November 26 in History

The Kingdom of Asturias was a medieval monarchy in the Iberian Peninsula founded by the nobleman Pelagius. It was the first Christian political entity to be established in the Iberian Peninsula after the Umayyad conquest of Visigothic Hispania in 711–720s. In the summer of 722, Pelagius defeated an Umayyad army at the Battle of Covadonga, in what is retroactively regarded as the beginning of the Christian Reconquista.

This is a list of monarchs who ruled over East Francia, and the Kingdom of Germany, from the division of the Frankish Empire in 843 and the collapse of the Holy Roman Empire in 1806 until the collapse of the German Empire in 1918:

The Hawaiian Islands are an archipelago of eight major volcanic islands, several atolls, and numerous smaller islets in the North Pacific Ocean, extending some 1,500 miles from the island of Hawaiʻi in the south to northernmost Kure Atoll. Formerly called the Sandwich Islands, the present name for the archipelago is derived from the name of its largest island, Hawaiʻi.

Thomas Telford was a Scottish civil engineer. After establishing himself as an engineer of road and canal projects in Shropshire, he designed numerous infrastructure projects in his native Scotland, as well as harbours and tunnels. Such was his reputation as a prolific designer of highways and related bridges, he was dubbed the 'Colossus of Roads', and, reflecting his command of all types of civil engineering in the early 19th century, he was elected as the first president of the Institution of Civil Engineers, a post he held for 14 years until his death. The town of Telford in Shropshire was named after him.

The 1852 Banda Sea earthquake struck on 26 November at 07:40 local time, affecting coastal communities on the Banda Islands. It caused violent shaking lasting five minutes, and was assigned XI on the Modified Mercalli intensity scale in the Maluku Islands. A tsunami measuring up to 8 m (26 ft) slammed into the islands of Banda Neira, Saparua, Haruku and Ceram. The tsunami caused major damage, washing away many villages, ships and residents. At least 60 people were killed in the earthquake and tsunami. The earthquake had an estimated moment magnitude of 7.5 or 8.4–8.8, according to various academic studies.

The Naval Battle of Papudo was a naval engagement fought between Spanish and Chilean forces on November 26, 1865, during the Chincha Islands War. It was fought 55 miles north of Valparaíso, Chile, near the coastal town of Papudo.

The Guardian is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in Manchester in 1821 as The Manchester Guardian and changed its name in 1959, followed by a move to London. Along with its sister paper, The Guardian Weekly, The Guardian is part of the Guardian Media Group, owned by the Scott Trust Limited. The trust was created in 1936 to "secure the financial and editorial independence of The Guardian in perpetuity and to safeguard the journalistic freedom and liberal values of The Guardian free from commercial or political interference". The trust was converted into a limited company in 2008, with a constitution written so as to maintain for The Guardian the same protections as were built into the structure of the Scott Trust by its creators. Profits are reinvested in its journalism rather than distributed to owners or shareholders. It is considered a newspaper of record in the UK.

The Great People's Assembly of the Serb People in Montenegro, commonly known as the Podgorica Assembly, was an ad hoc popular assembly convened in November 1918, after the end of World War I in the Kingdom of Montenegro. The committee convened the assembly with the aim of facilitating an unconditional union of Montenegro and Serbia and removing Nikola I of Montenegro from the throne. The assembly was organised by a committee supported by and coordinating with the government of the Kingdom of Serbia. The unification was successful and preceded the establishment of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes as a unified state of South Slavs by mere days. The unification was justified by the need to establish a single Serbian state for all Serbs, including Montenegro whose population as well as Nikola I felt that Montenegro belonged to the Serbian nation and largely supported the unification.

Howard Carter was a British archaeologist and Egyptologist who became known for discovering the intact tomb of the 18th Dynasty Pharaoh Tutankhamun in November 1922, the best-preserved pharaonic tomb ever found in the Valley of the Kings.

The Shelling of Mainila, or the Mainila incident, was a military incident on 26 November 1939 in which the Soviet Union's Red Army shelled the Soviet border village of Mainila near Beloostrov. The Soviet Union declared that the fire originated from Finland across the nearby border and claimed to have had losses in personnel. Through that false flag operation, the Soviet Union gained a great propaganda boost and a casus belli for launching the Winter War four days later. Historians have now concluded that the shelling of Mainila was a fabrication carried out by the Soviet NKVD state security agency.

The Yugoslav Partisans, officially the National Liberation Army and Partisan Detachments of Yugoslavia was the communist-led anti-fascist resistance to the Axis powers in occupied Yugoslavia during World War II. Led by Josip Broz Tito, the Partisans were Europe's most effective anti-Axis resistance movement during World War II.

On November 26, 1942, a riot occurred in Phoenix, Arizona, United States, involving United States Army infantrymen, military police, and members of the Phoenix Police Department. The incident left three people dead and approximately a dozen injured.

