublin, the Irish Republican Army killed more than a dozen British intelligence officers known as the Cairo Gang, and the Auxiliaries of the Royal Irish Constabulary opened fire on players and spectators at a Gaelic football match in Croke Park.
- 1962 – The Sino-Indian War ended after the Chinese People's Liberation Army declared a unilateral ceasefire and withdrew to the prewar Line of Actual Control, returning all the territory they had captured during the conflict.
- 1977 – God Defend New Zealand became New Zealand's second national anthem, on equal standing with God Save the Queen, which had been the traditional one since 1840.
More events: November 20 – November 21 – November 22
November 22: Holodomor Remembrance Day in Ukraine (2008); Independence Day in Lebanon (1943)
- 1869 – The Cutty Sark, one of the last sailing clippers ever to be built, was launched at Dumbarton in Scotland.
- 1967 – The United Nations Security Council unanimously adopted Resolution 242 in the aftermath of the Six-Day War between Israel and Egypt, Jordan, and Syria.
- 1975 – Two days after the death of Francisco Franco, Juan Carlos was declared King of Spain according to the law of succession promulgated by Franco.
- 2004 – Orange Revolution: Massive protests started in cities across Ukraine, resulting from allegations that the Ukrainian presidential election between sitting Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych and leader of the opposition coalition Viktor Yushchenko was rigged.
- 2005 – Angela Merkel (pictured) assumed office as the first female Chancellor of Germany.
More events: November 21 – November 22 – November 23
November 23: Labour Thanksgiving Day in Japan; St George's Day in Georgia
- 1644 – John Milton (pictured) published Areopagitica, arguing for the right to free speech and against publication censorship during the English Civil War.
- 1867 – The Manchester Martyrs were hanged in Manchester, England for their rescue of two Irish nationalists, who played important roles in the failed Fenian Rising, from jail.
- 1963 – The BBC television series Doctor Who premiered with William Hartnell in the titular role.
- 1971 – The People's Republic of China was given China's permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council.
- 1985 – Omar Rezaq and two others from the Abu Nidal terrorist group hijacked EgyptAir Flight 648 over the Mediterranean Sea.
- 2003 – Rose Revolution: Eduard Shevardnadze resigned as President of Georgia following weeks of mass protests over disputed election results.
More events: November 22 – November 23 – November 24
November 24: Teachers' Day in Turkey
- 1190 – Conrad of Montferrat became de jure King of Jerusalem after marrying Queen Isabella.
- 1642 – Dutch explorer Abel Tasman reached Tasmania. He named the island Anthoonij van Diemenslandt after Governor-General of the Dutch East Indies Anthony van Diemen.
- 1859 – On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection by British naturalist Charles Darwin (pictured) was first published, and sold out its initial print run on the first day.
- 1922 – Irish Civil War: Author and Irish nationalist Robert Erskine Childers was executed by firing squad by the Irish Free State for illegally carrying a revolver.
- 1974 – The 3.2-million-year-old skeleton of an Australopithecus afarensis, nicknamed "Lucy" after The Beatles song "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds", was discovered in the Afar Depression in Ethiopia.
More events: November 23 – November 24 – November 25
November 25: National Day in Bosnia and Herzegovina (1943); Independence Day in Suriname (1975)
- 1120 – William Adelin, the only legitimate son of King Henry I of England, drowned in the White Ship Disaster, leading to a succession crisis which would bring down the Norman monarchy of England.
- 1177 –The 16-year-old King Baldwin IV of Jerusalem, already ravaged by leprosy, destroys a Muslim army led by Saladin at the Battle of Montgisard, saving the Crusader states from invasion.
- 1795 – Stanisław August Poniatowski (pictured), the last King of Poland, was forced to abdicate after the Third Partition of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth by Austria, Prussia, and Russia.
- 1970 – Japanese author Yukio Mishima committed the ritual suicide seppuku at the Japan Self-Defense Forces headquarters in Tokyo after an unsuccessful attempt to inspire the soldiers to stage a coup d'etat to restore the powers of the Japanese Emperor prior to the 1947 constitution.
- 1992 – Legislators in Czechoslovakia voted to dissolve their country into the Czech Republic and Slovakia, effective January 1, 1993.
More events: November 24 – November 25 – November 26
- 1778 – An expedition led by James Cook reached Maui, the second largest of the Hawaiian Islands.
