Arts Culture
Week In History: November 8-14
Sunday, November 8
1519 - Spanish conqueror Hernan Cortez reaches Mexico City with his small Spanish force and 1,000 Tlaxcaltec allies. The Aztecs, believing he is an incarnation of the Aztec god Quetzalcoatl, receive him with great honor.
1520 - Swedes loyal to Denmark's King Christian II execute over 80 political opponents in the central square in "the blood bath of Stockholm."
1793 - The Louvre Museum in Paris opens to the public.
1892 - Former U.S. President Grover Cleveland beats incumbent Benjamin Harrison and becomes the first U.S. president to win nonconsecutive terms in the White House.
1895 - Wilhelm Conrad Roentgen, German physicist, discovers X-rays.
1917 - Vladimir I. Lenin becomes chief commissar in Russia and Leon Trotsky is named premier.
1923 - Adolf Hitler stages unsuccessful coup in Munich, Germany, that comes to be known as the "Beer-Hall Putsch."
1932 - New York Gov. Franklin Delano Roosevelt is elected U.S. president.
1942 - U.S. and British troops land in French North Africa during World War II.
1950 - First battle between jet planes breaks out as U.S. fighters are attacked by North Korean MiGs near Yalu River in Korean conflict.
1956 - U.N. General Assembly demands that Soviet troops withdraw from Hungary.
1977 - Israel shells Palestinian guerrilla concentrations in southern Lebanon.
1987 - A bomb planted by the Irish Republican Army kills 11 people and injures 55 at a memorial service for Britain's war dead in Enniskillen, Northern Ireland.
1988 - Nearly 9,000 foreign tourists are evacuated from Sri Lanka beach resorts after Sinhalese extremists threaten to attack south coast hotels.
1989 - Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega offers to end arms imports to his country in exchange for demobilization of Contra rebels.
1990 - U.S. President George Bush orders 200,000 more U.S. troops to the Gulf; United States readies U.N. resolution that would authorize an attack on Iraq.
1991 - The European Community and Canada impose economic sanctions on Yugoslavia in an attempt to stop the Balkan civil war.
1992 - U.S. Senator Bob Dole calls for an investigation into the action of the Iran-contra special prosecutor's office in connection with the indictment of former Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger, who was charged with making false statements to Congress.
1997 - Chinese engineers divert the Yangtze River from its natural course, clearing way for the construction of the enormous Three Gorges dam.
1998 - In Bangladesh, 15 former military commanders are sentenced to death for the 1975 assassination of the country's first prime minister.
1999 - Israel's national airline graduates its first Arab flight attendant in nearly a decade, several months after it came under attack for discriminating against Arabs.
2000 - Fusako Shigenobu, a Japanese revolutionary responsible for terrorist massacres in Israel and Italy, is arrested in Japan after decades on the run.
2001 - The discovery of eight remains — five skeletons and the partially clad bodies of three young women — in Cuidad Juarez, Mexico, ignites fear that a series of 57 rape-murders did not end in the 1990s.
2002 - A Yemeni-American, Ahmed Hijazihas, is killed by a CIA airstrike in Yemen. He is believed to have links to alleged members of the al-Qaida cell in suburban Buffalo, New York, that was raided by U.S. authorities in September.
2003 - A car bomb detonates in a residential compound in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, killing at least 17 people and wounding more than 120 others. Most of the victims are believed to be Arab Muslims.
2004 - Muslim groups ask the Dutch government to protect Islamic sites after an elementary school is bombed — the latest in escalating tensions following the killing of a filmmaker, allegedly by an Islamic radical.
2005 - France declares a state of emergency after nearly two weeks of rioting, clearing the way for curfews in hopes of ending the country's worst civil unrest in more than 50 years. Its prime minister acknowledges that racial discrimination has inflamed tempers in the heavily immigrant suburbs.
Monday, November 9
1799 - Napoleon Bonaparte, newly returned from his disastrous expedition to Egypt, seizes power in France, making himself one of three consuls.
1803 - A French expedition sent to put down rebellious Haiti surrenders, and the island declares independence soon after.
1882 - Franco-British dual control of Egypt is established.
1918 - German Emperor William II abdicates and Germany is declared a republic. Two days later, Germany signs an armistice ending World War I.
1923 - Fourteen Nazis are killed as federal troops break up march of Adolf Hitler's storm troopers in Munich, Germany.
1937 - Japanese troops take Shanghai, China.
1938 - Bands of Nazis roam streets of Germany, burning and destroying Jewish synagogues, homes and stores in what becomes known as Kristallnacht or 'Night of Broken Glass.'
1946 - Nineteen people, including 11 British soldiers and eight Arab constables are slain in Palestine as Jewish terrorists, using land mines and suitcase bombs, increase their attacks on railroad stations, trains and streetcars.
1952 - Police and British troops arrest more than 400 Kikuyu tribesmen and women in an effort to apprehend Mau Mau cult members in Kenya. The Mau Maus reportedly murdered 37 persons in the last 5 months.
1962 - United States completes emergency airlift of arms and ammunition to India in that nation's border war with China.
1963 - Twin disasters strikes Japan as 450 miners are killed in a coal-dust explosion and 160 people die in a train crash.
1965 - The great Northeast blackout occurs as several U.S. states and parts of Canada are hit by a series of power failures lasting up to 13 1/2 hours.
1971 - Chinese Communists make their first appearance in United Nations for conference on problems facing main delegation on its way from Beijing.
1987 - Bomb explodes during rush hour in crowded neighborhood of Colombo, Sri Lanka, with at least 32 people killed and 105 wounded.
1989 - Stunned East German border guards watch helplessly as jubilant Germans dance on the Berlin Wall. Thousands cross the border to experience long-forbidden freedoms and riches on one memorable night.
1990 - Nepal adopts a new constitution, creating a democratic government; Bundesrat, the upper house of the German parliament, meets in Berlin for the first time in 31 years; Fifteen blacks are stabbed to death and four wounded in factional fight in South African eastern province of Natal.
1991 - Shifting positions, Serbia urges United Nations to send peacekeeping troops to Croatia.
1992 - Some 100,000 people demonstrate in cities throughout Germany on the 54th anniversary of the Nazis' "'Night of Broken Glass" attacks against Jews.
1993 - After a parliamentary election victory by his supporters, King Hussein says that Jordan will forge ahead in negotiating peace with Israel; Mostar's Old Bridge in Bosnia, completed in 1566 by engineers of Ottoman emperor Suleyman the Magnificent, is destroyed by Croatian forces.
1994 - Iranian jet fighters bomb an Iranian Kurdish base in northern Iraq, the second attack in a week on dissidents operating from Iraq.
1995 - In his first visit to Israel since the peace process began, Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat calls on the widow of Yitzhak Rabin to offer his condolences.
1996 - Stung by allegations that it uses money and sex to win diplomatic backing, Taiwan says it will no longer use its wealth to fight China's diplomatic blockade.
2000 - An Israeli combat helicopter drops rockets on a car carrying Palestinian militia commanders, killing one and wounding another critically. Six other people, including passers-by are injured.
2001 - Afghanistan's ruling Taliban send a thousand more fighters to the front lines, reinforcing its troops north of Kabul as American jets range throughout the country in support of the opposition alliance.
2002 - Faced with criticism, Nigeria's foreign minister promises that the government would block Islamic courts from carrying out stonings of women sentenced to death for sex outside marriage.
2003 - Nigerian officials warn the United States not to try to capture ousted Liberian leader Charles Taylor, thought to be the target of $2 million bounty posted by the United States.
2004 - Thousands face off against French tanks outside Ivory Coast President Laurent Gbagbo's home, defying warning shots in answer to appeals for a "human shield" around the hard-line leader to prevent an overthrow.
Tuesday, November 10
1444 - Turks annihilate a Hungarian force at the Battle of Varna — now in Bulgaria — ending the European powers' efforts to save Constantinople from Turkish conquest.
1729 - Portugal loses Mombassa to the Muscat Arabs.
1871 - American journalist Henry Stanley finds African explorer Dr. David Livingstone in Ujiji, central Africa, on Lake Tanganyika; delivers his famous greeting "Dr. Livingstone I presume?"
1885 - The son of German engineer Otto Daimler becomes the first motorcyclist, riding his father's invention 10 kilometers (6 miles).
1928 - Hirohito is enthroned as Emperor of Japan.
