November 22nd
 

1718 ~ English pirate Edward Teach, better known as Blackbeard was killed in battle off the coast of Virginia.

1890 ~ Birthday of Charles de Gaulle, General, President of France.

1900 ~ Death of Arthur S. Sullivan, Composer.

1913 ~ Birthday of Benjamin Britten, Composer.

1963 ~ Death of C. S. Lewis, Author.

1963 ~ Death of Aldous Huxley, Author. (Brave New World)

1963 ~ President Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas.

1968 ~ The Beatles released The White Album.

1977 ~ British Airways began London to New York City supersonic Concorde service.

1990 ~ UK Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher resigned.

November 23rd
 

1860 ~ Birthday of Billy the Kid, Bandit.

1869 ~ The clipper ship "Cutty Sark" was launched. It is the only surviving example.

1887 ~ Birthday of Boris Karloff, Actor.

1888 ~ Birthday of Harpo Marx, Comedian.

1936 ~ The first edition of Life was published.

1943 ~ U.S. Marines seized control of the Tarawa and Makin atolls from the Japanese.

1955 ~ Death of Shemp Howard, actor, comedian (The Three Stooges)

1963 ~ The first episode of the sci-fi TV series "Doctor Who" aired on the BBC.

1971 ~ The People's Republic of China was given the Republic of China's seat on the United Nations Security Council.

2004 ~ Dan Rather announced he would step down as principal anchorman of "The CBS Evening News".

November 24th
 

1642 ~ Abel Tasman became the first European to discover the island of Tasmania.

1853 ~ Birthday of Bat Masterson, Gunslinger, Policeman, Sports Reporter.

1859 ~ British naturalist Charles Darwin published "The Origin of Species", a book which argues that organisms gradually evolve through natural selection.

1868 ~ Birthday of Scott Joplin, Musician.

1941 ~ Birthday of Pete Best, original drummer of The Beatles.

1947 ~ The U.S. House of Representatives voted to approve citations of contempt of Congress against the so-called Hollywood 10 after they refused to co-operate with the House Un-American Activities Committee.

1963 ~ Death of Lee Harvey Oswald, assassination suspect.

1991 ~ Death of Freddie Mercury, musician (Queen).

1993 ~ In the UK, Robert Thompson and Jon Venables were convicted of the murder of 2-year-old James Bulger.

1998 ~ America Online announced it would acquire Netscape Communications.

November 25th
 

1783 ~ American Revolutionary War: The last British troops leave New York City three months after the signing of the Treaty of Paris.

1844 ~ Birthday of Karl Benz, Engineer.

1913 ~ Birthday of Lewis Thomas, Physician & Essayist.

1926 ~ Birthday of Poul Anderson, Science Fiction writer.

1940 ~ Woody Woodpecker first appeared in the film "Knock Knock"

1947 ~ New Zealand ratified the Statute of Westminster and became independent of legislative control by the United Kingdom.

1968 ~ Death of Upton Sinclair, Journalist, Politician, Writer.

1973 ~ Greek President George Papadopoulos was ousted in a bloodless military coup.

1986 ~ The Iran-Contra affair became public knowledge.

1999 ~ Six-year-old Cuban refugee Elian Gonzalez was rescued by a pair of sport fishermen off the coast of Florida.

November 26th
 

1778 ~ Captain James Cook discovered Maui, in the Hawaiian Islands.

1862 ~ Lewis Carroll sent the handwritten manuscript of “Alice's Adventures Underground” to 10-year-old Alice Liddell.

1894 ~ Birthday of Norbert Wiener, mathematician, founder of cybernetics.

1922 ~ Birthday of Charles M. Schulz, Cartoonist.

1922 ~ Howard Carter and Lord Carnarvon viewed the tomb of King Tutankhamun.

1942 ~ The film Casablanca premiered in New York City.

1942 ~ President Roosevelt ordered nationwide gasoline rationing, beginning in December.

1968 ~ Cream played their farewell concert.

1976 ~ The Band played their farewell concert.

2003 ~ Last ever flight by Concorde.

