EVENTS
- 1558 – Queen Elizabeth I ascended the throne of England at the age of 25, reigning until 1603 when she was 69. Under her leadership, England became a world power, defeating the Spanish Armada, and witnessed a golden age of literature featuring works by William Shakespeare, Edmund Spenser and others.
- 1734 – New York Weekly Journal publisher John Peter Zenger was arrested and charged with libeling the colonial governor of New York. In his trial, held in August of 1735, truth was successfully used as a defense against libel, an important early step toward freedom of the press in America.
- 1800 – The first session of Congress is held in the United States Capitol building.
- 1858 – The start of Modified Julian Date. Mostly used by astronomers and astrophysicists, the Modified Julian Date (MJD) is a dating method that is defined by subtracting 2,400,000.5 days from the current Julian date (JD), which is calculated by counting the number of days past since Noon January 1, 4713 B.C.E. The MJD gives the number of days past Midnight November 17, 1858. MJD was first used in 1957 by scientists at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory to track satellites.
- 1869 – The Suez Canal, linking the Mediterranean Sea with the Red Sea, is inaugurated.
- 1954 – General Gamal Abdel Nasser became Egyptian head of state after forcing out General Mohammed Naguib.
- 1970 – The computer mouse is patented by Douglas Engelbart.
- 1973 – Athens Polytechnic Uprising Ends. The popular protests against the military junta under Georgios Papadopoulos began on November 14 when students at the polytechnic went on a strike. On the morning of November 17, the military crashed into the campus grounds using a tank and put an end of the protests. While no one was thought to have been killed on the polytechnic campus, many people were killed in clashes around the city. Today, all schools and universities are closed on November 17 to commemorate the uprising.
- 1989 – Velvet Revolution begins. A week after the fall of the Berlin Wall, a demonstration of by students commemorating International Students Day in Prague was violently shut down by riot police. The incident led to mass strikes and nonviolent around the country that ended communist rule in erstwhile Czechoslovakia and paved the way for the first democratic elections in the country in 41 years.
- 1989 – Thousands of protesters marched through the streets of Prague demanding an end to Communist rule in Czechoslovakia. Riot police and army paratroopers then moved in to crush the revolt.
- 1993 – The United Nations opened its first war crimes tribunal since the Nuremberg and Tokyo trials following World War II. Judges from 11 nations were sworn in to examine recent mass murders in Yugoslavia characterized as ethnic cleansing.
- 1993 – NAFTA, the North American Free Trade Agreement was approved by the U.S. House of Representatives by a vote of 234 to 200.
- 2003 – Arnold Schwarzenegger is inaugurated as Governor of California.
BIRTHDAYS
- 1790 – German mathematician August Mobius (1790-1868) was born in Schulpforte, Germany (He worked in the area of analytic geometry and was a pioneer in topology, the study of geometric figures that remain constant even when twisted or distorted.
- 1887 – British General Bernard L (Montgomery (1887-1976) was born in St (Mark’s Vicarage, Kennington Oval, London (He led the British Eighth Army to a major victory over the Germans at El Alamein in North Africa in 1943 (He then led the Eighth Army in the Sicilian and Italian campaigns and commanded all ground forces during D-Day.
- 1901 – Walter Hallstein (German politician, diplomat, 1st President of the European Commission)
- 1920 – Gemini Ganesan (Indian film actor)
- 1925 – Rock Hudson (Actor)
- 1942 – Martin Scorsese (Movie director)
- 1944 – Danny DeVito (Actor)
- 1944 – Tom Seaver (Baseball player)
- 1964 – Susan Rice (American diplomat, 27th United States Ambassador to the United Nations)
- 1978 – Rachel McAdams (Actress)
- 1978 – Reggie Wayne (NFL Football Player)
- 1980 – Isaac Hanson (Singer from Hanson)
- 1983 – Ryan Braun (Baseball player)
DEATHS
- 1558 – Mary I of England.
- 1768 – Thomas Pelham-Holles, 1st Duke of Newcastle (English politician, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom)
- 1796 – Catherine the Great (Russian wife of Peter III of Russia)
- 1917 – Auguste Rodin (French sculptor, created The Thinker)
- 2012 – Bal Thackeray (Indian politician)