1937 - President Getulio Vargas of Brazil cancels elections and decrees the Estado Novo dictatorship.
1938 - Anti-Semitic legislation is adopted in Italy.
1945 - Western powers recognize Communist-dominated Albanian government.
1954 - The Iwo Jima Memorial is dedicated in Arlington, Virginia. The battle for Iwo Jima in Japan during World War II resulted in the deaths of 21,000 Japanese and 6,800 American soldiers.
1963 - A cholera epidemic in India and Pakistan kills more than 1,500 people in a few weeks.
1969 - The children's educational program "Sesame Street" makes its debut on PBS television in the United States.
1970 - The Soviet Union launches Luna 17, which lands a roving vehicle on the Moon's surface.
1975 - Angola becomes independent of Portugal in the midst of a civil war; the U.N. General Assembly approves a resolution equating Zionism with racism. The resolution is repealed in 1991.
1976 - Syrian troops and tanks enter Beirut, Lebanon, without resistance under agreement for multinational Arab peacekeeping force.
1980 - East German President Erich Honecker makes his first state visit to a western country — Austria.
1982 - The newly finished Vietnam Veterans Memorial opens in Washington, D.C.
1987 - Niger's President Seyni Kountche dies in Paris, and is replaced as head of state by army chief Ali Seibou.
1988 - Soldiers open fire and kill at least 15 people in Sri Lanka when anti-government demonstrators defy a curfew.
1989 - Todor Zhivkov resigns after 35 years as Communist Party leader of Bulgaria.
1990 - Chandra Shekhar is sworn in as prime minister of India; Shiite Muslim militias begin 10-day pullout from Beirut.
1991 - Street fighting rages between Serbs and Croats struggling for control of Danube River town of Vukovar.
1992 - U.N. weapons inspectors in Baghdad remove 200 drums containing uranium from an Iraqi atomic facility.
1994 - Chandrika Kumaratunga, daughter of two prime ministers, wins presidential election in Sri Lanka; Iraq formally recognizes Kuwait as sovereign state.
1995 - Joseph Rotblat and the Pugwash Conference on Science and World Affairs are awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
1998 - A jury in New York City convicts Corey Arthur, 20, of second-degree murder in the 1997 torture and murder of Jonathan Levin, his former high-school English teacher. Levin was the son of Gerald Levin, the chairman of Time Warner Inc.
2000 - Philippine President Joseph Estrada denies new corruption allegations that he received a $20 million kickback from the sale of the country's largest telephone company and pocketed more than $16 million from a controversial stock sale.
2004 - Chile makes a step toward confronting its grim legacy of human rights abuses under the 1973-90 dictatorship of Gen. Augusto Pinochet by completing a lengthy report on torture and political imprisonment with testimonies from at least 35,000 victims.
2005 - Thousands of Jordanians rally in their capital and other cities, denouncing the Jordanian-born leader of al-Qaida in Iraq, a day after three deadly hotel bombings kill at least 57 people. Al-Qaida's Iraq branch claims responsibility for the attacks.
2006 - Zimbabwe's government launches a program to issue 99-year leases to black farmers allocated land seized mostly from white farmers.
2007 - Six U.S. troops are killed when insurgents ambush their foot patrol in the high mountains of eastern Afghanistan — the most lethal attack against American forces of the year, making 2007 the deadliest year for U.S. troops in Afghanistan since the 2001 invasion.
2008 - Railway and mass transit workers in Italy stage a strike, creating chaos for commuters, while a wildcat protest by some of Alitalia's staff forces the national airline to scrap dozens of flights.
Wednesday, November 11, the 315th day of 2009. There are 50 days left in the year.
Highlights in history on this date:
1500 - France's King Louis XII and Ferdinand of Aragon secretly sign the Treaty of Granada for conquest and partition of Naples.
1528 - Margaret Hunt tells the Bishop of London the secrets of her "sorcery" — how she combines natural herbs and prayer to heal the sick. She is not prosecuted.
1606 - Peace treaty is signed at Zeitva-Torok between Turks and Austrians.
1620 - Forty-one Pilgrims aboard the Mayflower, anchor in Massachusetts and sign a compact calling for a "body politick."
1673 - Poland's King John Sobieski defeats Turks at Korzim, Poland.
1778 - British forces take St. Lucia, West Indies, from French.
1831 - Former slave Nat Turner, who led a violent insurrection, is executed in Jerusalem, Virginia.
1836 - Chile declares war on Peru-Bolivia Federation.
1895 - British Bechuanaland is annexed to Cape Colony.
1918 - World War I ends with Germany and the Allies signing an armistice in a railroad car at Compiegne, France.
1921 - U.S. President Warren Harding dedicates the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Arlington National Cemetery.
1938 - Kate Smith first sings Irving Berlin's "God Bless America" on U.S. network radio.
1942 - Tearing up the Franco-German armistice which established the occupied zone in 1940, Hitler orders German troops into Unoccupied France on the 25th anniversary of the World War I Armistice.
1951 - Juan Peron is elected for his second of three presidential terms in Argentina.
1964 - Food shortages in India provoke riots.
1965 - Ian Smith declares Rhodesian independence, and Britain says the regime is illegal. The African country is now known as Zimbabwe.
1971 - China's chief delegates to the United Nations arrive in New York City amid tight security arrangements; U.S. Senate ratifies treaty to return island of Okinawa to Japan.
1972 - United States turns over its big base at Long Binh to South Vietnamese, symbolizing end of direct U.S. participation in Vietnam War.
1973 - Egypt and Israel sign cease-fire agreement sponsored by United States and begin discussions to carry out the pact.
1975 - Australian Governor General Sir John Kerr dismisses Prime Minister Gough Whitlam and dissolves Parliament — the first time in 200 years the British crown exercises its right to remove an elected PM.
1987 - Boris Yeltsin, who criticized what he called the slow pace of Soviet reform, is removed as Moscow Communist Party chief.
1990 - China tells Saddam Hussein it will not veto a U.N. Security Council resolution authorizing military action to force Iraq out of Kuwait.
1991 - Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir vows not to give up occupied territories.
1992 - The Church of England votes to ordain women as priests.
1993 - At least 15 people are killed and 47 injured after 52 vehicles including six big-rig trucks are involved in a blazing pileup on a highway in western France.
1994 - A 72-page manuscript of Leonardo da Vinci's scientific diagrams and notes is sold at an auction in New York for a record $30.8 million.
1995 - An avalanche buries a Japanese trekking group in the Mount Everest region in Nepal, killing 26.
1996 - Guatemalan President Alvaro Arzu announces a peace agreement with the guerrilla movement, ending 36 years of fighting.
1997 - An 8-year-old boy is killed when Israeli troops fire at Palestinians throwing stones to protest the opening of Rachel's Tomb in Bethlehem.
1998 - U.N. personnel leave Baghdad, Iraq, and U.S. President Bill Clinton orders more warplanes and ships to the Persian Gulf after Iraq refuses to allow weapons inspections to continue.
2000 - A cable car being pulled through an Austrian mountainside to a glacier resort catches on fire, killing 155 skiers and snowboarders.
2001 - Thirty-one members of the banned Iran Freedom Movement are tried on charges of plotting to overthrow the government.
2002 - Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates pledges $100 million to fight AIDS in India.
2003 - At least six people are killed and 60 injured when police fire rubber bullets at rock-throwing protesters during a general strike that paralyzed the Dominican Republic. The demonstrators were protesting rolling blackouts and the rising costs of gas and food.
2004 - Palestinians at home and abroad weep in an eruption of grief at the death of Yasser Arafat, the man they consider the father of their nation, and quickly elevate his No. 2 in the Palestine Liberation Organization as their top leader.
2005 - Top diplomats from Russia and the United States express hope that a deal could be reached with Iran over the nuclear program that the West fears could help Tehran develop atomic weapons, but the status of a possible compromise remains unclear.
2006 - Unidentified gunmen attack U.N. peacekeepers near a restive slum in Haiti's capital, killing two Jordanian members of the force.
2007 - The largest Protestant paramilitary group in Northern Ireland, the outlawed Ulster Defense Association, renounces violence, officially ending the decades of terror it inflicted on the province's Catholic minority.
2008 - Mohamed Nasheed is sworn in as the Maldives' first democratically elected president.
Thursday, November 12, the 316th day of 2009. There are 49 days left in the year.
