November in History

World War I: The first British Royal Navy defeat of the war with Germany, the Battle of Coronel, is fought off of the western coast of Chile, in the Pacific, with the loss of HMS Good Hope and HMS Monmouth.

Expedition 1 arrived at the International Space Station for the first long-duration stay onboard. From this day to present, a continuous human presence in space on the station remains uninterrupted.

Napoleon's armies are defeated at the Battle of Vyazma.

Barack Obama becomes the first person of biracial or African-American descent to be elected as President of the United States.

Seven Years' War: Frederick the Great defeats the allied armies of France and the Holy Roman Empire at the Battle of Rossbach.

The Charter of the Forest is sealed at St Paul's Cathedral, London by King Henry III, acting under the regency of William Marshall, 1st Earl of Pembroke which re-establishes for free men rights of access to the royal forest that had been eroded by William the Conqueror and his heirs.

World War I: The Third Battle of Gaza ends, with British forces capturing Gaza from the Ottoman Empire.

The Louvre Abu Dhabi was inaugurated by the French president Emmanuel Macron and then-crown prince of Abu Dhabi Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan.

Garry Kasparov, 22, of the Soviet Union, becomes the youngest World Chess Champion by beating fellow Soviet Anatoly Karpov.

Heavy fighting in Surabaya between Indonesian nationalists and returning colonialists after World War II, today celebrated as Heroes' Day (Hari Pahlawan).

World War II: In the Battle of Taranto, the Royal Navy launches the first all-aircraft ship-to-ship naval attack in history.

In New York City, American Airlines Flight 587, an Airbus A300 en route to the Dominican Republic, crashes minutes after takeoff from John F. Kennedy International Airport, killing all 260 on board and five on the ground.

First English Civil War: Battle of Turnham Green: The Royalist forces withdraw in the face of the Parliamentarian army and fail to take London.

Moby-Dick, a novel by Herman Melville, is published in the USA.

Xi Jinping becomes General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party and a new seven-member Politburo Standing Committee is inaugurated.

U.S. president Richard Nixon signs the Trans-Alaska Pipeline Authorization Act into law, authorizing the construction of the Alaska Pipeline.

Elizabethan era begins: Queen Mary I of England dies and is succeeded by her half-sister Elizabeth I.

After an 87-day siege, the Croatian city of Vukovar capitulates to the besieging Yugoslav People's Army and allied Serb paramilitary forces.

Cold War: In Geneva, U.S. President Ronald Reagan and Soviet Union General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev meet for the first time.

Grand Mosque seizure: About 200 Sunni Muslims revolt in Saudi Arabia at the site of the Kaaba in Mecca during the pilgrimage and take about 6,000 hostages. The Saudi government receives help from French special forces to put down the uprising.

"La Ronde" opens in Honolulu, the first revolving restaurant in the United States.

U.S. President John F. Kennedy is assassinated and Texas Governor John Connally is seriously wounded by Lee Harvey Oswald, who also kills Dallas Police officer J. D. Tippit after fleeing the scene. Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson is sworn in as the 36th President of the United States afterwards.

Edwin Hubble's discovery, that the Andromeda "nebula" is actually another island galaxy far outside our own Milky Way, is first published in The New York Times.

Lee Harvey Oswald, the assassin of President John F. Kennedy, is killed by Jack Ruby on live television. Robert H. Jackson takes a photograph of the shooting that will win the 1964 Pulitzer Prize in Photography.

World War I: German forces defeat Portuguese army of about 1,200 at Negomano on the border of modern-day Mozambique and Tanzania.

Mumbai attacks, a series of coordinated terrorist attacks took place in Mumbai killing 166 citizens by 10 terrorists of Lashkar-e-Taiba, a Pakistan based extremist Islamist terrorist organisation.

The centre-left Labour Party takes control of the New Zealand government with leader Helen Clark becoming the first elected female prime minister in New Zealand's history.

Albania declares its independence from the Ottoman Empire.

FC Barcelona is founded by Catalan, Spanish and Englishmen. It later develops into one of Spanish and world football's most iconic and strongest teams.

The Balmis Expedition starts in Spain with the aim of vaccinating millions against smallpox in Spanish America and Philippines.