On This Day — 11 November
2000s
2024
A vehicle-ramming attack in Zhuhai, China, kills 38 people and injures 48.
2024 Zhuhai car attack
2022
Russo-Ukrainian War: Ukrainian armed forces enter the city of Kherson following a successful two-month southern counteroffensive.
Russo-Ukrainian war
2020
Typhoon Vamco makes landfall in Luzon and several offshore islands, killing 67 people. The storm causes the worst floods in the region since Typhoon Ketsana in 2009.
Typhoon Vamco
2012
A strong earthquake with the magnitude 6.8 hits northern Burma, killing at least 26 people.
2012 Shwebo earthquake
2011
A helicopter crash just outside Mexico City kills seven, including Francisco Blake Mora the Secretary of the Interior of Mexico.
2011 in Mexico
2006
Queen Elizabeth II unveils the New Zealand War Memorial in London, United Kingdom, commemorating the loss of soldiers from the New Zealand Army and the British Army.
Elizabeth II
2004
New Zealand Tomb of the Unknown Warrior is dedicated at the National War Memorial, Wellington.
Tomb of the Unknown Warrior (New Zealand)
2004
The Palestine Liberation Organization confirms the death of Yasser Arafat from unidentified causes. Mahmoud Abbas is elected chairman of the PLO minutes later.
Palestine Liberation Organization
2002
A Fokker F27 Friendship operating as Laoag International Airlines Flight 585 crashes into Manila Bay shortly after takeoff from Ninoy Aquino International Airport, killing 19 people.
Fokker F27 Friendship
2002
Russian mathematician Grigori Perelman posts the first of three preprint texts with his proof of the Poincaré conjecture. It remains the only of the Millennium Prize Problems in mathematics to be solved. He later refused both the prize money from Clay Mathematics Institute as well as the Fields Medal for his work.
Grigori Perelman
2001
Journalists Pierre Billaud, Johanne Sutton and Volker Handloik are killed in Afghanistan during an attack on the convoy they are traveling in.
Pierre Billaud
2000
Kaprun disaster: One hundred fifty-five skiers and snowboarders die when a cable car catches fire in an alpine tunnel in Kaprun, Austria.
Kaprun disaster
1900s
1999
The House of Lords Act is given Royal Assent, restricting membership of the British House of Lords by virtue of a hereditary peerage.
House of Lords Act 1999
1993
A sculpture honoring women who served in the Vietnam War is dedicated at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C.
Vietnam War
1992
The General Synod of the Church of England votes to allow women to become priests.
General Synod of the Church of England
1982
Space Shuttle Columbia launches from the Kennedy Space Center on STS-5, the first operational mission of the Space Shuttle program.
Space Shuttle Columbia
1981
Antigua and Barbuda joins the United Nations.
Antigua and Barbuda
1977
A munitions explosion at a train station in Iri, South Korea kills at least 56 people.
Iri station explosion
1975
Australian constitutional crisis of 1975: Australian Governor-General Sir John Kerr dismisses the government of Gough Whitlam, appoints Malcolm Fraser as caretaker Prime Minister and announces a general election to be held in early December.
1975 Australian constitutional crisis
1975
Independence of Angola.
Angola
1972
Vietnam War: Vietnamization: The United States Army turns over the massive Long Binh military base to South Vietnam.
Vietnamization
1968
Vietnam War: Operation Commando Hunt initiated. The goal is to interdict men and supplies on the Ho Chi Minh trail, through Laos into South Vietnam.
Operation Commando Hunt
1967
Vietnam War: In a propaganda ceremony in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, three American prisoners of war are released by the Viet Cong and turned over to "new left" antiwar activist Tom Hayden.
Vietnam War
1966
NASA launches Gemini 12.
NASA
1965
Southern Rhodesia's Prime Minister Ian Smith unilaterally declares the colony independent as the unrecognised state of Rhodesia.
Southern Rhodesia
1965
United Air Lines Flight 227 crashes at Salt Lake City International Airport, killing 43.
United Air Lines Flight 227
1962
Kuwait's National Assembly ratifies the Constitution of Kuwait.
Kuwait
1961
Thirteen Italian Air Force servicemen, deployed to the Congo as a part of the UN peacekeeping force, are massacred by a mob in Kindu.
Kindu atrocity
1960
A military coup against President Ngô Đình Diệm of South Vietnam is crushed.
President of Vietnam
1949
The People's Liberation Army Air Force is founded.
People's Liberation Army Air Force
1942
World War II: France's zone libre is occupied by German forces in Case Anton.
Zone libre
1942
The Turkish parliament passes the Varlık Vergisi, a capital tax mostly levied on non-Muslim citizens with the unofficial aim to inflict financial ruin on them and end their prominence in the country's economy.
Grand National Assembly of Turkey
1940
World War II: In the Battle of Taranto, the Royal Navy launches the first all-aircraft ship-to-ship naval attack in history.
World War II
1940
World War II: The German auxiliary cruiser Atlantis captures top secret British mail from the Automedon, and sends it to Japan.
German auxiliary cruiser Atlantis
1934
The Shrine of Remembrance is opened in Melbourne, Australia.