Highlights in history on this date:
1554 - Britain's Parliament re-establishes Roman Catholicism.
1603 - Sir Walter Raleigh's high treason trial opens in Winchester, England.
1812 - Napoleon Bonaparte's army reaches Russian city of Smolensk in retreat from Moscow.
1920 - In the United States, Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis is elected baseball's first commissioner.
1927 - Leon Trotsky is expelled from Communist Party in Russia, and Josef Stalin becomes its undisputed ruler.
1933 - Nazis dominate German elections.
1937 - Japanese troops occupy Chinese city of Shanghai.
1941 - Soviet troops halt Germans at outskirts of Moscow in World War II.
1944 - The Tirpitz, the last of the major German battleships, is sunk by British bombers.
1948 - Japan's former Premier Hideki Tojo and other Japanese World War II leaders are sentenced to death by a war crimes tribunal.
1954 - Ellis Island closes after processing more than 20 million immigrants since opening in New York Harbor in 1892.
1955 - The first 101 soldiers and officers are named by Defense Minister Theodor Blank for West Germany's new postwar armed forces, the Bundeswehr.
1962 - Guam, in the Pacific, is devastated by a typhoon.
1965 - U.N. Security Council calls on all nations to refuse recognition to Rhodesia after it unilaterally declares independence from Britain.
1970 - The worst rainy season in Colombia in 40 years kills as many as 500 people, more than a thousand others missing and 30,000-60,000 people homeless in Colombia.
1976 - The U.N. General Assembly approves a resolution again calling on Turkey to withdraw its troops from Cyprus.
1982 - Yuri V. Andropov is elected to succeed the late Leonid I. Brezhnev as general secretary of the Soviet Communist Party's Central Committee.
1987 - The American Medical Association issues a policy statement saying it is unethical for a doctor to refuse to treat someone solely because that person has AIDS or is HIV-positive.
1990 - Emperor Akihito ascends the throne in Japan.
1991 - Troops in East Timor fire on pro-independence demonstrators, killing dozens.
1992 - Five Germans and two Egyptians are wounded when Islamic militants fire on them in an attempt to cripple Egypt's tourist industry.
1993 - Pop star Michael Jackson cancels world tour, citing painkiller addiction.
1994 - A million people march in Rome to protest government austerity measures.
1995 - Britain ends arm sales to Nigeria.
1996 - A Saudi jumbo jet collides shortly after takeoff from New Delhi with a Kazak airliner making its landing approach, killing 349 people.
1997 - Ramzi Yousef is found guilty of masterminding the 1993 bombing of New York's World Trade Center.
1999 - Four members of the banned Falun Gong meditation movement are convicted and sentenced to 12 years in prison in China.
2000 - Hijack drama on a Russian airliner ends after a mentally unstable man from the Russian republic of Dagestan held up the flight and forced the pilot to fly it to Israel. The 57 passengers and crew are released unhurt.
2002 - In an audiotaped message aired across the Arab world, a voice purported to be that of Osama bin Laden praises terrorist strikes in Bali, Indonesia, and Moscow and warns U.S. allies against following the "oppressive American government" in the war against terror.
2003 - A vehicle packed with explosives explodes outside the Italian military police station in Nasiriyah, killing at least 18 Italians and 13 Iraqis and wounding at least 100 others. The incident is the deadliest attack on foreign troops allied with the U.S. since the start of the invasion of Iraq.
2004 - A nationwide Dutch anti-terrorism operation nets 38 suspected members of a Kurdish rebel group, including "militant trainees" being prepared at a rural campground for fighting in Turkey and Armenia.
2005 - Police clash with some 2,000 neo-Nazis outside of Germany's largest World War II soldiers cemetery where the extremists had hoped to stage a demonstration in honor of the Nazi soldiers.
2006 - Thousands of protesters demanding electoral reforms in Bangladesh target major transport links around Dhaka, attacking trains and other vehicles and leaving at least one person dead.
2007 - Hamas security forces open fire on a rally by the Fatah movement in a Gaza City square, sending tens of thousands of protesters running for cover as gunfire kills at least seven and wounds at least 85.
2008 - Britain is facing a sperm donor shortage after reversing confidentiality laws and limiting the number of women who can use sperm from one donor, fertility experts warn.
Friday, November 13, the 317th day of 2009. There are 48 days left in the year.
Highlights in history on this date:
1511 - Britain's King Henry VIII joins Holy League and enters European politics.
1553 - Lady Jane Grey goes on trial for treason in England. She had been Queen of England for nine days.
1789 - American inventor Benjamin Franklin writes a letter to a friend in which he says, "In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes."
1832 - The first streetcar — a horse-drawn vehicle called th oh Mso —gos nt oertin n ewYok it.
181- harles J. Guiteau goes on trial for assassinating U.S. President James A. Garfield.
1913 - Greece and Turkey sign peace treaty.
1918 - Republic of Austria is proclaimed; Pro-independence Wafd party is formed in Egypt.
1935 - U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt proclaims the Philippine Islands a free commonwealth.
1940 - German planes destroys most of the English town of Coventry during World War II; the Walt Disney animated movie "Fantasia" has its world premiere in New York.
1941 - Britain's finest aircraft carrier, the Ark Royal, is torpedoed by a German submarine and sinks off Strait of Gibraltar the next day.
1942 - British forces retake Tobruk, Libya, in World War II.
1945 - Sukarno becomes president of Indonesia.
1950 - Tibet appeals to the United Nations against Chinese aggression.
1961 - Congo government asks United Nations to assist in restoring law and order in Katanga Province.
1968 - Pakistan's Foreign Minister Zulkifar Ali Bhutto is arrested on charges of inciting student demonstrations against government of President Mohammed Ayub Khan.
1969 - Vietnam War Moratorium demonstrations occur across the U.S.; Vice President Spiro T. Agnew accuses network television news departments of bias and distortion for broadcasts of them.
1970 - Hafez Assad seizes power in a bloodless coup in Syria.
1974 - Yasser Arafat, head of Palestine Liberation Organization, tells U.N. General Assembly that the organization's goal is a Palestinian state that would include Muslims, Christians and Jews.
197 -WoldHelt Ogaiztin nnunestht si i feeof sallpox for first time in history.
1985 - The Nevado de Ruiz volcano in Colombia erupts, sending an avalanche of mud and rock slamming into the town of Armero. About 25,000 people die.
1990 - Muslim and leftist militias announce completion of withdrawal from Beirut well ahead of deadline set by Syrian-backed government.
1991 - Scottish authorities issue arrest warrants for two Libyan men in connection with 1988 bombing of Pan Am flight 103.
1994 - Swedish voters approve European Union membership in a referendum.
1995 - A bomb rips through a building filled with American and Saudi military personnel in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, killing six.
1996 - The pope opens the World Food Summit in Rome, seeking to direct attention to refugees' agony in Zaire.
1997 - Iraqi President Saddam Hussein expels members of the U.N. weapons inspections teams. A week later, they are allowed back, but the Iraqis restrict their access.
1999 - Peru signs an agreement with Chile to end a 120-year territorial dispute.
2001 - A German court convicts four defendants in the 1986 bombing of a West Berlin discotheque that killed two U.S. soldiers and a Turkish woman. The Libyan secret service was accused of planning the attack.
2002 - A judge upholds 36-year prison sentences for 18 paramilitary fighters convicted of gunning down Zapatista rebel sympathizers in Mexico in 1997.
2003 - Residents of the remote village of Nubutautau, on the Fijian island of Viti Levu, apologize to the descendants of British missionary, Reverend Thomas Bakr. He wa klld ndeaenbythir acetos 36yersealir - in 867.
2004 - The death toll from a devastating fire in Siberia stood at 26 after emergency workers finished clearing up the ruins of a wooden apartment building that burned to the ground.
2005 - Iraq's defense minister criticizes Syria for letting militants train on its soil for attacks in Iraq and warns that Arab capitals won't be saved if the "Iraqi volcano explodes."
2006 - Voters in South Ossetia overwhelmingly approve a referendum calling for independence from Georgia.
2007 - A bomb explodes at an entrance of the Philippine House of Representatives, killing three people including Rep. Wahab Akbar, a Philippine congressman who had been targeted by Muslim militants.
2008 - An Italian court convicts 13 police officers of violence against protesters during the 2001 Group of Eight summit in the northern Italian city of Genoa.
