November 14

What happened that day?

• 1770: James Bruce discovers what he believes to be the source of the Nile.
• 1812: Napoleonic Wars: Battle of Smoliani, French Marshals Victor & Oudinot defeated by Wittgenstein.
• 1851: Moby-Dick, a novel by Herman Melville, is published in the USA.
• 1862: American Civil War: President Abraham Lincoln approves General Ambrose Burnside's plan to capture the Confederate capital at Richmond, Virginia, leading to the Battle of Fredericksburg.
• 1889: Pioneering female journalist Nellie Bly (aka Elizabeth Cochrane) begins a successful attempt to travel around the world in less than 80 days. She completes the trip in 72 days.
• 1910: Aviator Eugene Burton Ely performs the first takeoff from a ship in Hampton Roads, Virginia. He took off from a makeshift deck on the USS Birmingham in a Curtiss pusher.
• 1918: Czechoslovakia becomes a republic.
• 1921: Foundation of the Communist Party of Spain.
• 1922: The British Broadcasting Company begins radio service in the United Kingdom.
• 1932: Al Shorta SC, one of Iraq's biggest football clubs, are founded as Montakhab Al Shorta.
• 1938: The Lions Gate Bridge, connecting Vancouver to the North Shore region, opens to traffic.
• 1940: World War II: In England, Coventry is heavily bombed by German Luftwaffe bombers. Coventry Cathedral is almost completely destroyed.
• 1941: World War II: The aircraft carrier HMS Ark Royal sinks due to torpedo damage from the German submarine U-81 sustained on November 13.
• 1941: World War II: In Slonim, German forces engaged in Operation Barbarossa murder 9,000 Jews in a single day.
• 1952: The first regular UK Singles Chart published by the New Musical Express.
• 1957: The "Apalachin Meeting" in rural Tioga County in upstate New York is raided by law enforcement; many high level Mafia figures are arrested while trying to flee.
• 1960: Ruby Bridges becomes the first black child to attend an all-white elementary school in Louisiana.
• 1965: Vietnam War: The Battle of Ia Drang begins: The first major engagement between regular American and North Vietnamese forces.
• 1967: The Congress of Colombia, in commemoration of the 150 years of the death of Policarpa Salavarrieta, declares this day as "Day of the Colombian Woman".
• 1967: American physicist Theodore Maiman is given a patent for his ruby laser systems, the world's first laser.
• 1969: Apollo program: NASA launches Apollo 12, the second crewed mission to the surface of the Moon.
• 1970: Soviet Union enters ICAO, making Russian the fourth official language of organization.
• 1970: Southern Airways Flight 932 crashes in the mountains near Huntington, West Virginia, killing 75, including members of the Marshall University football team.
• 1971: Enthronment of Pope Shenouda III as Pope of Alexandria.
• 1971: Mariner 9 enters orbit around Mars.
• 1973: In the United Kingdom, Princess Anne marries Captain Mark Phillips, in Westminster Abbey.
• 1973: The Athens Polytechnic uprising, a massive demonstration of popular rejection of the Greek military junta of 1967-74, begins.
• 1975: With the signing of the Madrid Accords, Spain abandons Western Sahara.
• 1979: Iran hostage crisis: US President Jimmy Carter issues Executive order 12170, freezing all Iranian assets in the United States in response to the hostage crisis.
• 1982: Lech Wałęsa, the leader of Poland's outlawed Solidarity movement, is released after eleven months of internment near the Soviet border.
• 1984: Zamboanga City mayor Cesar Climaco, a prominent critic of the government of Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos, is assassinated in his home city.
• 1990: After German reunification, the Federal Republic of Germany and Poland sign a treaty confirming the Oder-Neisse line as the border between Germany and Poland.
• 1991: American and British authorities announce indictments against two Libyan intelligence officials in connection with the downing of the Pan Am Flight 103.
• 1991: Cambodian Prince Norodom Sihanouk returns to Phnom Penh after thirteen years of exile.
• 1995: A budget standoff between Democrats and Republicans in the U.S. Congress forces the federal government to temporarily close national parks and museums and to run most government offices with skeleton staffs.
• 2001: War in Afghanistan: Afghan Northern Alliance fighters take over the capital Kabul.
• 2003: Astronomers Michael E. Brown, Chad Trujillo, and David L. Rabinowitz discover 90377 Sedna, a Trans-Neptunian object.
• 2008: The first G-20 economic summit opens in Washington, D.C.
• 2012: Israel launches a major military operation in the Gaza Strip, as hostilities with Hamas escalate.