Shrine of Remembrance
1930
Patent number US1781541 is awarded to Albert Einstein and Leó Szilárd for their invention, the Einstein refrigerator.
Patent
1926
The United States Numbered Highway System is established.
United States Numbered Highway System
1923
Adolf Hitler is arrested in Munich for high treason for his role in the Beer Hall Putsch.
Adolf Hitler
1921
The Tomb of the Unknowns is dedicated by U.S. President Warren G. Harding at Arlington National Cemetery.
Tomb of the Unknown Soldier (Arlington National Cemetery)
1919
The Industrial Workers of the World attack an Armistice Day parade in Centralia, Washington, ultimately resulting in the deaths of five people.
Industrial Workers of the World
1919
Latvian forces defeat the West Russian Volunteer Army at Riga in the Latvian War of Independence.
West Russian Volunteer Army
1918
World War I: Germany signs an armistice agreement with the Allies in a railroad car in the forest of Compiègne.
World War I
1918
Józef Piłsudski assumes supreme military power in Poland – symbolic first day of Polish independence.
Józef Piłsudski
1918
Emperor Charles I of Austria relinquishes power.
Charles I of Austria
1911
Many cities in the Midwestern United States break their record highs and lows on the same day as a strong cold front rolls through.
Midwestern United States
1800s
1889
The State of Washington is admitted as the 42nd state of the United States.
Washington (state)
1887
Four convicted anarchists were executed as a result of the Haymarket affair.
Anarchism in the United States
1880
Australian bushranger Ned Kelly is hanged at Melbourne Gaol.
Bushranger
1869
The Victorian Aboriginal Protection Act is enacted in Australia, giving the government control of indigenous people's wages, their terms of employment, where they could live, and of their children, effectively leading to the Stolen Generations.
Victoria (state)
1865
Treaty of Sinchula is signed whereby Bhutan cedes the areas east of the Teesta River to the British East India Company.
Duar War
1855
A powerful earthquake occurs in Edo, Japan, causing considerable damage in the Kantō region from the shaking and subsequent fires. It had a death toll of 7,000–10,000 people and destroyed around 14,000 buildings.
1855 Edo earthquake
1839
The Virginia Military Institute is founded in Lexington, Virginia.
Virginia Military Institute
1831
In Jerusalem, Virginia, Nat Turner is hanged after inciting a violent slave uprising.
Courtland, Virginia
1813
War of 1812: Battle of Crysler's Farm: British and Canadian forces defeat a larger American force, causing the Americans to abandon their Saint Lawrence campaign.
War of 1812
1805
Napoleonic Wars: Battle of Dürenstein: Eight thousand French troops attempt to slow the retreat of a vastly superior Russian and Austrian force.
Napoleonic Wars
Before 1800
1778
Cherry Valley massacre: Loyalists and Seneca Indian forces attack a fort and village in eastern New York during the American Revolutionary War, killing more than forty civilians and soldiers.
Cherry Valley massacre
1750
Riots break out in Lhasa after the murder of the Tibetan regent.
Lhasa riot of 1750
1750
The F.H.C. Society, also known as the Flat Hat Club, is formed at Raleigh Tavern, Williamsburg, Virginia. It is the first college fraternity.
Flat Hat Club
1724
Joseph Blake, alias Blueskin, a highwayman known for attacking "Thief-Taker General" (and thief) Jonathan Wild at the Old Bailey, is hanged in London.
Joseph Blake (criminal)
1675
Gottfried Leibniz demonstrates integral calculus for the first time to find the area under the graph of y = ƒ(x).
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz
1673
Second Battle of Khotyn in Ukraine: Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth forces under the command of Jan Sobieski defeat the Ottoman army. In this battle, rockets made by Kazimierz Siemienowicz are successfully used.
Battle of Khotyn (1673)
1634
Following pressure from Anglican bishop John Atherton, the Irish House of Commons passes An Act for the Punishment for the Vice of Buggery.
Anglicanism
1620
The Mayflower Compact is signed in what is now Provincetown Harbor near Cape Cod.
Mayflower Compact
1572
Tycho Brahe observes the supernova SN 1572.
Tycho Brahe
1500
Treaty of Granada: Louis XII of France and Ferdinand II of Aragon agree to divide the Kingdom of Naples between them.
Treaty of Granada (1500)
1215
The Fourth Council of the Lateran meets, defining the doctrine of transubstantiation, the process by which bread and wine are, by that doctrine, said to transform into the body and blood of Christ.
Fourth Council of the Lateran
1100
Henry I of England marries Matilda of Scotland, the daughter of Malcolm III of Scotland and a direct descendant of the Saxon king Edmund Ironside; Matilda is crowned on the same day.
Henry I of England
1028
Constantine VIII dies, ending his uninterrupted reign as emperor or co-emperor of the Byzantine Empire of 66 years.
Constantine VIII
308
At Carnuntum, Emperor emeritus Diocletian confers with Galerius, Augustus of the East, and Maximianus, the recently returned former Augustus of the West, in an attempt to end the civil wars of the Tetrarchy.
Carnuntum