On this day

331 BC – Alexander the Great defeats Darius III of Persia in the Battle of Gaugamela.

1843 - The News of the World, Britain's most popular Sunday newspaper, was first published.

1847 – German inventor and industrialist Werner von Siemens founds Siemens AG & Halske.

1906 - The first hot-air balloon race was staged at Whitley, Yorkshire and was won by US Army Lieutenant Frank Lahm.

1908 - Henry Ford introduced the Model T automobile. It cost $825.

1918 - Lawrence of Arabia captured Damascus from the Turks with combined Arab and British forces.

1939 - Winston Churchill described the Soviet Union as "a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma" during a radio broadcast.

1946 – Mensa International is founded in the United Kingdom.

1954 - The UK Top 12 Pop Chart became a Top 20.

1971 - Walt Disney World, the world's largest amusement resort, opened in Florida.

1187 - Saladin, the Muslim sultan, captured Jerusalem after its 88-year occupation by the Franks.

1608 - First telescope was demonstrated by the Dutch lens maker, Hans Lipperschey.

1870 - Rome became the capital of the newly unified Italy. The previous capital was Florence.

1901 - The Royal Navy's first submarine, built by Vickers, was launched at Barrow. The company's shipbuilding division is now BAE Systems Submarine Solutions.

1925 - London's first red buses with roofed-in upper decks went into service, but they had been in use in Widnes, Cheshire, since 1909.

1942 - The British cruiser Curacao sank with the loss of 338 lives, after colliding with the liner Queen Mary off the coast of Donegal.

1950 - Legal Aid was introduced in Britain.

1964 - Scientists announced findings that smoking can cause cancer.

2008 - Searchers found the wreckage of millionaire adventurer Steve Fossett's plane more than a year after he disappeared on a solo flight over California's Sierra Nevada mountains.

1990 - i was born

1678 - The Taj Mahal, an architectural masterpiece, was completed after 22 years' work.

1691 - The Treaty of Limerick was signed, ending the Irish Rebellion against English rule.

1863 - President Abraham Lincoln declared the last Thursday in November to be Thanksgiving.

1906 - SOS became the international distress signal, replacing the call sign CDQ, sometimes explained as 'Come Damn Quick!'

1952 - Britain successfully tested its first atomic bomb off the northwest coast of Australia.

1959 - Postcodes were introduced in Britain.

1995 - A jury found ex-football player O.J. Simpson innocent of murder in the 1994 slayings of his former wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and Ronald Goldman.

2003 - Roy Horn, of the famed illusionist duo Siegfried and Roy, was mauled by a tiger during a performance in Las Vegas.

1829 - John Thompson of London, designed the first greeting card.

1911 - Britain's first escalators were introduced. They connected the District Line and Piccadilly Line platforms at Earl's Court underground station in London.

1957 - The Soviet Union launched Sputnik 1, the first manmade satellite, officially beginning the Space Age.

1958 - Aviation history was made when 2 British designed and built De Havilland Comet 4 airliners operated by BOAC (now British Airways) made the first scheduled jet passenger service flights across the North Atlantic.

1959 - Luna 3 was launched by the USSR and became the first satellite to photograph the Moon's distant side.

1976 - British Rail began its new 125mph Intercity 'High Speed Train' service.

1796 - Spain declared war on Britain in the Napoleonic Wars.

1880 - The first ballpoint pen with its own ink supply and retractable tip was patented by Alonzo T. Cross.

1962 – Dr. No, the first in the James Bond film series, was released.

1974 - American David Kunst completed the first round the world journey on foot, taking four years and 21 pairs of shoes to accomplish the 14,450 mile journey across four continents.

1984 - Police and Customs in Essex seized Britain's biggest ever haul of cannabis made in a single raid, (4.3 tons), with an estimated street value of almost £11 million.

1999 – The Ladbroke Grove rail crash in west London kills 31 people.

2000 – Mass demonstrations in Belgrade lead to resignation of Slobodan Milošević. These demonstrations are often called the Bulldozer Revolution.

2001 – Robert Stevens becomes the first victim in the 2001 anthrax attacks.

1536 - William Tyndale, English religious reformer and translator of the Bible's New Testament, was strangled and burned at the stake, for heresy.

1769 - English explorer Captain James Cook, aboard the Endeavour, discovered New Zealand.

1847 - Charlotte Bronte's novel "Jane Eyre" was published in London.

1883 - The Orient Express completed its first run from Paris to Constantinople (now Istanbul), it took nearly 78 hours.

1889 - Thomas Edison showed his first motion pictures.

1927 – The opening of The Jazz Singer, the first prominent talking movie.

1995 – 51 Pegasi is discovered to be the first major star apart from the Sun to have a planet (and extrasolar planet) orbiting around it.

1997 - Britain's first astronaut, Michael Foale, returned safely to earth aboard the space shuttle Atlantis after four and a half months on MIR, the Russian space station.

1806 - The first carbon paper was patented by its English inventor, Ralph Wedgwood.

1913 - The Ford Motor Company started operation of the first assembly line. It could turn out a car in three hours.

1920 - The first women were admitted to study for full degrees at Oxford University.

1982 - Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice's musical Cats, opened on Broadway. It closed after a record 7,485 performances over 18 years.

2003 - Arnold (I'll be back) Schwarzenegger, was elected governor of California.

1871 - The Great Chicago Fire started after a cow reportedly kicked over a lantern in the barn of Mrs. O'Leary. Damage was estimated at $200 million, 90,000 Chicagoans were made homeless, and at least 300 people died.

1908 - The Wind In The Willows, Kenneth Grahame's classic children's book, was published. It has never been out of print in its entire history.

1915 - The Battle of Loos, one of the fiercest of World War I, ended with virtually no gains for either side. Almost 430,000 French, British and Germans were killed. The British used poison gas for the first time in the battle.

1967 - A motorist in Somerset becomes the first person to be breathalysed in Britain.

1470 - Henry VI of England was restored to the throne after being deposed in 1461. Six months later he was deposed again and then murdered in the Tower of London.

1914 - During World War I, German forces captured Antwerp, Belgium after a 12-day siege, violating Belgian neutrality.

1940 - A German blitz destroyed the altar of St. Paul's Cathedral in London and left much of the city in flames.

1955 - Three armed men raided a Turkish bath in London, but the well heeled customers were wearing very little and the robbers' total haul was only £7.

1991 - The first Sumo wrestling tournament ever held off Japanese soil in the sport's 1500 year history began, at the Royal Albert Hall.

1997 - The campaign to ban landmines, a cause made popular by Diana, Princess of Wales, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

2006 - Google Inc. announced it was snapping up YouTube Inc. for $1.65 billion in a stock deal.