The History Shack

  OTD November 30th is the three hundredth thirty-second day of the year, and there are 31 days remaining until the end of the year.   Events 978 – Franco-German war of 978–980: Holy Roman Emperor Otto II lifts the siege of Paris and withdraws. 1782 – American Revolutionary War: Treaty of Paris: In Paris, representatives from the United States and Great Britain signed preliminary peace articles (later formalized as the 1783 Treaty of Paris). 1803 – The Balmis Expedition started in Spain to vaccinate millions against smallpox in Spanish America and the Philippines. 1872 – The first-ever international football match occurred between Scotland and England in Hamilton Crescent, Glasgow. 1936 – In London, the Crystal Palace is destroyed by fire. 1954 – In Sylacauga, Alabama, United States, the Hodges meteorite crashes through a roof and hits a woman taking an afternoon nap; this is the only documented case in the Western Hemisphere of a human being hit by a rock fr...

  OTD November 29th is the three hundredth thirty-first day of the year, and there are 33 days remaining until the end of the year.   Events 1612 – The Battle of Swally takes place, which loosens the Portuguese Empire's hold on India. 1777 – San Jose, California, is founded as Pueblo de San José de Guadalupe by José Joaquín Moraga. It is the first civilian settlement, or pueblo, in Alta California. 1783 – A 5.3 magnitude earthquake strikes New Jersey. 1890 – The Meiji Constitution was enacted in Japan, and the first Diet convened. 1899 – Catalan, Spanish, and Englishmen founded FC Barcelona. It later became one of Spanish football's most iconic and potent teams. 1929 – U.S. Admiral Richard E. Byrd led the first expedition to fly over the South Pole. 1952 – U.S. President-elect Dwight D. Eisenhower fulfilled a campaign promise by traveling to Korea to find out what could be done to end the conflict. 1961 – Enos, a chimpanzee, is launched into space. The sp...

  OTD November 28th is the three hundredth thirtieth day of the year, and there are 34 days remaining until the end of the year.   Events 1520 – After 38 days, an expedition under the command of Ferdinand Magellan completed the first passage through the Strait of Magellan and entered the Pacific Ocean. 1582 – In Stratford-upon-Avon, William Shakespeare and Anne Hathaway pay a £40 (equivalent to £12,261 in 2021) bond instead of posting wedding bans, which enables them to marry immediately. 1660 – At Gresham College, twelve men, including Christopher Wren, Robert Boyle, John Wilkins, and Sir Robert Moray, decide to find what is later known as the Royal Society. 1785 – The first Treaty of Hopewell was signed, by which the United States acknowledged Cherokee lands in what is now East Tennessee. 1811 – Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 5 in E-flat major, Op. 73, premieres at the Gewandhaus in Leipzig. 1895 – The first American automobile race occurred over 54 miles f...

  OTD November 27th is the three hundredth twenty-ninth day of the year, and there are 35 days remaining until the end of the year.   Events 1727 – The foundation stone of the Jerusalem Church in Berlin is laid. 1815 – Adoption of the Constitution of the Kingdom of Poland. 1839 – In Boston, Massachusetts, the American Statistical Association was founded. 1895 – At the Swedish–Norwegian Club in Paris, Alfred Nobel signed his last will, setting aside his estate to establish the Nobel Prize after he died. 1901 – The U.S. Army War College is established. 1945 – CARE (then the Cooperative for American Remittances to Europe) was founded to send CARE food relief packages to Europe after World War II. 1968 – Penny Ann Early becomes the first woman to play Major professional basketball for the Kentucky Colonels in an ABA game against the Los Angeles Stars. 2001—The Hubble Space Telescope discovered a hydrogen atmosphere on the extrasolar planet Osiris, the first a...

  OTD November 25th is the three hundredth twenty-eighth day of the year, and there are 36 days remaining until the end of the year.   Events 1161 – Battle of Caishi: A Song dynasty fleet fights a naval engagement with Jin dynasty ships on the Yangtze River during the Jin–Song Wars. 1476 – Vlad the Impaler defeats Basarab Laiota with the help of Stephen the Great and Stephen V Báthory and becomes the ruler of Wallachia for the third time. 1778 – Captain James Cook became the first European to visit Maui in the Hawaiian Islands. 1789 – A national Thanksgiving Day is observed in the United States as proclaimed by President George Washington at the request of Congress. 1917 – The National Hockey League is formed, with the Montreal Canadiens, Montreal Wanderers, Ottawa Senators, Quebec Bulldogs, and Toronto Arenas as its first teams. 1922—Howard Carter and Lord Carnarvon become the first people to enter Pharaoh Tutankhamun's tomb in over 3,000 years. 1922 – The...

OTD November 25th is the 329th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar; 36 days remain until the end of the year. Events 1343 – A tsunami caused by an earthquake in the Tyrrhenian Sea devastates Naples and the Maritime Republic of Amalfi, among other places. 1491 – The siege of Granada, the last Moorish stronghold in Spain, ends with the Treaty of Granada. 1678 – Trunajaya Rebellion: After a long and logistically challenging march, the allied Mataram and Dutch troops successfully assaulted the rebel stronghold of Kediri. 1783 – American Revolutionary War: The last British troops leave New York City three months after the signing of the Treaty of Paris. 1915 – Albert Einstein presented the field equations of general relativity to the Prussian Academy of Sciences. 1936 – In Berlin, Germany and Japan signed the Anti-Comintern Pact, agreeing to consult on measures "to safeguard their common interests" in the case of an unprovoked attack by the Soviet Union against either nation...