November 27th
 

8 BC ~ Death of Horace, poet. Remembered for, among other things, “carpe diem” (seize the day).

1095 ~ Pope Urban II preached the First Crusade at the Council of Clermont.

1895 ~ Alfred Nobel signed his last will and testament, setting aside his estate to establish the Nobel Prize after he died.

1907 ~ Birthday of L. Sprague de Camp, Science Fiction writer.

1921 ~ Birthday of Alexander Dubcèk, Czech politician.

1942 ~ Birthday of Jimi Hendrix, musician.

1946 ~ Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru appealed to the U.S. and the USSR to start nuclear disarmament, stating that such an action would "save humanity from the ultimate disaster".

1953 ~ Death of Eugene O'Neill, playwright.

1990 ~ John Major followed Margaret Thatcher as Prime Minister of the UK.

2001 ~ A hydrogen atmosphere was detected on the extrasolar planet Osiris by the HST, the first atmosphere detected on an extrasolar planet.

November 28th
 

1520 ~ Ferdinand Magellan became the first to sail from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific.

1632 ~ Birthday of Jean-Baptiste Lully, Composer.

1820 ~ Birthday of Friedrich Engels, social philosopher.

1859 ~ Death of Washington Irving, writer.

1905 ~ Irish nationalist Arthur Griffith founded Sinn Féin with a goal of independence for all of Ireland.

1939 ~ Death of James A Naismith, creator of basketball.

1954 ~ Death of Enrico Fermi, Physicist.

1969 ~ The Rolling Stones released the classic album Let It Bleed.

1989 ~ Velvet Revolution - The Communist Party of Czechoslovakia announced it would give up its monopoly on political power.

2000 ~ The eighth tar drop fell in the University of Queensland pitch drop experiment.

November 29th
 

1643 ~ Death of Claudio Monteverdi, Composer.

1797 ~ Birthday of Gaetano Donizetti, Opera Composer.

1832 ~ Birthday of Louisa May Alcott, Writer.

1898 ~ Birthday of C. S. Lewis, Writer.

1947 ~ The UN passed a resolution calling for Palestine to be partitioned between Arabs and Jews.

1975 ~ The name "Micro-soft" (for "microcomputer software") is first used in a letter from Bill Gates to Paul Allen.

1981 ~ Natalie Wood drowned in a boating accident off Santa Catalina Island, California.

1982 ~ The UN General Assembly passed Resolution 37/37, stating that the Soviet Union forces should withdraw from Afghanistan.

1990 ~ The UN Security Council passed Security Council Resolution 678, authorizing military intervention in Iraq if that nation did not withdraw its forces from Kuwait and free all foreign hostages by January 15, 1991.

2001 ~ Death of George Harrison, musician.

November 30th
 

1667 ~ Birthday of Jonathan Swift, Writer & Satirist.

1835 ~ Birthday of Mark Twain, Writer (Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, The Prince and the Pauper, and A Connecticut Yankee In King Arthur's Court).

1872 ~ First international soccer match played at Hamilton Crescent, Scotland.

1874 ~ Birthday of Sir Winston Churchill, British political leader & Writer.

1936 ~ In London, the Crystal Palace was destroyed in a fire. It had been built for the 1851 Great Exhibition.

1900 ~ Death of Oscar Wilde, Writer.

1954 ~ In Sylacauga, Alabama, an 8.5 pound meteorite crashed through her roof and hit Mrs. Elizabeth Hodges in her living room after bouncing off her radio. This is the only documented case of anyone being hit by a meteorite.

1993 ~ President Bill Clinton signed into law the Brady bill, which requires a five-day waiting period for handgun purchases and background checks of prospective buyers.

1999 ~ The anti-globalization movement caught police unprepared and forced the cancellation of opening ceremonies of a WTO meeting.

2004 ~ Jeopardy champion Ken Jennings lost, having won more than $2,500,000.

December 1st
 

1083 ~ Birthday of Anna Comnena, Byzantine historian.

1640 ~ Portugal regained its independence from Spain.

1824 ~ U.S. presidential election, 1824: Since no candidate received a majority of the total electoral college votes in the election, the House of Representatives was given the task to decide the winner, as stipulated by the Twelfth Amendment.

