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 –Â Newly discovered rock art announced found in the SerranÃa 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.
Via Britannica / On This Day