Wednesday, November 11
1500 - France's King Louis XII and Ferdinand of Aragon secretly sign the Treaty of Granada for conquest and partition of Naples.
1528 - Margaret Hunt tells the Bishop of London the secrets of her "sorcery" — how she combines natural herbs and prayer to heal the sick. She is not prosecuted.
1606 - Peace treaty is signed at Zeitva-Torok between Turks and Austrians.
1620 - Forty-one Pilgrims aboard the Mayflower, anchor in Massachusetts and sign a compact calling for a "body politick."
1673 - Poland's King John Sobieski defeats Turks at Korzim, Poland.
1778 - British forces take St. Lucia, West Indies, from French.
1831 - Former slave Nat Turner, who led a violent insurrection, is executed in Jerusalem, Virginia.
1836 - Chile declares war on Peru-Bolivia Federation.
1895 - British Bechuanaland is annexed to Cape Colony.
1918 - World War I ends with Germany and the Allies signing an armistice in a railroad car at Compiegne, France.
1921 - U.S. President Warren Harding dedicates the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Arlington National Cemetery.
1938 - Kate Smith first sings Irving Berlin's "God Bless America" on U.S. network radio.
1942 - Tearing up the Franco-German armistice which established the occupied zone in 1940, Hitler orders German troops into Unoccupied France on the 25th anniversary of the World War I Armistice.
1951 - Juan Peron is elected for his second of three presidential terms in Argentina.
1964 - Food shortages in India provoke riots.
1965 - Ian Smith declares Rhodesian independence, and Britain says the regime is illegal. The African country is now known as Zimbabwe.
1971 - China's chief delegates to the United Nations arrive in New York City amid tight security arrangements; U.S. Senate ratifies treaty to return island of Okinawa to Japan.
1972 - United States turns over its big base at Long Binh to South Vietnamese, symbolizing end of direct U.S. participation in Vietnam War.
1973 - Egypt and Israel sign cease-fire agreement sponsored by United States and begin discussions to carry out the pact.
1975 - Australian Governor General Sir John Kerr dismisses Prime Minister Gough Whitlam and dissolves Parliament — the first time in 200 years the British crown exercises its right to remove an elected PM.
1987 - Boris Yeltsin, who criticized what he called the slow pace of Soviet reform, is removed as Moscow Communist Party chief.
1990 - China tells Saddam Hussein it will not veto a U.N. Security Council resolution authorizing military action to force Iraq out of Kuwait.
1991 - Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir vows not to give up occupied territories.
1992 - The Church of England votes to ordain women as priests.
1993 - At least 15 people are killed and 47 injured after 52 vehicles including six big-rig trucks are involved in a blazing pileup on a highway in western France.
1994 - A 72-page manuscript of Leonardo da Vinci's scientific diagrams and notes is sold at an auction in New York for a record $30.8 million.
1995 - An avalanche buries a Japanese trekking group in the Mount Everest region in Nepal, killing 26.
1996 - Guatemalan President Alvaro Arzu announces a peace agreement with the guerrilla movement, ending 36 years of fighting.
2006 - Unidentified gunmen attack U.N. peacekeepers near a restive slum in Haiti's capital, killing two Jordanian members of the force.
2007 - The largest Protestant paramilitary group in Northern Ireland, the outlawed Ulster Defense Association, renounces violence, officially ending the decades of terror it inflicted on the province's Catholic minority.
2008 - Mohamed Nasheed is sworn in as the Maldives' first democratically elected president.
Thursday, November 12
1554 - Britain's Parliament re-establishes Roman Catholicism.
1603 - Sir Walter Raleigh's high treason trial opens in Winchester, England.
1812 - Napoleon Bonaparte's army reaches Russian city of Smolensk in retreat from Moscow.
1920 - In the United States, Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis is elected baseball's first commissioner.
1927 - Leon Trotsky is expelled from Communist Party in Russia, and Josef Stalin becomes its undisputed ruler.
1933 - Nazis dominate German elections.
1937 - Japanese troops occupy Chinese city of Shanghai.
1941 - Soviet troops halt Germans at outskirts of Moscow in World War II.
1944 - The Tirpitz, the last of the major German battleships, is sunk by British bombers.
1948 - Japan's former Premier Hideki Tojo and other Japanese World War II leaders are sentenced to death by a war crimes tribunal.
1954 - Ellis Island closes after processing more than 20 million immigrants since opening in New York Harbor in 1892.
1955 - The first 101 soldiers and officers are named by Defense Minister Theodor Blank for West Germany's new postwar armed forces, the Bundeswehr.
1962 - Guam, in the Pacific, is devastated by a typhoon.
1965 - U.N. Security Council calls on all nations to refuse recognition to Rhodesia after it unilaterally declares independence from Britain.
1970 - The worst rainy season in Colombia in 40 years kills as many as 500 people, more than a thousand others missing and 30,000-60,000 people homeless in Colombia.
1976 - The U.N. General Assembly approves a resolution again calling on Turkey to withdraw its troops from Cyprus.
1982 - Yuri V. Andropov is elected to succeed the late Leonid I. Brezhnev as general secretary of the Soviet Communist Party's Central Committee.
1987 - The American Medical Association issues a policy statement saying it is unethical for a doctor to refuse to treat someone solely because that person has AIDS or is HIV-positive.
1990 - Emperor Akihito ascends the throne in Japan.
1991 - Troops in East Timor fire on pro-independence demonstrators, killing dozens.
1992 - Five Germans and two Egyptians are wounded when Islamic militants fire on them in an attempt to cripple Egypt's tourist industry.
1993 - Pop star Michael Jackson cancels world tour, citing painkiller addiction.
1994 - A million people march in Rome to protest government austerity measures.
1995 - Britain ends arm sales to Nigeria.
1996 - A Saudi jumbo jet collides shortly after takeoff from New Delhi with a Kazak airliner making its landing approach, killing 349 people.
1997 - Ramzi Yousef is found guilty of masterminding the 1993 bombing of New York's World Trade Center.
1999 - Four members of the banned Falun Gong meditation movement are convicted and sentenced to 12 years in prison in China.
2000 - Hijack drama on a Russian airliner ends after a mentally unstable man from the Russian republic of Dagestan held up the flight and forced the pilot to fly it to Israel. The 57 passengers and crew are released unhurt.
2002 - In an audiotaped message aired across the Arab world, a voice purported to be that of Osama bin Laden praises terrorist strikes in Bali, Indonesia, and Moscow and warns U.S. allies against following the "oppressive American government" in the war against terror.
2003 - A vehicle packed with explosives explodes outside the Italian military police station in Nasiriyah, killing at least 18 Italians and 13 Iraqis and wounding at least 100 others. The incident is the deadliest attack on foreign troops allied with the U.S. since the start of the invasion of Iraq.
Friday, November 13
1511 - Britain's King Henry VIII joins Holy League and enters European politics.
1553 - Lady Jane Grey goes on trial for treason in England. She had been Queen of England for nine days.
1789 - American inventor Benjamin Franklin writes a letter to a friend in which he says, "In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes."
1913 - Greece and Turkey sign peace treaty.
1918 - Republic of Austria is proclaimed; Pro-independence Wafd party is formed in Egypt.
1935 - U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt proclaims the Philippine Islands a free commonwealth.
1940 - German planes destroys most of the English town of Coventry during World War II; the Walt Disney animated movie "Fantasia" has its world premiere in New York.
1941 - Britain's finest aircraft carrier, the Ark Royal, is torpedoed by a German submarine and sinks off Strait of Gibraltar the next day.
1942 - British forces retake Tobruk, Libya, in World War II.
1945 - Sukarno becomes president of Indonesia.
1950 - Tibet appeals to the United Nations against Chinese aggression.
1961 - Congo government asks United Nations to assist in restoring law and order in Katanga Province.
1968 - Pakistan's Foreign Minister Zulkifar Ali Bhutto is arrested on charges of inciting student demonstrations against government of President Mohammed Ayub Khan.
197 -WoldHelt Ogaiztin nnunestht si i feeof sallpox for first time in history.
1985 - The Nevado de Ruiz volcano in Colombia erupts, sending an avalanche of mud and rock slamming into the town of Armero. About 25,000 people die.
2001 - A German court convicts four defendants in the 1986 bombing of a West Berlin discotheque that killed two U.S. soldiers and a Turkish woman. The Libyan secret service was accused of planning the attack.