- 1842 – The University of Notre Dame in South Bend, Indiana, USA was founded by members of the Roman Catholic Congregation of Holy Cross.
- 1917 – The National Hockey League, the premier professional ice hockey league in the world, was formed at a meeting at the Windsor Hotel in Montreal, Canada.
- 1942 – World War II: Josip Broz Tito (pictured) and the Yugoslav Partisans convened the first meeting of the Anti-Fascist Council of National Liberation of Yugoslavia at Bihać in northwestern Bosnia.
- 1950 – Battle of Chosin Reservoir: Chinese forces in North Korea launched a massive counterattack against South Korean and United States armed forces, ending any thought of a quick end to the Korean War.
More events: November 25 – November 26 – November 27
November 27: Thanksgiving in the United States (2008)
- 1095 – At the Council of Clermont, Pope Urban II called for the First Crusade, declaring bellum sacrum against the Muslims who had occupied the Holy Land and were attacking the Eastern Roman Empire.
- 1895 – Swedish chemist and industrialist Alfred Nobel signed his last will and testament, setting aside the bulk of his estate to establish the Nobel Prize after his death.
- 1926 - Restoration of Colonial Williamsburg (pictured) in the Historic Triangle on the Virginia Peninsula, United States began.
- 2001 – The Hubble Space Telescope detected sodium in the atmosphere of the extrasolar planet HD 209458b, the first planetary atmosphere outside our solar system to be measured.
- 2005 – French oral and maxillofacial surgeon Bernard Devauchelle performed the world's first partial face transplant on a living human, replacing Isabelle Dinoire's face after her Labrador dog mauled her.
More events: November 26 – November 27 – November 28
November 28: Independence Day in Albania (1912) and Mauritania (1960)
- 1443 – Rebelling against the Ottoman Empire, Skanderbeg and his forces liberated Kruja in Middle Albania and raised the Albanian flag.
- 1919 – Nancy Astor (pictured), the first woman to serve as a Member of Parliament in the British House of Commons, was elected in a by-election.
- 1920 – Kilmichael Ambush: Thirty-six local Irish Republican Army volunteers killed seventeen members of the Auxiliary Division of the Royal Irish Constabulary, marking a turning point in the Irish War of Independence.
- 1979 – Air New Zealand Flight 901 crashed into Antarctica's Mount Erebus, killing all 257 people on board.
- 2000 – The Cassette Scandal: Ukrainian politician Oleksandr Moroz publicly accused President Leonid Kuchma of being involved in the abduction of journalist Georgiy R. Gongadze and numerous other crimes.
More events: November 27 – November 28 – November 29
November 29: Liberation Day in Albania
- 1854 – The Eureka Flag was flown for the first time during the Eureka Stockade rebellion in Australia.
- 1877 – Thomas Edison demonstrated the phonograph (pictured), his invention for recording and replaying sound, for the first time.
- 1890 – The Diet of Japan, Japan's bicameral legislature modelled after both the German Reichstag and the British Westminster system, first met after the Meiji Constitution went into effect.
- 1929 – American explorer Richard Evelyn Byrd and three others completed the first flight over the South Pole.
- 1947 – The United Nations General Assembly voted to approve the Partition Plan for Palestine, a plan to resolve the Arab-Israeli conflict in the British Mandate of Palestine by separating the territory into Jewish and Arab states.
More events: November 28 – November 29 – November 30
November 30: Independence Day in Barbados (1966); Saint Andrew's Day in Scotland; Bonifacio Day in the Philippines; Cities for Life Day
- 1786 – Peter Leopold Joseph, Grand Duke of Tuscany, promulgated a penal reform that made his country the first sovereign state to abolish the death penalty.
- 1853 – Russian battleships led by Pavel Nakhimov destroyed an Ottoman fleet of frigates at the Battle of Sinop in Sinop, Turkey, precipitating the Crimean War.
- 1936 – The Crystal Palace (pictured), built for the Great Exhibition of 1851 in London, was destroyed by fire.
- 1939 – The Winter War broke out as the Soviet Red Army invaded Finland and quickly advanced to the Mannerheim Line, an action judged as illegal by the League of Nations.
- 2005 – John Sentamu was enthroned as Archbishop of York, becoming the first member of an ethnic minority to serve as an archbishop in the Church of England.
More events: November 29 – November 30 – December 1
Selected anniversaries/On this day archive
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