What Happened This Day In History
A chronological timetable of historical events that occurred on this day in history. Historical facts of the day in the areas of military, politics, science, music, sports, arts, entertainment and more. Discover what happened today in history.
Today in History
November 12
| 1035 | King Canute of Norway dies. | |
| 1276 | Suspicious of the intentions of Llywelyn ap Gruffydd, the Prince of Wales, English King Edward I resolves to invade Wales. | |
| 1859 | The first flying-trapeze circus act is performed by Jules Leotard at the Circus Napoleon. | |
| 1863 | Confederate General James Longstreet arrives at Loudon, Tennessee, to assist the attack on Union General Ambrose Burnside’s troops at Knoxville. | |
| 1867 | Mount Vesuvius erupts. | |
| 1903 | The Lebaudy brothers of France set an air-travel distance record of 34 miles in a dirigible. | |
| 1923 | Adolf Hitler is arrested for his attempted German coup. | |
| 1927 | Canada is admitted to the League of Nations. | |
| 1928 | The ocean liner Vestris sinks off the Virginia cape with 328 aboard, killing 111. | |
| 1938 | Mexico agrees to compensate the United States for land seizures. | |
| 1941 | Madame Lillian Evanti and Mary Cardwell Dawson establish the National Negro Opera Company. | |
| 1944 | U.S. fighters wipe out a Japanese convoy near Leyte, consisting of six destroyers, four transports and 8,000 troops. | |
| 1944 | The German battleship Tirpitz is sunk in a Norwegian fjord. | |
| 1948 | Hikedi Tojo, Japanese prime minister, and seven others are sentenced to hang by an international tribunal. | |
| 1951 | The U.S. Eighth Army in Korea is ordered to cease offensive operations and begin an active defense. | |
| 1960 | The satellite Discoverer XVII is launched into orbit from California’s Vandenberg AFB. | |
| 1968 | The U.S. Supreme Court voids an Arkansas law banning the teaching of evolution in public schools. | |
| 1971 | President Richard Nixon announces the withdrawal of about 45,000 U.S. troops from Vietnam by February. | |
| 1987 | Boris Yeltsin is fired as head of Moscow’s Communist Party for criticizing the slow pace of reform. | |
| 1990 | Crown Prince Akihito is formally installed as Emperor Akihito of Japan. | |
| 1990 | Sir Timothy John “Tim” Berners-Lee, a British computer scientist, publishes a formal proposal for the creation of the World Wide Web. | |
| 1996 | A Saudi Arabian Airlines Boeing 747 collides with a Kazakh Illyushin II-76 cargo plane near New Delhi, killing 349. It is the deadliest mid-air collision to date (2013) and third-deadliest aircraft accident. | |
| 1997 | Ramzi Yousef convicted of masterminding the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. | |
| 2003 | The first Italians to die in the Iraq War are among 23 fatalities from a suicide bomb attack on an Italian police base in Nasiriya, iraq. | |
| 2003 | Shanghai Transrapid sets a new world speed record (311 mph or 501 kph) for commercial railway systems. | |
| Born on November 12 | ||
| 1815 | Elizabeth Cady Stanton, political reformer and founder of the Women’s Rights Convention. | |
| 1817 | Mirza Hoseyn ‘Ali Nuri (Baha’ Ullah), founder of the Baha’i faith. | |
| 1840 | Auguste Rodin, French sculptor. | |
| 1866 | Sun Yat-Sen, Chinese revolutionary who founded the Nationalist Party. | |
| 1889 | DeWitt Wallace, founder of Reader’s Digest. | |
| 1911 | Buck Clayton, jazz trumpeter. | |
| 1922 | Charlotte MacLeod, mystery writer (Rest You Merry, Maid of Honor). | |
| 1929 | Grace Kelly, American actress and Princess of Monaco. | |
| 1945 | Tracy Kidder, writer (Among Schoolchildren, Old Friends). | |
| 1945 | Neil Young, singer, songwriter, musician, producer; member of several well-known bands including Buffalo Springfield and Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young. | |
| 1952 | Ronald Burkle, business magnate; founded Yucaipa Companies private investment firm and is co-owner of the Pittsburgh Penguins pro hockey team. | |
| 1957 | Tim Samaras, engineer and storm chaser who contributed to scientific knowledge of tornadoes; killed along with his son Paul and meteorologist Carl Young by a tornado with winds of nearly 300 mph near El Reno, Okla,, in 2013. | |
| 1961 | Nadia Comaneci, Olympic gold medal-winning Romanian gymnast; named one of the athletes of the century by Laureus World Sports Academy (2000). | |
| 1962 | Naomi Wolf, activist, author of The Beauty Myth; a leader in what has been described as the third wave of the feminist movement. | |
| 1968 | Sammy Sosa, pro baseball player from Dominican Republic; only MLB player to hit 60 or more home runs in a single season three times, he was denied entry into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 2013 after as-yet unproven allegations he used performance-enhancing drugs. | |
Πρόσφατα σχόλια