  OTD November 24th is the three hundredth twenty-seventh day of the year, and there are 37 days remaining until the end of the year.   Events  1221 – Genghis Khan defeats the renegade Khwarazmian prince Jalal al-Din at the Battle of the Indus, completing the Mongol conquest of Central Asia. 1429 – Hundred Years' War: Joan of Arc unsuccessfully besieges La Charité. 1835 – The Texas Provincial Government authorizes the creation of a horse-mounted police force called the Texas Rangers (now the Texas Ranger Division of the Texas Department of Public Safety). 1877 – Anna Sewell's animal welfare novel Black Beauty is published. 1917 – In Milwaukee, nine members of the Milwaukee Police Department were killed by a bomb, the most deaths in a single event in U.S. police history until the September 11 attacks in 2001. 1932 – In Washington, D.C., the FBI Scientific Crime Detection Laboratory (the FBI Crime Lab) officially opens. 1963 – Lee Harvey Oswald, the assa...

  OTD November 23rd is the three hundredth twenty-seventh day of the year, and there are 38 days remaining until the end of the year.   Events 534 BC – Thespis of Icaria becomes the first recorded actor to portray a character on stage. 1644 – John Milton publishes Areopagitica, a pamphlet decrying censorship. 1876 – Corrupt Tammany Hall leader William Magear Tweed (better known as Boss Tweed) is delivered to authorities in New York City after being captured in Spain. 1910 – Johan Alfred Ander becomes the last person to be executed in Sweden. 1924 – Edwin Hubble's discovery that the Andromeda "nebula" is another island galaxy far outside our Milky Way was first published in The New York Times. 1955 – The Cocos Islands are transferred from the control of the United Kingdom to that of Australia. 1963 – The BBC broadcasts An Unearthly Child (starring William Hartnell), the first episode of the first story from the first series of Doctor Who, which is now t...

  OTD November 22nd is the three hundredth twenty-sixth day of the year, and there are 39 days remaining until the end of the year.   Events 1718 – Royal Navy Lieutenant Robert Maynard attacks and boards the vessels of the British pirate Edward Teach (best known as "Blackbeard") off the coast of North Carolina. The casualties on both sides include Maynard's first officer, Mister Hyde, and Teach himself. 1869 – In Dumbarton, Scotland, the clipper Cutty Sark is launched. 1942 – World War II: Battle of Stalingrad: General Friedrich Paulus sends Adolf Hitler a telegram saying that the German 6th Army is surrounded. 1967 – UN Security Council Resolution 242 is adopted, establishing a set of principles to guide negotiations for an Arab-Israeli peace settlement. 1971 – In Britain's worst mountaineering tragedy, the Cairngorm Plateau Disaster, five children and one of their leaders are found dead from exposure in the Scottish mountains. 1990 – British Prime ...

  OTD November 21st is the three hundredth twenty-fifth day of the year, and there are 40 days remaining until the end of the year.   Events 164 BCE – Judas Maccabeus, son of Mattathias of the Hasmonean family, rededicates the Temple in Jerusalem, an event commemorated each year by the festival of Hanukkah. (25 Kislev 3597 in the Hebrew calendar.) 1620 – Plymouth Colony settlers sign the Mayflower Compact (November 11, O.S.) 1676 – The Danish astronomer Ole Rømer presents the first quantitative measurements of the speed of light. 1783 – In Paris, Jean-François Pilâtre de Rozier and François Laurent d'Arlandes make the first untethered hot air balloon flight. 1877 – Thomas Edison announced the invention of his phonograph, a machine that could record and play sound. 1900 – Claude Monet's paintings are shown at Gallery Durand-Ruel in Paris. 1905—Albert Einstein's paper, which led to the mass-energy equivalence formula E = mc², was published in Annalen der P...

  OTD November 20th is the three hundredth twenty-fourth day of the year, and there are 41 days remaining until the end of the year.   Events  1407 – John the Fearless, Duke of Burgundy, and Louis of Valois, Duke of Orléans, agree to a truce, but Burgundy would kill Orléans three days later. 1441 – The Peace of Cremona ends the war between the Republic of Venice and the Duchy of Milan after the victorious Venetian enterprise of military engineering of the Galeas per montes. 1695 – Zumbi, the last of the leaders of Quilombo dos Palmares in early Brazil, is executed by the forces of Portuguese Bandeirante Domingos Jorge Velho. 1789 – New Jersey becomes the first U.S. state to ratify the Bill of Rights. 1805 – Beethoven's only opera, Fidelio, premieres in Vienna. 1917—World War I: The Battle of Cambrai begins. British forces made early progress in attacking German positions but were later pushed back. 1945 – Nuremberg trials: Trials against 24 Nazi war cr...