AP
1519 - Spanish conqueror Hernan Cortez reaches Mexico City with his small Spanish force and 1,000 Tlaxcaltec allies. The Aztecs, believing he is an incarnation of the Aztec god Quetzalcoatl, receive him with great honor.
1520 - Swedes loyal to Denmark's King Christian II execute over 80 political opponents in the central square in "the blood bath of Stockholm."
1793 - The Louvre Museum in Paris opens to the public.
1892 - Former U.S. President Grover Cleveland beats incumbent Benjamin Harrison and becomes the first U.S. president to win nonconsecutive terms in the White House.
1895 - Wilhelm Conrad Roentgen, German physicist, discovers X-rays.
1917 - Vladimir I. Lenin becomes chief commissar in Russia and Leon Trotsky is named premier.
1923 - Adolf Hitler stages unsuccessful coup in Munich, Germany, that comes to be known as the "Beer-Hall Putsch."
1932 - New York Gov. Franklin Delano Roosevelt is elected U.S. president.
1942 - U.S. and British troops land in French North Africa during World War II.
1950 - First battle between jet planes breaks out as U.S. fighters are attacked by North Korean MiGs near Yalu River in Korean conflict.
1956 - U.N. General Assembly demands that Soviet troops withdraw from Hungary.
1977 - Israel shells Palestinian guerrilla concentrations in southern Lebanon.
1987 - A bomb planted by the Irish Republican Army kills 11 people and injures 55 at a memorial service for Britain's war dead in Enniskillen, Northern Ireland.
1988 - Nearly 9,000 foreign tourists are evacuated from Sri Lanka beach resorts after Sinhalese extremists threaten to attack south coast hotels.
1989 - Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega offers to end arms imports to his country in exchange for demobilization of Contra rebels.
1990 - U.S. President George Bush orders 200,000 more U.S. troops to the Gulf; United States readies U.N. resolution that would authorize an attack on Iraq.
1991 - The European Community and Canada impose economic sanctions on Yugoslavia in an attempt to stop the Balkan civil war.
1992 - U.S. Senator Bob Dole calls for an investigation into the action of the Iran-contra special prosecutor's office in connection with the indictment of former Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger, who was charged with making false statements to Congress.
1997 - Chinese engineers divert the Yangtze River from its natural course, clearing way for the construction of the enormous Three Gorges dam.
1998 - In Bangladesh, 15 former military commanders are sentenced to death for the 1975 assassination of the country's first prime minister.
1999 - Israel's national airline graduates its first Arab flight attendant in nearly a decade, several months after it came under attack for discriminating against Arabs.
2000 - Fusako Shigenobu, a Japanese revolutionary responsible for terrorist massacres in Israel and Italy, is arrested in Japan after decades on the run.
2001 - The discovery of eight remains — five skeletons and the partially clad bodies of three young women — in Cuidad Juarez, Mexico, ignites fear that a series of 57 rape-murders did not end in the 1990s.
2002 - A Yemeni-American, Ahmed Hijazihas, is killed by a CIA airstrike in Yemen. He is believed to have links to alleged members of the al-Qaida cell in suburban Buffalo, New York, that was raided by U.S. authorities in September.
2003 - A car bomb detonates in a residential compound in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, killing at least 17 people and wounding more than 120 others. Most of the victims are believed to be Arab Muslims.
2004 - Muslim groups ask the Dutch government to protect Islamic sites after an elementary school is bombed — the latest in escalating tensions following the killing of a filmmaker, allegedly by an Islamic radical.
2005 - France declares a state of emergency after nearly two weeks of rioting, clearing the way for curfews in hopes of ending the country's worst civil unrest in more than 50 years. Its prime minister acknowledges that racial discrimination has inflamed tempers in the heavily immigrant suburbs.
Monday, November 9
1799 - Napoleon Bonaparte, newly returned from his disastrous expedition to Egypt, seizes power in France, making himself one of three consuls.
1803 - A French expedition sent to put down rebellious Haiti surrenders, and the island declares independence soon after.
1882 - Franco-British dual control of Egypt is established.
1918 - German Emperor William II abdicates and Germany is declared a republic. Two days later, Germany signs an armistice ending World War I.
1923 - Fourteen Nazis are killed as federal troops break up march of Adolf Hitler's storm troopers in Munich, Germany.
1937 - Japanese troops take Shanghai, China.
1938 - Bands of Nazis roam streets of Germany, burning and destroying Jewish synagogues, homes and stores in what becomes known as Kristallnacht or 'Night of Broken Glass.'
1946 - Nineteen people, including 11 British soldiers and eight Arab constables are slain in Palestine as Jewish terrorists, using land mines and suitcase bombs, increase their attacks on railroad stations, trains and streetcars.
1952 - Police and British troops arrest more than 400 Kikuyu tribesmen and women in an effort to apprehend Mau Mau cult members in Kenya. The Mau Maus reportedly murdered 37 persons in the last 5 months.
1962 - United States completes emergency airlift of arms and ammunition to India in that nation's border war with China.
1963 - Twin disasters strikes Japan as 450 miners are killed in a coal-dust explosion and 160 people die in a train crash.
1965 - The great Northeast blackout occurs as several U.S. states and parts of Canada are hit by a series of power failures lasting up to 13 1/2 hours.
1971 - Chinese Communists make their first appearance in United Nations for conference on problems facing main delegation on its way from Beijing.
1987 - Bomb explodes during rush hour in crowded neighborhood of Colombo, Sri Lanka, with at least 32 people killed and 105 wounded.
1989 - Stunned East German border guards watch helplessly as jubilant Germans dance on the Berlin Wall. Thousands cross the border to experience long-forbidden freedoms and riches on one memorable night.
1990 - Nepal adopts a new constitution, creating a democratic government; Bundesrat, the upper house of the German parliament, meets in Berlin for the first time in 31 years; Fifteen blacks are stabbed to death and four wounded in factional fight in South African eastern province of Natal.
1991 - Shifting positions, Serbia urges United Nations to send peacekeeping troops to Croatia.
1992 - Some 100,000 people demonstrate in cities throughout Germany on the 54th anniversary of the Nazis' "'Night of Broken Glass" attacks against Jews.
1993 - After a parliamentary election victory by his supporters, King Hussein says that Jordan will forge ahead in negotiating peace with Israel; Mostar's Old Bridge in Bosnia, completed in 1566 by engineers of Ottoman emperor Suleyman the Magnificent, is destroyed by Croatian forces.
1994 - Iranian jet fighters bomb an Iranian Kurdish base in northern Iraq, the second attack in a week on dissidents operating from Iraq.
1995 - In his first visit to Israel since the peace process began, Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat calls on the widow of Yitzhak Rabin to offer his condolences.
1996 - Stung by allegations that it uses money and sex to win diplomatic backing, Taiwan says it will no longer use its wealth to fight China's diplomatic blockade.
2000 - An Israeli combat helicopter drops rockets on a car carrying Palestinian militia commanders, killing one and wounding another critically. Six other people, including passers-by are injured.
2001 - Afghanistan's ruling Taliban send a thousand more fighters to the front lines, reinforcing its troops north of Kabul as American jets range throughout the country in support of the opposition alliance.
2002 - Faced with criticism, Nigeria's foreign minister promises that the government would block Islamic courts from carrying out stonings of women sentenced to death for sex outside marriage.
2003 - Nigerian officials warn the United States not to try to capture ousted Liberian leader Charles Taylor, thought to be the target of $2 million bounty posted by the United States.
2004 - Thousands face off against French tanks outside Ivory Coast President Laurent Gbagbo's home, defying warning shots in answer to appeals for a "human shield" around the hard-line leader to prevent an overthrow.
Tuesday, November 10
1444 - Turks annihilate a Hungarian force at the Battle of Varna — now in Bulgaria — ending the European powers' efforts to save Constantinople from Turkish conquest.
1729 - Portugal loses Mombassa to the Muscat Arabs.
1871 - American journalist Henry Stanley finds African explorer Dr. David Livingstone in Ujiji, central Africa, on Lake Tanganyika; delivers his famous greeting "Dr. Livingstone I presume?"
1885 - The son of German engineer Otto Daimler becomes the first motorcyclist, riding his father's invention 10 kilometers (6 miles).
1928 - Hirohito is enthroned as Emperor of Japan.
