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November 20 is the 324th day of the year (325th in leap years) in the Gregorian Calendar. There are 41 days remaining.

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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.
• 1955 - RCA ofrres $35,000 contract for Elvis Presley. On the same day, Bo Diddley is the first African American performer to appear on The Ed Sullivan Show. Apparently Sullivan was infuriated when Diddley sang his self-titled song instead of Tennessee Ernie Ford's Hit, Sixteen Tons.

• 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
• 1968 - Vietnam War: Eleven men comprising a Long Range Patrol team from F Company, 58th Infantry, 101st_Airborne are surrounded and nearly wiped out by North_Vietnamese_Army regulars from the 4th and 5th Regiment. The seven wounded survivors and their fallen brothers are rescued after several hours by an impromptu force made of other men from their unit.
• 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 - The first module of the International Space Station, Zarya, was launched.
• 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.

Births

• 1602 - Otto von Guericke, German physicist and inventor (d. 1686)
• 1620 - Peregrine White, first English child born in the Massachusetts Bay Colony (d. 1704)
• 1625 - Paulus Potter, painter (d. 1654)
• 1660 - Daniel Ernst Jablonski, German theologian (d. 1741)
• 1761 - Pope Pius VIII (d. 1830)
• 1765 - Sir Thomas Fremantle, British naval captain and politician (d. 1819)
• 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, American astronomer (d. 1953)
• 1903 - Alexandra Danilova, Russian ballerina (d. 1997)
• 1908 - Alistair Cooke, English-born journalist (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
• 1966 - Kevin Gilbert, singer, composer and instrumentalist
• 1970 - Delia Gonzalez, boxer
• 1975 - Dierks Bentley, country music singer, musician

Deaths

• 870 - King Edmund of East Anglia
• 1316 - King John I of France (d. 1316)
• 1695 - Zumbi, Brazilian runaway slave
• 1737 - Caroline of Ansbach, queen of George II of Great Britain (b. 1683)
• 1742 - Melchior de Polignac, French diplomat (b. 1661)
• 1758 - Johan Helmich Roman, Swedish composer (b. 1694)
• 1764 - Christian Goldbach, Prussian mathematician (b. 1690)
• 1894 - Anton Rubinstein, Russian pianist and composer
• 1910 - Leo Tolstoy, Russian novelist
• 1925 - Queen Alexandra of the United Kingdom
• 1936 - José Antonio Primo de Rivera, activist and politician
• 1936 - Buenaventura Durruti, Italian anarchist
• 1945 - Francis William Aston, English chemist, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1877)
• 1950 - Francesco Cilea, Italian composer (b. 1866)
• 1973 - Allan Sherman, comedian
• 1975 - Francisco Franco, dictator of Spain (b. 1892)
• 1980 - John McEwen, eighteenth Prime Minister of Australia
• 1993 - Emile Ardolino, director, producer
• 2000 - Mike Muuss, computer programmer
• 2003 - Robert Addie, British actor (cancer) (b. 1960)
• 2003 - David Dacko, first President of the Central African Republic (b. 1930)
• 2003 - Eugene Kleiner, entrepreneur and venture capitalist
• 2003 - Roger Short, British Consulate General in Istanbul
• 2003 - Jim Siedow, American actor (b. 1920)
• 2003 - Kerem Yilmazer, Turkish actor
• 2004 - David Grierson, radio host

Holidays and observances

• Mexico: Anniversary of the Revolution (1910)
• Brazil: Zumbi Day (Since 1978)
• Malaysia: Birthday of Wong Choo Uei (Since 1984)
• Vietnam: Teacher's Day (Ngày nhà giáo Việt Nam)
• Transgender Day of Remembrance (since 1999)

External links

• BBC: On This Day

November 19 - November 21 - October 20 - December 20 -- listing of all days