November 20
From Wikipedia, a free encyclopedia written in simple English for easy reading.
[edit] Births
- 1602 - Otto von Guericke, German physicist and inventor (d. 1686)
- 1625 - Paulus Potter, painter (d. 1654)
- 1761 - Pope Pius VIII (d. 1830)
- 1841 - Wilfrid Laurier, seventh Prime Minister of Canada (d. 1919)
- 1858 - Selma Lagerlöf, Swedish author, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1940)
- 1864 - Erik Axel Karlfeldt, Swedish writer (d. 1931)
- 1866 - Kenesaw Mountain Landis, American judge and first baseball commissioner (d. 1944)
- 1879 - Albert S. Reitz, American evangelist
- 1884 - Norman Thomas, American social reformer (d. 1968)
- 1889 - Edwin Hubble, astronomer (d. 1953)
- 1903 - Alexandra Danilova, Russian ballerina (d. 1997)
- 1908 - Alistair Cooke, television host (d. 2004)
- 1912 - Otto von Habsburg, German head of the Austrian imperial family
- 1913 - Judy Canova, actress (d. 1983)
- 1914 - Emilio Pucci, fashion designer (d. 1992)
- 1917 - Robert Byrd, American politician
- 1919 - Evelyn Keyes, actress
- 1921 - Jim Garrison, assassination detective, author, and politician (d. 1992)
- 1923 - Nadine Gordimer, South African writer
- 1924 - Benoît Mandelbrot, mathematician
- 1925 - Robert F. Kennedy, U.S. Attorney General (d. 1968)
- 1927 - Estelle Parsons, actress
- 1932 - Richard Dawson, actor and game show host
- 1936 - Don DeLillo, American author
- 1937 - René Kollo, tenor
- 1939 - Dick Smothers, American comedian
- 1946 - Duane Allman, musician (d. 1971)
- 1946 - Greg Cook, American football player
- 1947 - Joe Walsh, musician
- 1948 - John R. Bolton, American neo-conservative
- 1948 - Barbara Hendricks, American-born soprano
- 1956 - Bo Derek, actress
- 1959 - Sean Young, actress
- 1960 - Cathy Moriarty, actress
- 1963 - Timothy Gowers, mathematician
- 1970 - Delia Gonzalez, boxer
- 1975 - Timea Vagvoelgyi, hungarian model
[edit] Deaths
[edit] Events
- 1272 - Following Henry III of England's death on November 16, his son Prince Edward becomes King of England.
- 1407 - A solemn truce between John, Duke of Burgundy and Louis of Valois, Duke of Orléans is agreed under the auspicies of John, Duke of Berry. Orléans would be assassinated three days later by Burgundy.
- 1468 - Joanot Martorell's book Tirant lo Blanc is published for the first time.
- 1700 - Great Northern War: Battle of Narva - King Charles XII of Sweden defeats the army of Tsar Peter the Great at Narva.
- 1789 - New Jersey becomes the first U.S. state to ratify the Bill of Rights.
- 1820 - An 80-ton sperm whale attacks the Essex (a whaling ship from Nantucket, Massachusetts) 2,000 miles from the western coast of South America (Herman Melville's 1851 novel Moby-Dick was in part inspired by this story).
- 1902 - Henri Desgrange and fellow journalist Géo Lefèvre dream up the idea of the Tour de France over lunch at the Cafe de Madrid in Paris.
- 1910 - Mexican Revolution: Francisco I. Madero denounces President Porfirio Díaz, declares himself president, and calls for a revolution to overthrow the government of Mexico.
- 1917 - World War I: Battle of Cambrai begins - British forces make early progress in an attack on German positions but are later pushed back.
- 1917 - Ukraine is declared a republic.
- 1940 - World War II: Hungary, Romania and Slovakia join the Axis Powers.
- 1943 - World War II: Battle of Tarawa begins - United States Marines land on Tarawa and Makin atolls in the Gilbert Islands and take heavy fire from Japanese shore guns.
- 1945 - Nuremberg Trials begin: Trials against 24 Nazi war criminals of World War II start at the Nuremberg Palace of Justice.
- 1947 - The Princess Elizabeth marries Lieutenant Philip Mountbatten at Westminster Abbey in London.
- 1962 - Cuban Missile Crisis ends: In response to the Soviet Union agreeing to remove its missiles from Cuba, US President John F. Kennedy ends the quarantine of the Caribbean nation.
- 1966 - "Cabaret" opens at the Imperial Theatre, New York
- 1969 - Vietnam War: The Cleveland Plain Dealer publishes explicit photographs of dead villagers from the My Lai massacre in Vietnam.
- 1974 - The United States Department of Justice files its final Anti-trust suit against AT&T. This suit later leads to the break up of AT&T and its Bell System.
- 1982 - Andy Kaufman was forever voted off of Saturday Night Live by a live phone poll.
- 1983 - An estimated 100 million people watch the controversial made-for-television movie The Day After, depicting the start of a nuclear war.
- 1989 - Velvet Revolution: The number of peaceful protestors assembled in Prague, Czechoslovakia swells from 200,000 the day before to an estimated half-million.
- 1992 - In England, a fire breaks out in the Private Chapel room of Windsor Castle, rages for 15 hours, and seriously damages the northwest side of the building (an investigation found that the fire was ignited after a spotlight came into contact with a curtain over an extended period).
- 1993 - Savings and Loan scandal: The United States Senate Ethics Committee issues a stern censure of California senator Alan Cranston for his "dealings" with savings-and-loan executive Charles Keating.
- 1994 - The Angolan government and UNITA rebels sign the Lusaka Protocol in Zambia, ending 19 years of civil war (in 1995 localized fighting resumed).
- 1998 - A court in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan declares accused terrorist Osama bin Laden "a man without a sin" in regards to the 1998 U.S. embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania.
- 1999 - The People's Republic of China launches its first Shenzhou spacecraft.
- 2001 - In Washington, DC, US President George W. Bush dedicates the United States Department of Justice headquarters building as the Robert F. Kennedy Justice Building, honoring the late Robert F. Kennedy on what would have been his 76th birthday.
- 2003 - Several bombs are detonated in Istanbul, Turkey destroying the Turkish head office of HSBC Holdings and the British consulate.
- 2003 - Michael Jackson is arrested by police on charges of child molestation, a charge that can carry an 8 year jail term.
- 2003 - Protests against the Free Trade Area of the Americas in Miami
