The U.N. General Assembly requested Member States to take specific measures to bring about the abandonment of apartheid in South Africa, including breaking of diplomatic, trade and transport relations. It also established a Special Committee to follow developments and report to the General Assembly and the Security Council. More
Browse Historical Events by Month:
What Happened in November?
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.
Note: Sources for the historical content shown, include research and reviews of relevant Online History Resources or printed material. When possible, we show a link to a source which provides additional or unique perspective about the event.
We do our best to provide accurate information but would appreciate being notified if any incorrect information is found. You may do so by using our Feedback link.
Generals in the South Vietnamese Army depose President Ngo Dinh Diem and assassinate Diem and his brother Ngo Dinh Nhu. More
President John F. Kennedy, the 35th President of the United States is assassinated in Dallas, Texas. He was the fourth American president to be assassinated, following Abraham Lincoln in 1865 , James A. Garfield in 1881 and William McKinley in 1901. More
Jack Ruby, a Dallas nightclub owner with connections to the criminal underworld, shoots and mortally wounded Lee Harvey Oswald, the alleged assassin of President John F. Kennedy at 11:20 AM CST in the basement of the Dallas police station.
Oswald was being escorted from the city jail to the county jail at the time. He died at 1:07 PM at Parkland Memorial Hospital. Ruby was convicted but in October 1966, the Texas Court of Appeals reversed the decision on the grounds of improper admission of testimony and the fact that Ruby could not have received a fair trial in Dallas at the time. Ruby died of lung cancer in a Dallas hospital in January 1967, while awaiting a new trial, to be held in Wichita Falls, More
John F. Kennedy, the 35th president of the United States, is laid to rest with full military honors at Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia, three days after his assassination in Dallas, Texas while riding in an open-car motorcade with his wife and Texas Governor John Connally on a campaign trip. Kennedy's alleged assassin, was Ex-Marine and communist sympathizer Lee Harvey Oswald. More
Richard Nixon is elected as the 37th President of the United States (1969-1974) after previously serving as a U.S. Representative and a U.S. Senator from California. He became the only President to ever resign the office, as a result of the Watergate scandal. More
Sesame Street, a beloved educational children's television program, premieres in the United States.
Apollo 12 is launched from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida on November 14, 1969. It was the sixth crewed flight in the United States Apollo program and the second to land on the Moon.
Commander Charles "Pete" Conrad and Lunar Module Pilot Alan L. Bean spent one day and seven hours of lunar surface activity while Command Module Pilot Richard F. Gordon remained in lunar orbit.
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
.jpg?auto=format,compress&fit=clip&max-w=1600)
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