On this day

1620 – Pilgrims aboard the Mayflower sight land at Cape Cod, Massachusetts.

1799 – Napoleon Bonaparte leads the Coup d'état of 18 Brumaire ending the Directory government, and becoming one of its three Consuls (Consulate Government).

1847 - In Edinburgh, Dr James Young Simpson delivered Wilhelmina Carstairs while chloroform was administered to her mother, the first child to be born with the aid of anaesthetics.

1859 - Flogging in the British army was abolished.

1888 – Jack the Ripper kills Mary Jane Kelly, his last known victim.

1907 - The Cullinan Diamond, the largest diamond yet found, was presented by the Transvaal to King Edward VII.

1921 – Albert Einstein is awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for his work with the photoelectric effect.

1967 – Apollo program: NASA launches the unmanned Apollo 4 test spacecraft atop the first Saturn V rocket from Cape Kennedy, Florida.

1972 - Bones discovered by the Leakey family of anthropologists set human origins 1 million years earlier than previously determined.

1989 - East Germany opened it borders to West Germany and allowed thousands of its citizens to pass freely through the Berlin Wall. The next day, East German troops began dismantling the wall, and less than a year later, East Germany and West Germany were formally reunited.

1992 - Sir Ranulph Fiennes and Dr Michael Stroud set out on their unassisted crossing of the Antarctic. For 97 days they fought pain, starvation and snow blindness until they were eventually airlifted out after completing the first and the longest, unsupported journey in Polar history. They walked more than 1,350 miles across some of the most hostile terrain in the world, averaging more than 14 miles a day at temperatures as low as -45°C.

1493 - Christopher Columbus discovered Antigua during his second expedition.

1871 – Henry Morton Stanley locates missing explorer and missionary, Dr. David Livingstone in Ujiji, near Lake Tanganyika, allegedly greeting him with the words, "Dr. Livingstone, I presume?".

1885 - Paul Daimler, son of German engineer Gottlieb Daimler, became the first motorcyclist when he rode his father's new invention for six miles.

1954 - The Iwo Jima Memorial was dedicated in Arlington, Virginia.

1958 – The Hope Diamond is donated to the Smithsonian Institution by New York diamond merchant Harry Winston.

1960 - Bookshops all over England sold out of Penguin's first run of the controversial novel Lady Chatterley's Lover. All 200,000 copies were sold on the first day of publication.

1969 - "Sesame Street" debuted on PBS television.

1970 - The Great Wall of China, created in the third century BC, was opened to visitors.

1983 - Microsoft released Windows, an extension of MS-DOS with a graphical user interface.

1989 - Bulldozers began demolishing the 28-year-old Berlin Wall.

1918 - World War I (then called the Great War) came to an end with the signing of an Armistice between the Allies and Germany. In all, there were nine million soldiers dead, 21 million wounded, and seven million taken prisoner or missing in action. In addition, some six million civilians died from disease, starvation, or exposure.

1919 - Britain introduced a two minute silence at 11:00 a.m. to remember those who died in World War I.

1921 - The British Legion held its first Poppy Day for wounded World War I veterans.

1926 – U.S. Route 66 is established.

1940 - The Willys-Overland Company came out with a four-wheel drive vehicle for the U.S. Army, named "jeep" after GP, or "general purpose."

1952 - The first video recorder was demonstrated in California, by its inventors John Mullin and Wayne Johnson.

1987 - An unidentified person bought Vincent Van Gogh's painting "Irises" from the estate of Joan Whitney Payson for $53.9 million at Sotheby's in New York.

1992 - The Church of England voted to ordain women as priests.

1439 – Plymouth, England, becomes the first town incorporated by the English Parliament.

1799 - Andrew Ellicott Douglass, an early American astronomer, reported witnessing the Leonids meteor shower from a ship off the Florida Keys - the first meteor shower on record.

1912 – The frozen bodies of Robert Scott and his men are found on the Ross Ice Shelf in Antarctica.

1918 - A day after World War I ends, Austria and Hungary were declared independent republics, and Emperor Charles I, ruler of Austria-Hungary since 1916, was forced to abdicate.

1927 - Josef Stalin took over the Soviet Union as Leon Trotsky was expelled from the Communist Party.

1933 - The first photograph of the 'Loch Ness monster' was taken by Mr Hugh Gray. He managed to take five pictures altogether but after processing, four of them were blank and the fifth was not confirmed as being Nessie.