The V-2 rocket, with the development name Aggregat-4 (A4), was the world's first practical, modern ballistic missile and suborbital launch vehicle. The missile, powered by a liquid-propellant rocket engine, was developed during the Second World War in Nazi Germany as a "vengeance weapon" and assigned to attack Allied cities as retaliation for the Allied bombings of German cities. After an altitude of 100 km was selected to define the edge of space, the V2 rocket also became retroactively the first artificial object to travel into space with the vertical launch of MW 18014 on 20 June 1944.

The Constituent Assembly of India was the legislature of the Dominion of India from its independence in August 1947 until 1950, when India became a republic. Best known for its creation of the Indian constitution, its members were mostly elected from the provinces of British India—with a third being nominated by princely states.

Astérix or A-1 is the first French satellite. It was launched on 26 November 1965 by a Diamant A rocket from the CIEES launch site at Hammaguir, Algeria. With Astérix, France became the sixth country to have an artificial satellite and the third country to launch a satellite on its own rocket. Its main purpose was to test the Diamant launcher, though it was also designed to study the ionosphere. Astérix continues to orbit Earth as of 2026 and is expected to remain in orbit for centuries.

Basse-Terre is a commune in the French overseas department of Guadeloupe, in the Lesser Antilles. It is also the prefecture of Guadeloupe. The city of Basse-Terre is located on Basse-Terre Island, the western half of Guadeloupe.

Pakistan International Airlines Flight 740 was a Hajj pilgrimage flight from Kano, Nigeria to Karachi, Pakistan with an intermediate stopover in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. Operated by Pakistan International Airlines, on 26 November 1979, the Boeing 707 serving the route crashed shortly after takeoff from Jeddah International Airport. All 156 people on board were killed.

The Iran–Contra affair, also referred to as the Iran–Contra scandal, the Contragate, Iran Initiative, or simply Iran–Contra, was a political scandal in the United States that centered on arms trafficking to Iran between 1981 and 1986, facilitated by senior officials of the Reagan administration. The administration hoped to use the proceeds of the arms sale to fund the Contras, an anti-Sandinista rebel group in Nicaragua. Under the Boland Amendments, a series of laws passed by Congress and signed by Ronald Reagan, further funding of the Contras by legislative appropriations was prohibited by Congress, but the Reagan administration continued funding them secretly using non-appropriated funds.

The National Assembly, also transliterated as Milli Mejlis, is the legislative branch of government in Azerbaijan. The unicameral National Assembly has 125 deputies: previously 100 members were elected for five-year terms in single-seat constituencies and 25 members were elected by proportional representation; as of the latest election, however, all 125 deputies are returned from single-member constituencies.

The Khanna rail disaster occurred on 26 November 1998 near Khanna on the Khanna-Ludhiana section of India's Northern Railway in Punjab, at 03:15 when the Calcutta-bound Jammu Tawi-Sealdah Express collided with six derailed coaches of the Amritsar-bound "Frontier Mail" which were lying in its path. At least 212 people were killed; the trains were estimated to be carrying 2,500 passengers. The initial derailment was caused by a broken rail. The crash is among the deadliest rail accidents in India.

George Walker Bush is an American former politician, businessman, and former United States Air Force officer who was the 43rd president of the United States, serving from 2001 to 2009. A member of the Republican Party, he served as the governor of Texas from 1995 to 2000. He is the eldest son of George H. W. Bush, the 41st president of the United States.

This is a list of mass stabbings that took place before 2010. It includes incidents in which there were at least three casualties.

The 2008 Mumbai attacks, colloquially known as 26/11, were a coordinated series of twelve Islamic terrorist attacks carried out in Mumbai, Maharashtra, India, from 26 to 29 November 2008, by ten members of the Lashkar-e-Taiba. A total of 175 people died, including nine of the attackers, and more than 300 were injured.

The 2011 NATO attack in Pakistan, also known as the Salala incident, was a border skirmish that occurred when United States-led NATO forces engaged Pakistani security forces at two Pakistani military checkpoints along the Afghanistan–Pakistan border on 26 November 2011, with both sides later claiming that the other had fired first.

Uncrewed spacecraft or robotic spacecraft are spacecraft without people on board. Uncrewed spacecraft may have varying levels of autonomy from human input, such as remote control, or remote guidance. They may also be autonomous, in which they have a pre-programmed list of operations that will be executed unless otherwise instructed. A robotic spacecraft for scientific measurements is often called a space probe or space observatory.

The global COVID-19 pandemic, caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), began with an outbreak in Wuhan, China, in December 2019. It spread to other parts of Asia and then worldwide in early 2020. The World Health Organization (WHO) declared the outbreak a public health emergency of international concern (PHEIC) on 30 January 2020 and assessed it as having become a pandemic on 11 March. The WHO declared that the public health emergency caused by COVID-19 had ended in May 2023, while noting that COVID-19 continued to be a global health threat.