1835 ~ Hans Christian Andersen published his first book of fairy tales.

1918 ~ Founding of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes (later known as the Kingdom of Yugoslavia).

1935 ~ Birthday of Woody Allen, Film Director & Actor &Comedian.

1955 ~ Rosa Parks refused to give her bus seat to a white man and was arrested for violating the city's racial segregation laws.

1959 ~ The Antarctic Treaty signed, which set aside Antarctica as a scientific preserve and banned military activity.

1990 ~ English and French Channel Tunnel workers met beneath the English Channel.

1991 ~ Ukrainian voters overwhelmingly approved a referendum for independence from the Soviet Union.

Oh my god, that was 1990 for the tunnel in the English Channel?

December 2nd
 

1547 ~ Death of Hernán Cortés, Spanish explorer and conqueror.

1814 ~ Death of Marquis de Sade, Writer.

1859 ~ Militant abolitionist leader John Brown was hanged for his October 16th raid on Harper's Ferry.

1923 ~ Birthday of Maria Callas, Opera Singer.

1942 ~ Manhattan Project: A team led by Enrico Fermi initiate the first self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction.

1954 ~ Senator McCarthy was censured for conduct unbecoming to a senator.

1961 ~ Cuban leader Fidel Castro declared that he was a Marxist-Leninist and that Cuba was going to adopt Communism.

1990 ~ War on Drugs: Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar was shot and killed in Medellín.

1991 ~ Apple release the first version of QuickTime.

2001 ~ Enron files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.

December 3rd
 

1815 ~ Death of John Carroll - First Roman Catholic Archbishop in the U.S.

1857 ~ Birthday of Joseph Conrad, Writer.

1894 ~ Death of Robert Louis Stevenson, Writer.

1919 ~ Death of Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Painter.

1947 ~ ''A Streetcar Named Desire'' by Tennessee Williams opened on Broadway.

1967 ~ At Groote Schuur Hospital in Cape Town, South Africa, Lewis Washkansky became the first human to receive a heart transplant. The transplant team was headed by Christiaan Barnard.

1984 ~ Bhopal Disaster: A leak from a pesticide plant in Bhopal, India, killed nearly 3,000 people in one of the worst industrial disasters in history.

1989 ~ U.S. President George Bush and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev declared an end to the Cold War.

1999 ~ NASA lost contact with the Mars Polar Lander just before it entered the Martian atmosphere.

1999 ~ Death of Madeline Kahn, Actress & Comedian.

December 4th
 

1110 ~ The Crusaders captured Sidon.

1642 ~ Death of Cardinal Richelieu , French statesman.

1674 ~ Father Jacques Marquette founded a mission on the shores of Lake Michigan which would later grow into the city of Chicago, Illinois.

1679 ~ Death of Thomas Hobbes, political philosopher.

1849 ~ Birthday of Crazy Horse, American Indian leader.

1872 ~ The Mary Celeste was found by the British brig Dei Gratia. The ship had been abandoned for 9 days but was only slightly damaged.

1945 ~ The U.S. Senate approved United States participation in the United Nations.

1952 ~ Great Smog of 1952: A "killer fog" descended on London. "Smog" for "smoke" and "fog" becomes a word.

1976 ~ Death of Benjamin Britten, Composer.

1991 ~ Pan American World Airways ceased operations.

December 5th
 

1766 ~ James Christie held his first sale in London. He later founded Christie's, the world's oldest auction house.

1791 ~ Death of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Composer.

1839 ~ Birthday of George Armstrong Custer, American general.

1890 ~ Birthday of Fritz Lang, film director.

1901 ~ Birthday of Werner Karl Heisenberg, physicist.

1901 ~ Birthday of Walt Disney, film producer.

1926 ~ Sergei Eisenstein's Battleship Potemkin, debuted.

1933 ~ Prohibition ended: The Twenty-first Amendment to the U.S. Constitution is ratified. This overturned the 18th Amendment, which had outlawed the inter-state sale of alcohol.

1945 ~ A U.S. Navy training flight, Flight 19, was lost in the Bermuda Triangle.

1995 ~ The Sri Lankan armed forces took Jaffna from the Tamil Tigers.