Complete Index

On Nov. 21, 1953, British scientists revealed that the fragments from the skull of the Piltdown man, discovered in 1912, were taken from human and orangutan skulls and doctored to look like an early human skull.

On Nov. 20, 1945, the International Military Tribunal began proceedings against 22 high-ranking Nazis indicted for war crimes; the Nuremberg Trials set a precedent in international human rights law.

On Nov. 19, 1863, President Abraham Lincoln delivered the Gettysburg Address, a speech that redefined the meaning of the Civil War.

Nov. 18, 1883, railways in the United States and Canada adopted Standard Railway Time, creating four standardized time zones in the U.S. and five in Canada.

On Nov. 18, 1978, more than 900 followers of the Rev. Jim Jones participated in a mass suicide in Jonestown, Guyana.

On Nov. 17, 1558, Queen Elizabeth I ascended the throne of England, succeeding her sister Mary.

On Nov. 16, 1988, Benazir Bhutto’s Pakistan People’s Party was the winner of Pakistan’s national elections, clearing the way for Bhutto to become the first female leader of a Muslim-majority nation.

On Nov. 15, 1940, German bombers completed a 10-hour blitz on Coventry, which killed over 500 people and destroyed the city’s cathedral.

On Nov. 14, 1889, journalist Nellie Bly set out to circle the globe, seeking to beat the fictional record set by Phileas Fogg in Jules Verne’s “Around the World in 80 Days.”

On Nov. 14, 1851, Herman Melville’s epic narrative of the great white whale debuted on the American literary scene, meeting mixed reviews and tepid sales.

On Nov. 13, 1956, the Supreme Court affirmed a ruling that found the segregated bus laws in Montgomery, Ala., to be unconstitutional.

On Nov. 13, 1985, a massive mudslide devastated entire towns and killed thousands in Colombia following the volcanic eruption of Nevado del Ruiz.

On Nov. 12, 1927, Josef Stalin ousted Leon Trotsky from the Communist Party, effectively ending the career of his greatest political rival. Stalin would later force Trotsky into exile and order his assassination.

On Nov. 11, 1918, representatives from Germany and the Allied forces signed an armistice that brought an end to fighting in World War I.

On Nov. 11, 2000, a cable car in Austria’s Kitzsteinhorn tunnel caught fire, killing 155 of the 167 people on board.

On Nov. 10, 1871, reporter Henry Stanley located missing British explorer David Livingstone in a small Tanzanian village, and asked, “Dr. Livingstone, I presume?”

On Nov. 9, 1989, jubilant East and West Berliners began tearing down the Berlin Wall, a symbol of the Iron Curtain for 28 years.

On Nov. 9, 1938, Nazi storm troopers launched a coordinated attack against Jewish communities, destroying property and shipping thousands to concentration camps.

On Nov. 8, 1895, German scientist Wilhelm Roentgen’s experiments with cathode rays led him to discover X-rays, a feat that earned him the first-ever Nobel Prize for Physics.

On Nov. 7, 1991, Lakers guard Magic Johnson held a press conference to announce that he had HIV.

On Nov. 6, 1860, Abraham Lincoln beat three other candidates in a presidential election divided along geographical lines. By the time Lincoln was inaugurated four months later, seven Southern states had seceded from the union.

On Nov. 6, 1977, after a week of heavy rain, the Barnes Lake Dam in Toccoa Falls ruptured and unleashed a flood of water that killed 38 people and left a small college town destroyed.

On Nov. 5, 1605, Guy Fawkes was discovered in the cellar of the House of Lords guarding barrels of gunpowder, exposing a plot to kill the king.

On Nov. 5, 1872, 48 years before the 19th Amendment gave women the right to vote, women’s rights activist Susan B. Anthony and a group of women in Rochester, N.Y., cast votes in the presidential election.

On Nov. 3, 1986, a Lebanese weekly first published the story of controversial arms sales from the United States to Iran, which was later linked to funding of the Nicaraguan Contras.

On Nov. 2, 1947, aviator Howard Hughes successfully tested the H-4 Hercules flying boat, better known as the “Spruce Goose,” the largest fixed-wing aircraft ever built.

On Nov. 1, 1950, two Puerto Rican nationalists, Oscar Collazo and Griselio Torresola, tried to assassinate President Truman in hopes of bringing their country closer to independence.

On Oct. 31, 1517, Martin Luther nailed a list of grievances against the Catholic Church onto the door of a chapel in Wittenberg, Germany; his “Ninety-five Theses” became the catalyst for the Protestant Reformation.

On Oct. 30, 1938, many Americans believed Orson Welles’ radio broadcast adaptation of H. G. Wells’ “The War of the Worlds” was reporting an actual alien invasion.

On Oct. 29, 1929, the New York Stock Exchange closed down 12 percent for the second straight day, signaling the end of the bull market of the 1920s and the beginning of the Great Depression.