November 15 - Events

Events

• 655 – Battle of the Winwaed: Penda of Mercia is defeated by Oswiu of Northumbria.
• 1315 – Battle of Morgarten: the Schweizer Eidgenossenschaft ambushes the army of Leopold I.
• 1532 – Commanded by Francisco Pizarro, Spanish conquistadors under Hernando de Soto meet Inca Empire leader Atahualpa for the first time outside Cajamarca, arranging a meeting on the city plaza the following day
• 1533 – Francisco Pizarro arrives in Cuzco, the capital of the Inca Empire.
• 1688 – The Glorious Revolution begins: William of Orange lands at Brixham.
• 1705 – Battle of Zsibó - Austrian-Danish victory above the Kurucs (Hungarians)
• 1777 – American Revolutionary War: After 16 months of debate the Continental Congress approves the Articles of Confederation.
• 1791 – The first U.S Catholic college, Georgetown University, opens its doors.
• 1806 – Pike expedition: Lieutenant Zebulon Pike sees a distant mountain peak while near the Colorado foothills of the Rocky Mountains (it is later named Pikes Peak).
• 1859 – The first modern revival of the Olympic Games takes place in Athens, Greece.
• 1864 – American Civil War: Union General William Tecumseh Sherman burns Atlanta, Georgia and starts Sherman's March to the Sea.
• 1889 – Brazil is declared a republic by Marshal Deodoro da Fonseca and Emperor Pedro II is deposed in a military coup.
• 1920 – First assembly of the League of Nations is held in Geneva, Switzerland.
• 1923 – The German Rentenmark is introduced in Germany to counter Inflation in the Weimar Republic.
• 1926 – The NBC radio network opens with 24 stations.
• 1928 – The RNLI lifeboat Mary Stanford capsized in Rye Harbour with the loss of the entire 17 man crew.
• 1935 – Manuel L. Quezon is inaugurated as the second President of the Philippines.
• 1939 – In Washington, D.C., US President Franklin D. Roosevelt lays the cornerstone of the Jefferson Memorial.
• 1942 – World War II: First flight of the Heinkel He 219.
• 1942 – World War II: The Battle of Guadalcanal ends in a decisive Allied victory.
• 1943 – Holocaust: German SS leader Heinrich Himmler orders that Gypsies are to be put "on the same level as Jews and placed in concentration camps". (see Porajmos)
• 1945 – Venezuela joins the United Nations.
• 1949 – Nathuram Godse and Narayan Apte are executed for assassinating Mahatma Gandhi.
• 1951 – Greek resistance leader Nikos Beloyannis, along with 11 resistance members, is sentenced to death by the court-martial.
• 1959 – Four members of the Herbert Clutter Family are murdered at their farm outside Holcomb, Kansas.
• 1966 – Project Gemini: Gemini 12 completes the program's final mission, when it splashes down safely in the Atlantic Ocean.
• 1966 – A Boeing 727 carrying Pan Am Flight 708 crashes near Berlin, Germany, killing all three people on board.
• 1967 – The only fatality of the North American X-15 program occurs during the 191st flight when Air Force test pilot Michael J. Adams loses control of his aircraft which is destroyed mid-air over the Mojave Desert.
• 1969 – Cold War: The Soviet submarine K-19 collides with the American submarine USS Gato in the Barents Sea.
• 1969 – Vietnam War: In Washington, D.C., 250,000-500,000 protesters staged a peaceful demonstration against the war, including a symbolic "March Against Death".
• 1969 – In Columbus, Ohio, Dave Thomas opens the first Wendy's restaurant.
• 1971 – Intel releases world's first commercial single-chip microprocessor, the 4004.
• 1976 – René Lévesque and the Parti Québécois take power to become the first Quebec government of the 20th century clearly in favor of independence.
• 1978 – A chartered Douglas DC-8 crashes near Colombo, Sri Lanka, killing 183.
• 1979 – A package from the Unabomber Ted Kaczynski begins smoking in the cargo hold of a flight from Chicago, Illinois to Washington, D.C., forcing the plane to make an emergency landing.
• 1983 – Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus is founded. Recognized only by Turkey.
• 1985 – A research assistant is injured when a package from the Unabomber addressed to a University of Michigan professor explodes.
• 1985 – The Anglo-Irish Agreement is signed at Hillsborough Castle by British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and Irish Taoiseach Garret FitzGerald.
• 1987 – Continental Airlines Flight 1713, a Douglas DC-9-14 jetliner, crashes in a snowstorm at Denver, Colorado Stapleton International Airport, killing 28 occupants, while 54 survive the crash.
• 1987 – In Brașov, Romania, workers rebel against the communist regime of Nicolae Ceaușescu.
• 1988 – In the Soviet Union, the unmanned Shuttle Buran makes its only space flight.
• 1988 – Israeli–Palestinian conflict: An independent State of Palestine is proclaimed by the Palestinian National Council.
• 1988 – The first Fairtrade label, Max Havelaar, is launched in the Netherlands.
• 1990 – Space Shuttle program: Space Shuttle Atlantis launches with flight STS-38.
• 1990 – The People's Republic of Bulgaria is disestablished and a new republican government is instituted.
• 2000 – A chartered Antonov An-24 crashes after takeoff from Luanda, Angola killing more than 40 people.
• 2000 – Jharkhand state comes into existence in India.
• 2002 – Hu Jintao becomes General Secretary of the Communist Party of China and a new 9-members Politburo Standing Committee is inaugurated.
• 2003 – The first day of the 2003 Istanbul bombings, in which two car bombs, targeting two synagogues, explode, killing 25 people and wounding about 300. Additional bombings follow on November 20.
• 2005 – Boeing formally launches the stretched Boeing 747-8 variant with orders from Cargolux and Nippon Cargo Airlines.
• 2007 – Cyclone Sidr hit Bangladesh, killing an estimated 5000 people and destroyed the world's largest mangrove forest, Sundarbans.