15 November 2024 (MIA)

565 – Justin II succeeds his uncle, Justinian I, as emperor of the Byzantine Empire.

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.

1705 – Battle of Zsibó: Austrian-Danish victory over 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.)

1864 – American Civil War: Union General William Tecumseh Sherman burns Atlanta and starts Sherman’s March to the Sea.

1889 – Brazil is declared a republic by Marshal Deodoro da Fonseca as Emperor Pedro II is deposed in a military coup.

1914 – Harry Turner becomes the first player to die from game-related injuries in the “Ohio League”, the direct predecessor to the National Football League.

1915 – Winston Churchill resigns from his Government, and soon commands the 6th Battalion of the Royal Scots Fusiliers on the Western Front.

1920 – First assembly of the League of Nations is held in Geneva, Switzerland.

1920 – The Free City of Danzig is established.

1922 – Over 1,000 are massacred during a general strike in Guayaquil, Ecuador.

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.

1933 – Thailand has its first election

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: The Battle of Guadalcanal ends in a decisive Allied victory.

1943 – The Holocaust: German SS leader Heinrich Himmler orders that Gypsies are to be put “on the same level as Jews and placed in concentration camps”

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.

1955 – The first part of Saint Petersburg Metro is opened.

1959 – The murders of the Clutter Family in Holcomb, Kansas, which inspired Truman Capote’s non-fiction book In Cold Blood.

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”.

1971 – Intel releases the 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 Unabomber Ted Kaczynski begins smoking in the cargo hold of a flight from Chicago to Washington, D.C., forcing the plane to make an emergency landing.

1983 – Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus declared independence. 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 – 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 Communist 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 nine-member 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.

2006 – Al Jazeera English launches worldwide.

2007 – Cyclone Sidr hits Bangladesh, killing an estimated 5,000 people and destroying parts of the world’s largest mangrove forest, the Sundarbans.

2012 – Xi Jinping becomes General Secretary of the Communist Party of China and a new seven-member Politburo Standing Committee is inaugurated.