1937 - President Getulio Vargas of Brazil cancels elections and decrees the Estado Novo dictatorship.
1938 - Anti-Semitic legislation is adopted in Italy.
1945 - Western powers recognize Communist-dominated Albanian government.
1954 - The Iwo Jima Memorial is dedicated in Arlington, Virginia. The battle for Iwo Jima in Japan during World War II resulted in the deaths of 21,000 Japanese and 6,800 American soldiers.
1963 - A cholera epidemic in India and Pakistan kills more than 1,500 people in a few weeks.
1969 - The children's educational program "Sesame Street" makes its debut on PBS television in the United States.
1970 - The Soviet Union launches Luna 17, which lands a roving vehicle on the Moon's surface.
1975 - Angola becomes independent of Portugal in the midst of a civil war; the U.N. General Assembly approves a resolution equating Zionism with racism. The resolution is repealed in 1991.
1976 - Syrian troops and tanks enter Beirut, Lebanon, without resistance under agreement for multinational Arab peacekeeping force.
1980 - East German President Erich Honecker makes his first state visit to a western country — Austria.
1982 - The newly finished Vietnam Veterans Memorial opens in Washington, D.C.
1987 - Niger's President Seyni Kountche dies in Paris, and is replaced as head of state by army chief Ali Seibou.
1988 - Soldiers open fire and kill at least 15 people in Sri Lanka when anti-government demonstrators defy a curfew.
1989 - Todor Zhivkov resigns after 35 years as Communist Party leader of Bulgaria.
1990 - Chandra Shekhar is sworn in as prime minister of India; Shiite Muslim militias begin 10-day pullout from Beirut.
1991 - Street fighting rages between Serbs and Croats struggling for control of Danube River town of Vukovar.
1992 - U.N. weapons inspectors in Baghdad remove 200 drums containing uranium from an Iraqi atomic facility.
1994 - Chandrika Kumaratunga, daughter of two prime ministers, wins presidential election in Sri Lanka; Iraq formally recognizes Kuwait as sovereign state.
1995 - Joseph Rotblat and the Pugwash Conference on Science and World Affairs are awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
1998 - A jury in New York City convicts Corey Arthur, 20, of second-degree murder in the 1997 torture and murder of Jonathan Levin, his former high-school English teacher. Levin was the son of Gerald Levin, the chairman of Time Warner Inc.
2000 - Philippine President Joseph Estrada denies new corruption allegations that he received a $20 million kickback from the sale of the country's largest telephone company and pocketed more than $16 million from a controversial stock sale.
2004 - Chile makes a step toward confronting its grim legacy of human rights abuses under the 1973-90 dictatorship of Gen. Augusto Pinochet by completing a lengthy report on torture and political imprisonment with testimonies from at least 35,000 victims.
2005 - Thousands of Jordanians rally in their capital and other cities, denouncing the Jordanian-born leader of al-Qaida in Iraq, a day after three deadly hotel bombings kill at least 57 people. Al-Qaida's Iraq branch claims responsibility for the attacks.
2006 - Zimbabwe's government launches a program to issue 99-year leases to black farmers allocated land seized mostly from white farmers.
2007 - Six U.S. troops are killed when insurgents ambush their foot patrol in the high mountains of eastern Afghanistan — the most lethal attack against American forces of the year, making 2007 the deadliest year for U.S. troops in Afghanistan since the 2001 invasion.
2008 - Railway and mass transit workers in Italy stage a strike, creating chaos for commuters, while a wildcat protest by some of Alitalia's staff forces the national airline to scrap dozens of flights.
Wednesday, November 11, the 315th day of 2009. There are 50 days left in the year.
Highlights in history on this date:
1500 - France's King Louis XII and Ferdinand of Aragon secretly sign the Treaty of Granada for conquest and partition of Naples.
1528 - Margaret Hunt tells the Bishop of London the secrets of her "sorcery" — how she combines natural herbs and prayer to heal the sick. She is not prosecuted.
1606 - Peace treaty is signed at Zeitva-Torok between Turks and Austrians.
1620 - Forty-one Pilgrims aboard the Mayflower, anchor in Massachusetts and sign a compact calling for a "body politick."
1673 - Poland's King John Sobieski defeats Turks at Korzim, Poland.
1778 - British forces take St. Lucia, West Indies, from French.
1831 - Former slave Nat Turner, who led a violent insurrection, is executed in Jerusalem, Virginia.
1836 - Chile declares war on Peru-Bolivia Federation.
1895 - British Bechuanaland is annexed to Cape Colony.
1918 - World War I ends with Germany and the Allies signing an armistice in a railroad car at Compiegne, France.
1921 - U.S. President Warren Harding dedicates the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Arlington National Cemetery.
1938 - Kate Smith first sings Irving Berlin's "God Bless America" on U.S. network radio.
1942 - Tearing up the Franco-German armistice which established the occupied zone in 1940, Hitler orders German troops into Unoccupied France on the 25th anniversary of the World War I Armistice.
1951 - Juan Peron is elected for his second of three presidential terms in Argentina.
1964 - Food shortages in India provoke riots.
1965 - Ian Smith declares Rhodesian independence, and Britain says the regime is illegal. The African country is now known as Zimbabwe.
1971 - China's chief delegates to the United Nations arrive in New York City amid tight security arrangements; U.S. Senate ratifies treaty to return island of Okinawa to Japan.
1972 - United States turns over its big base at Long Binh to South Vietnamese, symbolizing end of direct U.S. participation in Vietnam War.
1973 - Egypt and Israel sign cease-fire agreement sponsored by United States and begin discussions to carry out the pact.
1975 - Australian Governor General Sir John Kerr dismisses Prime Minister Gough Whitlam and dissolves Parliament — the first time in 200 years the British crown exercises its right to remove an elected PM.
1987 - Boris Yeltsin, who criticized what he called the slow pace of Soviet reform, is removed as Moscow Communist Party chief.
1990 - China tells Saddam Hussein it will not veto a U.N. Security Council resolution authorizing military action to force Iraq out of Kuwait.
1991 - Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir vows not to give up occupied territories.
1992 - The Church of England votes to ordain women as priests.
1993 - At least 15 people are killed and 47 injured after 52 vehicles including six big-rig trucks are involved in a blazing pileup on a highway in western France.
1994 - A 72-page manuscript of Leonardo da Vinci's scientific diagrams and notes is sold at an auction in New York for a record $30.8 million.
1995 - An avalanche buries a Japanese trekking group in the Mount Everest region in Nepal, killing 26.
1996 - Guatemalan President Alvaro Arzu announces a peace agreement with the guerrilla movement, ending 36 years of fighting.
1997 - An 8-year-old boy is killed when Israeli troops fire at Palestinians throwing stones to protest the opening of Rachel's Tomb in Bethlehem.
1998 - U.N. personnel leave Baghdad, Iraq, and U.S. President Bill Clinton orders more warplanes and ships to the Persian Gulf after Iraq refuses to allow weapons inspections to continue.
2000 - A cable car being pulled through an Austrian mountainside to a glacier resort catches on fire, killing 155 skiers and snowboarders.
2001 - Thirty-one members of the banned Iran Freedom Movement are tried on charges of plotting to overthrow the government.
2002 - Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates pledges $100 million to fight AIDS in India.
2003 - At least six people are killed and 60 injured when police fire rubber bullets at rock-throwing protesters during a general strike that paralyzed the Dominican Republic. The demonstrators were protesting rolling blackouts and the rising costs of gas and food.
2004 - Palestinians at home and abroad weep in an eruption of grief at the death of Yasser Arafat, the man they consider the father of their nation, and quickly elevate his No. 2 in the Palestine Liberation Organization as their top leader.
2005 - Top diplomats from Russia and the United States express hope that a deal could be reached with Iran over the nuclear program that the West fears could help Tehran develop atomic weapons, but the status of a possible compromise remains unclear.
2006 - Unidentified gunmen attack U.N. peacekeepers near a restive slum in Haiti's capital, killing two Jordanian members of the force.
2007 - The largest Protestant paramilitary group in Northern Ireland, the outlawed Ulster Defense Association, renounces violence, officially ending the decades of terror it inflicted on the province's Catholic minority.
2008 - Mohamed Nasheed is sworn in as the Maldives' first democratically elected president.
Thursday, November 12, the 316th day of 2009. There are 49 days left in the year.
