1016 – Cnut the Great [Canute], King of Denmark, claims the English throne after the death of Edmund ‘Ironside’. 1648 – English Parliamentary army captures King Charles I. 1731 – Beijing hit by an earthquake; about 100,000 die.
1786 – Grand Duke of Tuscany Leopold II promulgates a penal reform, making his the 1st state to abolish the death penalty. November 30 commemorated as Cities for Life Day.
1874 – Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill, the British leader who guided Great Britain and the Allies through the crisis of World War II, is born at Blenheim Palace in Oxfordshire, England.
1939 – Red Army crosses the Soviet-Finnish border with 465,000 men and 1,000 aircraft. Helsinki was bombed, and 61 Finns were killed in an air raid that steeled the Finns for resistance, not capitulation.
1974 – Most complete early human skeleton (Lucy, Australopithecus) discovered by Donald Johanson, Maurice Taieb, Yves Coppens and Tim White in the Middle Awash of Ethiopia’s Afar Depression.
1980 – Uruguay’s new constitution rejected by referendum
1988 – France performs nuclear test at Fangataufa Island
1990 – American actor Burt Lancaster suffers a stroke
1990 – US President George H. W. Bush offers to send Secretary of State James Baker to Baghdad to meet with Saddam Hussein
1999 – British Aerospace and Marconi Electronic Systems merge to form BAE Systems, Europe’s largest defence contractor and fourth largest aerospace firm in the world
2006 – South Africa’s Civil Union Act of 2006 legalizes same-sex marriage, becomes fifth country in the world and first in Africa to do so
2007 – Hillary Clinton presidential campaign office hostage crisis: Leeland Eisenberg enters campaign office of Hillary Clinton in Rochester, New Hampshire with suspected bomb and holds three people hostage for 5 hours
2014 – Australia experiences its hottest spring and second-hottest November recorded
2015 – NBA star Kobe Bryant (LA Lakers) announces his intention to retire at the end of the season
2015 – Pope Francis urges peace while visiting controversial mosque in Bangui’s PK5 district in Central African Republic
2016 – UNESCO adds Belgian beer to its Cultural Heritage List
2017 – Def Jam founder Russell Simmons steps down from his companies after allegations of sexual misconduct
2017 – Disney announces it has cast Chinese actress Liu Yifei to play Mulan in up-coming live action film
2017 – World’s longest recorded rainbow – 8 hrs 58 min in Taipei’s Yangmingshan mountain range
2018 – 7.0 magnitude earthquake near Anchorage, Alaska
2018 – Marriot Hotels reveal massive data breach – 500 million guests affected in one of largest-ever company hacks
2019 – Gun battle between suspected cartel and security forces at Villa Unión city hall, northern Mexico, kills 21
2020 – Newly discovered rock art announced found in the Serranía La Lindosa, Colombian Amazon, dated 12,600 and 11,800 years ago with thousands of paintings of now extinct Ice Age animals
Film:
1982 – “Gandhi” directed by Richard Attenborough and starring Ben Kingsley and John Gielgud premieres in New Delhi (Best Picture 1983).
1994 – Beatles’ 1st album in 25 years, “Live at the BBC”, is released in Britain.
Music:
1982 – “Thriller”, 6th studio album by Michael Jackson is released (Grammy Award Album of the Year 1984, best-selling album of all time, Billboard Album of the Year 1983).
1979 – The British rock band Pink Floyd released their 11th studio album, The Wall.