1942 – World War II: The Naval Battle of Guadalcanal between Japanese and American forces begins near Guadalcanal. The battle lasts for three days.

1980 – The NASA space probe Voyager I makes its closest approach to Saturn and takes the first images of its rings.

1981 – Space Shuttle program: mission STS-2, utilizing the Space Shuttle Columbia, marks the first time a manned spacecraft is launched into space twice.

2003 – Shanghai Transrapid sets up a new world speed record (501 kilometres per hour or 311 mph) for commercial railway systems.

(12-11-2010 12:41 )skully Wrote:  1927 - Josef Stalin took over the Soviet Union as Leon Trotsky was expelled from the Communist Party.

Leon Trotsky, is this a real name or an Only Fools and Horses character

(12-11-2010 22:13 )mitchell Wrote:  

(12-11-2010 12:41 )skully Wrote:  1927 - Josef Stalin took over the Soviet Union as Leon Trotsky was expelled from the Communist Party.

Leon Trotsky, is this a real name or an Only Fools and Horses character

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leon_Trotsky

1835 - Texans officially proclaimed independence from Mexico and called it the Lone Star Republic.

1916 - The Battle of the Somme (World War 1) ended. By the end of the battle, the British Army had suffered 420,000 casualties including nearly 60,000 on the first day alone. The French lost 200,000 men and the Germans nearly 500,000. The battle epitomised the futility of trench warfare and the indiscriminate slaughter of so many men.

1947 – Russia completes development of the AK-47, one of the first proper assault rifles

1970 - A 20-foot tidal wave and a cyclone struck East Pakistan (Bangladesh) and washed over 100 islands near the coast.

1971 – The American space probe, Mariner 9, becomes the first spacecraft to orbit another planet successfully, swinging into its planned trajectory around Mars.

1985 - Colombia's volcano Nevado del Ruiz, dormant since 1845, erupted and killed more than 22,000 people.

1998 - President Bill Clinton agreed to pay Paula Jones $850,000 with no apology or admission of guilt, it was to settle a sexual harassment suit.

2005 – Andrew Stimpson, a 25-year old British man, is reported as the first person proven to have been "cured" of HIV.

1533 – Conquistadors from Spain under the leadership of Francisco Pizarro arrive in Cajamarca, Inca empire.

1666 - First blood transfusion took place, it was performed by Dr. Croone in England.

1770 - Scottish explorer James Bruce discovered the source of the Blue Nile in Ethiopia.

1851 - Herman elton's novel "Moby Dick" was published.

1889 - Newspaper reporter Nellie Bly set off to attempt to break Jules Verne's imaginary hero Phileas Fogg's record of voyaging around the world in 80 days. She beat the record, needing just over 72 days for the trip.

1922 - BBC radio was first broadcast from Alexandra Palace. The first programme was broadcast at 6 pm from 2LO London (later the BBC). A news bulletin, repeated again at 9 pm, and a weather report were the entire programme.

1940 - In one raid, 449 German Luftwaffe bombers dropped 503 tons of bombs and 881 incendiaries onto the City of Coventry, killing over 500 civilians and destroying the medieval cathedral. A new cathedral was built, adjacent to the old, and the bombed cathedral was left as a memorial.

1969 - The BBC began colour television programmes.

2003 – Astronomers Michael E. Brown, Chad Trujillo, and David L. Rabinowitz discover 90377 Sedna, a Trans-Neptunian object.

1533 – Francisco Pizarro arrives in Cuzco, the capital of the Inca Empire.

1577 - English explorer and navigator Sir Francis Drake began his voyage to sail around the world.

1859 – The first modern revival of the Olympic Games takes place in Athens, Greece.

1899 - Winston Churchill was captured by the Boers while covering the war as a reporter for the Morning Post. He escaped a few weeks later.

1960 - The first submarine with nuclear missiles, USS George Washington, went to sea.

1968 - RMS Queen Elizabeth, in its day the largest ocean liner ever built, retired from service.

1971 – Intel releases world's first commercial single-chip microprocessor, the 4004.

1988 – The first Fairtrade label, Max Havelaar, is launched in the Netherlands.

2007 – Cyclone Sidr hit Bangladesh, killing an estimated 5000 people and destroyed the world's largest mangrove forest, Sundarbans.

Love this thread.So interesting!