Highlights in history on this date:
1554 - Britain's Parliament re-establishes Roman Catholicism.
1603 - Sir Walter Raleigh's high treason trial opens in Winchester, England.
1812 - Napoleon Bonaparte's army reaches Russian city of Smolensk in retreat from Moscow.
1920 - In the United States, Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis is elected baseball's first commissioner.
1927 - Leon Trotsky is expelled from Communist Party in Russia, and Josef Stalin becomes its undisputed ruler.
1933 - Nazis dominate German elections.
1937 - Japanese troops occupy Chinese city of Shanghai.
1941 - Soviet troops halt Germans at outskirts of Moscow in World War II.
1944 - The Tirpitz, the last of the major German battleships, is sunk by British bombers.
1948 - Japan's former Premier Hideki Tojo and other Japanese World War II leaders are sentenced to death by a war crimes tribunal.
1954 - Ellis Island closes after processing more than 20 million immigrants since opening in New York Harbor in 1892.
1955 - The first 101 soldiers and officers are named by Defense Minister Theodor Blank for West Germany's new postwar armed forces, the Bundeswehr.
1962 - Guam, in the Pacific, is devastated by a typhoon.
1965 - U.N. Security Council calls on all nations to refuse recognition to Rhodesia after it unilaterally declares independence from Britain.
1970 - The worst rainy season in Colombia in 40 years kills as many as 500 people, more than a thousand others missing and 30,000-60,000 people homeless in Colombia.
1976 - The U.N. General Assembly approves a resolution again calling on Turkey to withdraw its troops from Cyprus.
1982 - Yuri V. Andropov is elected to succeed the late Leonid I. Brezhnev as general secretary of the Soviet Communist Party's Central Committee.
1987 - The American Medical Association issues a policy statement saying it is unethical for a doctor to refuse to treat someone solely because that person has AIDS or is HIV-positive.
1990 - Emperor Akihito ascends the throne in Japan.
1991 - Troops in East Timor fire on pro-independence demonstrators, killing dozens.
1992 - Five Germans and two Egyptians are wounded when Islamic militants fire on them in an attempt to cripple Egypt's tourist industry.
1993 - Pop star Michael Jackson cancels world tour, citing painkiller addiction.
1994 - A million people march in Rome to protest government austerity measures.
1995 - Britain ends arm sales to Nigeria.
1996 - A Saudi jumbo jet collides shortly after takeoff from New Delhi with a Kazak airliner making its landing approach, killing 349 people.
1997 - Ramzi Yousef is found guilty of masterminding the 1993 bombing of New York's World Trade Center.
1999 - Four members of the banned Falun Gong meditation movement are convicted and sentenced to 12 years in prison in China.
2000 - Hijack drama on a Russian airliner ends after a mentally unstable man from the Russian republic of Dagestan held up the flight and forced the pilot to fly it to Israel. The 57 passengers and crew are released unhurt.
2002 - In an audiotaped message aired across the Arab world, a voice purported to be that of Osama bin Laden praises terrorist strikes in Bali, Indonesia, and Moscow and warns U.S. allies against following the "oppressive American government" in the war against terror.
2003 - A vehicle packed with explosives explodes outside the Italian military police station in Nasiriyah, killing at least 18 Italians and 13 Iraqis and wounding at least 100 others. The incident is the deadliest attack on foreign troops allied with the U.S. since the start of the invasion of Iraq.
2004 - A nationwide Dutch anti-terrorism operation nets 38 suspected members of a Kurdish rebel group, including "militant trainees" being prepared at a rural campground for fighting in Turkey and Armenia.
2005 - Police clash with some 2,000 neo-Nazis outside of Germany's largest World War II soldiers cemetery where the extremists had hoped to stage a demonstration in honor of the Nazi soldiers.
2006 - Thousands of protesters demanding electoral reforms in Bangladesh target major transport links around Dhaka, attacking trains and other vehicles and leaving at least one person dead.
2007 - Hamas security forces open fire on a rally by the Fatah movement in a Gaza City square, sending tens of thousands of protesters running for cover as gunfire kills at least seven and wounds at least 85.
2008 - Britain is facing a sperm donor shortage after reversing confidentiality laws and limiting the number of women who can use sperm from one donor, fertility experts warn.
Friday, November 13, the 317th day of 2009. There are 48 days left in the year.
Highlights in history on this date:
1511 - Britain's King Henry VIII joins Holy League and enters European politics.
1553 - Lady Jane Grey goes on trial for treason in England. She had been Queen of England for nine days.
1789 - American inventor Benjamin Franklin writes a letter to a friend in which he says, "In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes."
1832 - The first streetcar — a horse-drawn vehicle called th oh Mso —gos nt oertin n ewYok it.
181- harles J. Guiteau goes on trial for assassinating U.S. President James A. Garfield.
1913 - Greece and Turkey sign peace treaty.
1918 - Republic of Austria is proclaimed; Pro-independence Wafd party is formed in Egypt.
1935 - U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt proclaims the Philippine Islands a free commonwealth.
1940 - German planes destroys most of the English town of Coventry during World War II; the Walt Disney animated movie "Fantasia" has its world premiere in New York.
1941 - Britain's finest aircraft carrier, the Ark Royal, is torpedoed by a German submarine and sinks off Strait of Gibraltar the next day.
1942 - British forces retake Tobruk, Libya, in World War II.
1945 - Sukarno becomes president of Indonesia.
1950 - Tibet appeals to the United Nations against Chinese aggression.
1961 - Congo government asks United Nations to assist in restoring law and order in Katanga Province.
1968 - Pakistan's Foreign Minister Zulkifar Ali Bhutto is arrested on charges of inciting student demonstrations against government of President Mohammed Ayub Khan.
1969 - Vietnam War Moratorium demonstrations occur across the U.S.; Vice President Spiro T. Agnew accuses network television news departments of bias and distortion for broadcasts of them.
1970 - Hafez Assad seizes power in a bloodless coup in Syria.
1974 - Yasser Arafat, head of Palestine Liberation Organization, tells U.N. General Assembly that the organization's goal is a Palestinian state that would include Muslims, Christians and Jews.
197 -WoldHelt Ogaiztin nnunestht si i feeof sallpox for first time in history.
1985 - The Nevado de Ruiz volcano in Colombia erupts, sending an avalanche of mud and rock slamming into the town of Armero. About 25,000 people die.
1990 - Muslim and leftist militias announce completion of withdrawal from Beirut well ahead of deadline set by Syrian-backed government.
1991 - Scottish authorities issue arrest warrants for two Libyan men in connection with 1988 bombing of Pan Am flight 103.
1994 - Swedish voters approve European Union membership in a referendum.
1995 - A bomb rips through a building filled with American and Saudi military personnel in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, killing six.
1996 - The pope opens the World Food Summit in Rome, seeking to direct attention to refugees' agony in Zaire.
1997 - Iraqi President Saddam Hussein expels members of the U.N. weapons inspections teams. A week later, they are allowed back, but the Iraqis restrict their access.
1999 - Peru signs an agreement with Chile to end a 120-year territorial dispute.
2001 - A German court convicts four defendants in the 1986 bombing of a West Berlin discotheque that killed two U.S. soldiers and a Turkish woman. The Libyan secret service was accused of planning the attack.
2002 - A judge upholds 36-year prison sentences for 18 paramilitary fighters convicted of gunning down Zapatista rebel sympathizers in Mexico in 1997.
2003 - Residents of the remote village of Nubutautau, on the Fijian island of Viti Levu, apologize to the descendants of British missionary, Reverend Thomas Bakr. He wa klld ndeaenbythir acetos 36yersealir - in 867.
2004 - The death toll from a devastating fire in Siberia stood at 26 after emergency workers finished clearing up the ruins of a wooden apartment building that burned to the ground.
2005 - Iraq's defense minister criticizes Syria for letting militants train on its soil for attacks in Iraq and warns that Arab capitals won't be saved if the "Iraqi volcano explodes."
2006 - Voters in South Ossetia overwhelmingly approve a referendum calling for independence from Georgia.
2007 - A bomb explodes at an entrance of the Philippine House of Representatives, killing three people including Rep. Wahab Akbar, a Philippine congressman who had been targeted by Muslim militants.
2008 - An Italian court convicts 13 police officers of violence against protesters during the 2001 Group of Eight summit in the northern Italian city of Genoa.
