Browse Historical Events by Month:
Wars, expanding empires, and critical deaths. Explore significant events and milestones from November that have helped shape the world. Dates for earlier events may be approximate.
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The Bhola cyclone, the deadliest tropical cyclone ever recorded, and one of the deadliest natural disasters in modern times occurred on this day in East Pakistan, now Bangladesh. and India's West Bengal.
The estimated fatalities were at least 300,000 and possibly as many as 500,000. primarily as a result of the storm surge that flooded much of the low-lying islands of the Ganges Delta. More
Congress changes the status of Arches to National Park in recognition of over 10,000 years of human history that flourished in this now-famous landscape of rock.
Located in Southeastern Utah, U.S., on the Colorado River just north of Moab and northeast of Canyon lands National Park, it had been previously established as a National Monument in 1929. More
An unidentified man hijacks Northwest Orient Airlines, Flight 305, a Boeing 727 aircraft, flying from Portland, Oregon, to Seattle, Washington in the U.S. The hijacker was nicknamed D. B. Cooper by the media.
He tells a flight attendant that he is armed with a bomb, demanded $200,000 in ransom (equivalent to about $1,500,000 in 2023). He later parachuted out of the aircraft with the ransom money. Despite an extensive manhunt, he was never identified or caught. More
Richard Nixon is re-elected President of the United States after defeating Senator George McGovern, Democrat from South Dakota.
Almost two years later, on the evening of August 8, 1974, President Nixon addressed the nation and announced his intention to resign. The President’s resignation letter is addressed to Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, who initialed it at 11:35 a.m. More
Pong, the first commercially successful video game is released on November 29, 1972 by Atari. It was created by Allan Alcorn as a training exercise assigned to him by Nolan Bushnell, Atari co-founder.
Bushnell and Ted Dabney, the other Atari co-founder were so surprised by the quality of Alcorn's work that they decided to manufacture the game. Pong along with the Magnavox Odyssey were instrumental in the establishment of the video game industry.
U.S. President Richard Nixon signs the Trans-Alaska Pipeline Authorization Act on November 16, 1973. The act authorized the construction of the 800-mile pipeline from the Alaska North Slope to the port city of Valdez, and it removed legal barriers that had blocked the project, largely from environmental lawsuits.
President Richard Nixon famously declared "Well, I'm not a crook" during a televised press conference on November 17, 1973. Questions had been intensifying about his role in the 1972 break-in at the Democratic National Committee headquarters in the Watergate complex and subsequent cover-up efforts as well as his personal finances. Less than nine months later, Nixon resigned to avoid impeachment.
His full quote was : "People have got to know whether or not their president is a crook. Well, I'm not a crook. I've earned everything I've got". The ongoing investigations, the "Saturday Night Massacre," and the eventual revelation of the White House tapes (including an incriminating 18 1/2-minute gap) forced his resignation.
Karen Silkwood, an American chemical technician and whistleblower, dies under suspicious circumstances while investigating safety concerns at a nuclear facility. More
Fossils of one of the oldest known human ancestors, an Australopithecus afarensis specimen nicknamed “Lucy,” were discovered in Hadar, Ethiopia's Awash Valley.
Lucy, about 3.2 million years old, stood only a meter (3.5 feet) tall. She had powerful arms and long, curved toes that paleontologists think allowed her to climb trees as well as walk upright. More
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The 729-foot iron ore freighter SS Edmund Fitzgerald, sinks in Lake Superior during a severe storm on November 10, 1975, resulting in the loss of all 29 crew members. The sinking was famously documented in Gordon Lightfoot's 1976 song; “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald".
The exact cause of the sinking is still debated, but it is known that the ship carrying a cargo of taconite pellets, The ship was struck by enormous waves, sinking in a blinding snowstorm as it sustained damage and lost its radar just before it disappeared from radar screens. The SS Edmund Fitzgerald was named after Edmund Fitzgerald, the president and later chairman of the board of the Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance Company, which commissioned the ship.
Greenmars, CC BY-SA 3.0 , via Wikimedia Commons
Suriname, officially the Republic of Suriname and previously, Dutch Guiana gains its independence from the Netherlands on November 25, 1975 after negotiations with the Dutch government.
Suriname maintains close diplomatic, economic, and cultural ties with the Netherlands. Suriname is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the north, Guyana to the west, French Guiana to the east, and Brazil to the south. It is the smallest country in South America by both territory and population.
Egyptian President Anwar Sadat makes a historic visit to Israel during which he offered a peace plan to its parliament. It was the first visit of its kind by an Arab leader to Israel. At that time, the two countries were considered at war.
The visit was a major step toward the Camp David Accords, signed by President Jimmy Carter, Egyptian President Anwar Sadat, and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin in September 1978, established a framework for a historic peace treaty concluded between Israel and Egypt in March 1979. Sadat, was assassinated during the annual victory parade held in Cairo On 6 October 1981. More
Iranian students seized the American embassy and detained more than 50 Americans, ranging from the Chargé d’Affaires to the most junior members of the staff, as hostages. The Iranians held the American diplomats hostage for 444 days. More
The British newspaper The Times, resumes publishing on November 13, 1979, after suspending publication almost a year before on December 1, 1978. The shutdown was due to a dispute between management and printing unions over new technology, automation, and union demands regarding manpower levels. The closure led to a significant loss of revenue also affecting the Times sister papers; The Sunday Times and the Times Literary Supplement.
New Zealand's flight TE901 crashes on Antarctica's Mt Erebus volcano during a sightseeing trip. All 257 people on board were killed. More
Ronald Reagan is elected President of the United States, defeating incumbent Jimmy Carter.
The U.S. space probe Voyager 1 reaches the planet Saturn. More
The Vietnam Veterans Memorial is dedicated. The most prominent feature of the memorial is a massive wall that lists the names of the more than 58,000 servicemen and women who lost their lives during the Vietnam War.
About 2.7 Million U.S. Service members served in Vietnam. including 265,000 women. It's the most-visited memorial on the National Mall in Washington, attracting more than 5 million people each year. More
The volcano Nevado del Ruiz, located about 130 kilometers from Colombia’s capital city of Bogotá, erupts spewing a violent mix of hot ash and lava into the atmosphere and causing nearly 30 meters high mudflows through the countryside where more than 23,000 people were killed most of them in the town of Armero. More
The Geneva Summit, the first meeting between U.S. President Ronald Reagan and Soviet General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev begins. The two leaders met for two days to discuss the Cold War-era arms race, primarily the possibility of reducing the number of nuclear weapons. Hosted in Geneva, Switzerland, the meeting was the first American-Soviet summit in more than six years. More
