November 4 in History

The Siege of Corfu was a military operation by a joint Russian and Turkish fleet against French troops occupying the fortified island of Corfu; ended in Coalition victory. Corfu fortifications had a strong reputation, but by the siege time they were in a parlous state.

Sir James Young Simpson, 1st Baronet was a Scottish obstetrician and a significant figure in the history of medicine. He was the first physician to demonstrate the anaesthetic properties of chloroform in humans and helped to popularize its use in medicine.

The American Civil War was a civil war in the United States between the Union and the Confederacy, which was formed in 1861 by states that had seceded from the Union to preserve slavery in the United States, which they saw as threatened because of the election of Abraham Lincoln and the growing abolitionist movement in the North. The war ended with Union victory, the dissolution of the Confederacy and the abolition of slavery, freeing four million African Americans.

The City and South London Railway (C&SLR) was the first successful deep-level underground "tube" railway in the world, and the first major railway to use electric traction. The railway was originally intended for cable-hauled trains, but owing to the bankruptcy of the cable contractor during construction, a system of electric traction using electric locomotives – an experimental technology at the time – was chosen instead.

The Nazi Party, officially the National Socialist German Workers' Party, was a far-right political party in Germany active between 1920 and 1945 that created and supported the ideology of Nazism. Its precursor, the German Workers' Party, existed from 1919 to 1920. The Nazi Party emerged from the extremist German nationalist, racist, and populist Freikorps paramilitary culture, which fought against communist uprisings in post–World War I Germany. The party was created to draw workers away from communism and into völkisch nationalism. Hitler stated while on trial for his role in the Beer Hall Putsch in February 1924 that “I have resolved to be the destroyer of Marxism”, a statement which he later applied to those opposed to the Nazi Party in 1926, claiming “They tried to paralyze the one party that would have been able to give opposition to this Red pest.” Initially, Nazi political strategy used socialist rhetoric to gain the support of the lower middle class; that was later downplayed to gain the support of business leaders. By the 1930s, the party's main focus shifted to antisemitic and anti-Marxist themes. The party had little popular support until the Great Depression, when worsening living standards and widespread unemployment drove Germans into political extremism.

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 Spanish Civil War was fought from 1936 to 1939 between the Republicans and the Nationalist rebels. Republicans loyal to the left-leaning Popular Front government of the Second Spanish Republic included socialists, anarchists, communists, and separatists, supported by the Soviet Union. The opposing Nationalists were an alliance of fascist Falangists, monarchists, conservatives, and traditionalists, supported by Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy. Initially led by a military junta, until General Francisco Franco was appointed supreme leader on 1 October 1936 of what he called the Spanish State. Due to the international political climate at the time, the war was variously viewed as class struggle, religious struggle, or struggle between republican democracy and dictatorship, revolution and counterrevolution, or between fascism and communism. The Nationalists won the war in early 1939, and ruled Spain until Franco's death in November 1975.

Adolf Hitler was an Austrian-born German politician who was the dictator of Germany during the Nazi era from 1933 until his suicide in 1945. He rose to power as the leader of the Nazi Party, becoming the chancellor of Germany in 1933 and then taking the title of Führer und Reichskanzler in 1934. Germany's invasion of Poland on 1 September 1939 under his leadership marked the outbreak of the Second World War. Throughout the ensuing conflict, Hitler was closely involved in the direction of German military operations and was central to the perpetration of the genocide of about six million Jews in the Holocaust as well as the murders of millions of other victims.

Operation Pheasant, also known as the Liberation of North Brabant, was a major operation to clear German troops from the province of North Brabant in the Netherlands during the fighting on the Western Front in the Second World War. This offensive was conceived as a result of the failure of Operation Market Garden and the allied effort to capture the important port of Antwerp. It was conducted by the allied 21st Army Group between 20 October to 4 November 1944.

The Soviet Union, officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until its dissolution in 1991. It was the world's third-most populous country, the largest by area, and bordered twelve countries. A diverse multinational state, it was organized as a federal union of national republics, with the largest and most populous being the Russian SFSR. In practice, its government and economy were highly centralized. As a one-party state governed by the Communist Party, it was the flagship communist state. Its capital and largest city was Moscow.

Operation Fishbowl was a series of high-altitude nuclear tests in 1962 that were carried out by the United States as a part of the larger Operation Dominic nuclear test program.

Iberia Flight 062 was a twin-engined Sud Aviation Caravelle registered EC-BDD operating a scheduled flight from Málaga Airport, Spain, to London Heathrow Airport. While on approach to Heathrow on 4 November 1967, the Caravelle descended far below the flight level assigned to it and flew into the southern slope of Blackdown Hill in West Sussex, killing all 37 on board.

Salvador Guillermo Allende Gossens was a Chilean socialist politician who served as the 29th president of Chile from 1970 until his suicide in 1973. As a socialist committed to democracy, he has been described as the first Marxist to be elected president in a liberal democracy in Latin America.

The Iran hostage crisis began on November 4, 1979, when 66 Americans, including diplomats and other civilian personnel, were taken hostage at the Embassy of the United States in Tehran, with 52 of them being held until January 20, 1981. The incident occurred after the Muslim Student Followers of the Imam's Line stormed and occupied the building in the months following the Iranian Revolution. With support from Ruhollah Khomeini, who had led the Iranian Revolution and would eventually establish the present-day Islamic Republic of Iran, the hostage-takers demanded that the United States extradite Iranian king Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, who had been granted asylum by the Carter administration for cancer treatment. Notable among the assailants were Hossein Dehghan, Mohammad Ali Jafari, and Mohammad Bagheri. The hostage crisis contributed to a dramatic decline in Iran–United States relations. After 444 days, it came to an end with the signing of the Algiers Accords between the Iranian and American governments; Pahlavi had died in Cairo, Egypt, on July 27, 1980.

China Airlines Flight 605 was a daily non-stop flight departing from Taipei, Taiwan to Hong Kong, then a British colony. On 4 November 1993, the Boeing 747-400 operating the flight went off the runway when attempting to land during a storm. It was the first hull loss of a 747-400.

He Depu is a dissident in the People's Republic of China.

Aero Caribbean Flight 883 was an international scheduled passenger service from Port-au-Prince, Haiti to Havana, Cuba with a stopover in Santiago de Cuba. On 4 November 2010, the ATR 72 operating the route crashed in the central Cuban province of Sancti Spíritus, killing all 61 passengers and 7 crew members aboard. Along with American Eagle Flight 4184 it was the worst crash in ATR 72 history until Yeti Airlines Flight 691 crashed 12 years later killing 72 passengers and crew.

On 4 November 2015, an Antonov An-12 cargo aircraft crashed near the White Nile shortly after takeoff from Juba International Airport serving Juba, the capital city of South Sudan. At least 37 people were killed, including the crew of six. The crash is the deadliest aviation accident to have occurred in South Sudan since independence in 2011.

The Tigray war, also referred to in some academic and policy sources as the northern Ethiopia conflict, was an armed conflict that lasted from 3 November 2020 to 3 November 2022. It was a civil war primarily fought in the Tigray Region of Ethiopia between forces allied with the Ethiopian federal government and Eritrea on one side, and the Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF) on the other.