November 20

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

Table of contents

1 Events
2 Births
3 Deaths
4 Holidays and Observances
5 See Also

Events

1272 - Following Henry III of England's death on November 16, his son Prince Edward becomes King of England.
1468 - Joanot Martorell's book Tirant lo Blanch 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).
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 soon beat 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 - Princess Elizabeth marries 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 Carribean 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.
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.

Births

1602 - Otto von Guericke, German physicist, inventor (d. 1686)
1625 - Paulus Potter, painter (d. 1654)
1669 - Susannah Annesley, mother of Methodist founders John and Charles Wesley (d. 1742)
1841 - Wilfrid Laurier, seventh Prime Minister of Canada (d. 1919)
1858 - Selma Lagerlöf, author and recipient of the Nobel Prize in literature 1909 (d. 1940)
1866 - Kenesaw Mountain Landis, judge and first baseball commissioner (d. 1944)
1879 - Albert S. Reitz, American Baptist evangelist
1884 - Norman Thomas, U.S. social reformer (d. 1968)
1889 - Edwin Hubble, astronomer (d. 1953)
1903 - Alexandra Danilova, Russian ballerina (d. 1997)
1908 - Alastair Cooke, television host
1912 - Otto von Habsburg, scion of the Austrian imperial family
1913 - Judy Canova, actress (d. 1983)
1914 - Emilio Pucci, fashion designer (d. 1992)
1917 - Robert Byrd, U.S. politician
1919 - Evelyn Keyes, actress
1921 - Jim Garrison, assassination detective, author, politician (d. 1992)
1923 - Nadine Gordimer, author and recipient of the Nobel Prize in literature 1992
1924 - Benoît Mandelbrot, mathematician
1925 - Robert F. Kennedy, U.S. politician (d. 1968)
1927 - Estelle Parsons, actress
1932 - Richard Dawson, actor, game show host
1936 - Don DeLillo, U.S. author
1937 - René Kollo, tenor
1939 - Dick Smothers, comedian, half of the Smothers Brothers
1946 - Duane Allman, musician (d. 1971)
1947 - Joe Walsh, musician
1956 - Bo Derek, actress
1959 - Sean Young, actress
1960 - Cathy Moriarty, actress
1970 - Delia Gonzalez, world champion boxer

Deaths

1894 - Anton Rubinstein, pianist and composer
1910 - Leo Tolstoy, novelist
1925 - Queen Alexandra of the United Kingdom
1936 - José Antonio Primo de Rivera, activist, politician
1936 - Buenaventura Durruti, anarchist
1973 - Alan Sherman, comedian
1975 - Francisco Franco, dictator of Spain
1993 - Emile Ardolino, director, producer

Holidays and Observances

Bahá'í Faith: Holy Day, Birth of Bahá'u'llah
Mexico: Anniversary of the Revolution (1910)