• 1519 - Hernán Cortés enters Tenochtitlán and Aztec ruler Moctezuma welcomes him with great a celebration as would befit a returning god.
• 1520 - Stockholm Bloodbath begins: A successful invasion of Sweden by Danish forces results in the execution of around 100 people.
• 1576 - Eighty Years' War: Pacification of Ghent - The States-General of the Netherlands meet and unite to oppose Spanish occupation.
• 1602 - The Bodleian Library at Oxford University is opened to the public.
• 1620 - The Battle of White Mountain takes place near Prague, ending in a decisive Catholic victory in only two hours.
• 1793 - In Paris, the French Revolutionary government opens the Louvre to the public as a museum.
• 1837 - Mary Lyon founds Mount Holyoke Female Seminary, which later becomes Mount Holyoke College.
• 1861 - American Civil War: The "Trent Affair" – The USS San Jacinto stops the United Kingdom mail ship Trent and arrests two Confederate envoys, sparking a diplomatic crisis between the UK and US.
• 1889 - Montana is admitted as the 41st U.S. state.
• 1892 - The New Orleans general strike begins, uniting black and white American trade unionists in a successful four-day general strike action for the first time.
• 1895 - While experimenting with electricity, Wilhelm Röntgen discovers the X-ray.
• 1901 - Bloody clashes take place in Athens following the translation of the Gospels into demotic Greek.
• 1917 - The People's Commissars give authority to Vladimir Lenin, Leon Trotsky, and Joseph Stalin.
• 1923 - Beer Hall Putsch: In Munich, Adolf Hitler leads the Nazis in an unsuccessful attempt to overthrow the German government.
• 1933 - Great Depression: New Deal - US President Franklin D. Roosevelt unveils the Civil Works Administration, an organization designed to create jobs for more than 4 million of the unemployed.
• 1935 - A dozen labor leaders come together to announce the creation of the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO), an organization charged with advancing industrial unionism.
• 1935 - Fernand Bouisson becomes Prime Minister of France.
• 1937 - The Nazi exhibition Der ewige Jude ("The Eternal Jew") opens in Munich.
• 1937 - The Chinese Youth Journalist Association is created in Shanghai. It is now known as Chinese Journalist Day.
• 1938 - A pogrom against the Jews of Germany and Austria takes place in response to the assassination of a German diplomat in Paris.
• 1939 - Venlo Incident: Two British agents of SIS are captured by the Germans.
• 1939 - In Munich, Adolf Hitler narrowly escapes an assassination attempt while celebrating the 16th anniversary of the Beer Hall Putsch.
• 1941 - The Albanian Communist Party is founded.
• 1942 - Holocaust: In Ternopil, western Ukraine, the German SS deport about 2,400 Jews from Ternopil ghetto to the Belzec death camp, in the so called "Second Aktion". When the Germans captured Ternopil, about 18,000 Jews lived in the city.
• 1942 - World War II: Operation Torch - United States and United Kingdom forces land in French North Africa.
• 1942 - World War II: French resistance coup in Algiers, in which 400 civilian French patriots neutralize Vichyist XIXth Army Corps after 15 hours of fighting, and arrest several Vichyst generals, allowing the immediate success of Operation Torch in Algiers.
• 1950 - Korean War: United States Air Force Lt. Russell J. Brown shoots down two North Korean MiG-15s in the first jet aircraft-to-jet aircraft dogfight in history.
• 1957 - Operation Grapple X, Round C1: Britain conducts its first successful hydrogen bomb test over Kiritimati in the Pacific. Two tests earlier that year were publicly hailed as successful, but in fact largely failed.
• 1965 - The British Indian Ocean Territory is created, consisting of Chagos Archipelago, Aldabra, Farquhar and Des Roches islands.
• 1965 - The Murder (Abolition of the Death Penalty) Act 1965 is given Royal Assent, formally abolishing the death penalty in the United Kingdom.
• 1965 - The 173rd Airborne is ambushed by over 1,200 Viet Cong in Operation Hump during the Vietnam War.
• 1966 - Former Massachusetts Attorney General Edward Brooke becomes the first African American elected to the United States Senate.
• 1966 - U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson signs into law an antitrust exemption allowing the National Football League to merge with the upstart American Football League.
• 1973 - The right ear of John Paul Getty III is delivered to a newspaper together with a ransom note, convincing his father to pay 2.9 million USD.
• 1976 - A series of earthquakes spreads panic in the city of Thessaloniki, which is evacuated.
• 1977 - Manolis Andronikos, a Greek Archaeologist and professor at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, discovers the tomb of Philip II of Macedon at Vergina.
• 1979 - The Chilean Communist Party (Proletarian Action) is formed.
• 1987 - Remembrance Day Bombing: In Enniskillen, Northern Ireland, an Provisional Irish Republican Army bomb explodes, at a ceremony honoring Britain's war dead, killing twelve people.
• 1989 - Hong Kong's MTR Lam Tin Station comes into service.
• 2002 - Iraq disarmament crisis: UN Security Council Resolution 1441 – The United Nations Security Council unanimously approves a resolution on Iraq, forcing Saddam Hussein to disarm or face "serious consequences".
• 2004 - War in Iraq: More than 10,000 U.S. troops and a small number of Iraqi army units participate in a siege on the insurgent stronghold of Fallujah.
• 2006 - Kathiraveli November 2006 massacre
• 2006 - Beit Hanoun November 2006 incident

Births