Wednesday, November 11
1500 - France's King Louis XII and Ferdinand of Aragon secretly sign the Treaty of Granada for conquest and partition of Naples.
1528 - Margaret Hunt tells the Bishop of London the secrets of her "sorcery" — how she combines natural herbs and prayer to heal the sick. She is not prosecuted.
1606 - Peace treaty is signed at Zeitva-Torok between Turks and Austrians.
1620 - Forty-one Pilgrims aboard the Mayflower, anchor in Massachusetts and sign a compact calling for a "body politick."
1673 - Poland's King John Sobieski defeats Turks at Korzim, Poland.
1778 - British forces take St. Lucia, West Indies, from French.
1831 - Former slave Nat Turner, who led a violent insurrection, is executed in Jerusalem, Virginia.
1836 - Chile declares war on Peru-Bolivia Federation.
1895 - British Bechuanaland is annexed to Cape Colony.
1918 - World War I ends with Germany and the Allies signing an armistice in a railroad car at Compiegne, France.
1921 - U.S. President Warren Harding dedicates the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Arlington National Cemetery.
1938 - Kate Smith first sings Irving Berlin's "God Bless America" on U.S. network radio.
1942 - Tearing up the Franco-German armistice which established the occupied zone in 1940, Hitler orders German troops into Unoccupied France on the 25th anniversary of the World War I Armistice.
1951 - Juan Peron is elected for his second of three presidential terms in Argentina.
1964 - Food shortages in India provoke riots.
1965 - Ian Smith declares Rhodesian independence, and Britain says the regime is illegal. The African country is now known as Zimbabwe.
1971 - China's chief delegates to the United Nations arrive in New York City amid tight security arrangements; U.S. Senate ratifies treaty to return island of Okinawa to Japan.
1972 - United States turns over its big base at Long Binh to South Vietnamese, symbolizing end of direct U.S. participation in Vietnam War.
1973 - Egypt and Israel sign cease-fire agreement sponsored by United States and begin discussions to carry out the pact.
1975 - Australian Governor General Sir John Kerr dismisses Prime Minister Gough Whitlam and dissolves Parliament — the first time in 200 years the British crown exercises its right to remove an elected PM.
1987 - Boris Yeltsin, who criticized what he called the slow pace of Soviet reform, is removed as Moscow Communist Party chief.
1990 - China tells Saddam Hussein it will not veto a U.N. Security Council resolution authorizing military action to force Iraq out of Kuwait.
1991 - Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir vows not to give up occupied territories.
1992 - The Church of England votes to ordain women as priests.
1993 - At least 15 people are killed and 47 injured after 52 vehicles including six big-rig trucks are involved in a blazing pileup on a highway in western France.
1994 - A 72-page manuscript of Leonardo da Vinci's scientific diagrams and notes is sold at an auction in New York for a record $30.8 million.
1995 - An avalanche buries a Japanese trekking group in the Mount Everest region in Nepal, killing 26.
1996 - Guatemalan President Alvaro Arzu announces a peace agreement with the guerrilla movement, ending 36 years of fighting.
2006 - Unidentified gunmen attack U.N. peacekeepers near a restive slum in Haiti's capital, killing two Jordanian members of the force.
2007 - The largest Protestant paramilitary group in Northern Ireland, the outlawed Ulster Defense Association, renounces violence, officially ending the decades of terror it inflicted on the province's Catholic minority.
2008 - Mohamed Nasheed is sworn in as the Maldives' first democratically elected president.
Thursday, November 12
1554 - Britain's Parliament re-establishes Roman Catholicism.
1603 - Sir Walter Raleigh's high treason trial opens in Winchester, England.
1812 - Napoleon Bonaparte's army reaches Russian city of Smolensk in retreat from Moscow.
1920 - In the United States, Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis is elected baseball's first commissioner.
1927 - Leon Trotsky is expelled from Communist Party in Russia, and Josef Stalin becomes its undisputed ruler.
1933 - Nazis dominate German elections.
1937 - Japanese troops occupy Chinese city of Shanghai.
1941 - Soviet troops halt Germans at outskirts of Moscow in World War II.
1944 - The Tirpitz, the last of the major German battleships, is sunk by British bombers.
1948 - Japan's former Premier Hideki Tojo and other Japanese World War II leaders are sentenced to death by a war crimes tribunal.
1954 - Ellis Island closes after processing more than 20 million immigrants since opening in New York Harbor in 1892.
1955 - The first 101 soldiers and officers are named by Defense Minister Theodor Blank for West Germany's new postwar armed forces, the Bundeswehr.
1962 - Guam, in the Pacific, is devastated by a typhoon.
1965 - U.N. Security Council calls on all nations to refuse recognition to Rhodesia after it unilaterally declares independence from Britain.
1970 - The worst rainy season in Colombia in 40 years kills as many as 500 people, more than a thousand others missing and 30,000-60,000 people homeless in Colombia.
1976 - The U.N. General Assembly approves a resolution again calling on Turkey to withdraw its troops from Cyprus.
1982 - Yuri V. Andropov is elected to succeed the late Leonid I. Brezhnev as general secretary of the Soviet Communist Party's Central Committee.
1987 - The American Medical Association issues a policy statement saying it is unethical for a doctor to refuse to treat someone solely because that person has AIDS or is HIV-positive.
1990 - Emperor Akihito ascends the throne in Japan.
1991 - Troops in East Timor fire on pro-independence demonstrators, killing dozens.
1992 - Five Germans and two Egyptians are wounded when Islamic militants fire on them in an attempt to cripple Egypt's tourist industry.
1993 - Pop star Michael Jackson cancels world tour, citing painkiller addiction.
1994 - A million people march in Rome to protest government austerity measures.
1995 - Britain ends arm sales to Nigeria.
1996 - A Saudi jumbo jet collides shortly after takeoff from New Delhi with a Kazak airliner making its landing approach, killing 349 people.
1997 - Ramzi Yousef is found guilty of masterminding the 1993 bombing of New York's World Trade Center.
1999 - Four members of the banned Falun Gong meditation movement are convicted and sentenced to 12 years in prison in China.
2000 - Hijack drama on a Russian airliner ends after a mentally unstable man from the Russian republic of Dagestan held up the flight and forced the pilot to fly it to Israel. The 57 passengers and crew are released unhurt.
2002 - In an audiotaped message aired across the Arab world, a voice purported to be that of Osama bin Laden praises terrorist strikes in Bali, Indonesia, and Moscow and warns U.S. allies against following the "oppressive American government" in the war against terror.
2003 - A vehicle packed with explosives explodes outside the Italian military police station in Nasiriyah, killing at least 18 Italians and 13 Iraqis and wounding at least 100 others. The incident is the deadliest attack on foreign troops allied with the U.S. since the start of the invasion of Iraq.
Friday, November 13
1511 - Britain's King Henry VIII joins Holy League and enters European politics.
1553 - Lady Jane Grey goes on trial for treason in England. She had been Queen of England for nine days.
1789 - American inventor Benjamin Franklin writes a letter to a friend in which he says, "In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes."
1913 - Greece and Turkey sign peace treaty.
1918 - Republic of Austria is proclaimed; Pro-independence Wafd party is formed in Egypt.
1935 - U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt proclaims the Philippine Islands a free commonwealth.
1940 - German planes destroys most of the English town of Coventry during World War II; the Walt Disney animated movie "Fantasia" has its world premiere in New York.
1941 - Britain's finest aircraft carrier, the Ark Royal, is torpedoed by a German submarine and sinks off Strait of Gibraltar the next day.
1942 - British forces retake Tobruk, Libya, in World War II.
1945 - Sukarno becomes president of Indonesia.
1950 - Tibet appeals to the United Nations against Chinese aggression.
1961 - Congo government asks United Nations to assist in restoring law and order in Katanga Province.
1968 - Pakistan's Foreign Minister Zulkifar Ali Bhutto is arrested on charges of inciting student demonstrations against government of President Mohammed Ayub Khan.
197 -WoldHelt Ogaiztin nnunestht si i feeof sallpox for first time in history.
1985 - The Nevado de Ruiz volcano in Colombia erupts, sending an avalanche of mud and rock slamming into the town of Armero. About 25,000 people die.
2001 - A German court convicts four defendants in the 1986 bombing of a West Berlin discotheque that killed two U.S. soldiers and a Turkish woman. The Libyan secret service was accused of planning the attack.
AP
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