14 November

Events

• 1851 - Herman Melville's novel Moby-Dick is published for the first time.
• 1862 - American Civil War: Union President Abraham Lincoln approves General Ambrose Burnside's plan to capture the Confederate capital at Richmond, Virginia (this led to a dramatic Union defeat at the Battle of Fredericksburg on December 13).
• 1889 - Pioneer woman Journalist Nellie Bly (Elizabeth Cochrane) begins an attempt to beat travel around the world in less than 80 days (Bly finished the journey in 72 days, 6 hours and 11 minutes).
• 1918 - Czechoslovakia becomes a republic.
• 1922 - The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) begins radio service in the United Kingdom.
• 1940 - World War II: In England, the city of Coventry is destroyed by 500 German Luftwaffe bombers (150,000 fire bombs, 503 tons of high explosives, 130 parachute mines leveled 60,000 of the city's 75,000 buildings; 568 people were killed).
• 1941 - World War II: The aircraft carrier HMS Ark Royal sunk due to torpedo damage from U 81 sustained on November 13.
• 1965 - Vietnam War: Battle of the Ia Drang begins - In the Ia Drang Valley of the Central Highlands in Vietnam, the first major engagement of the war between regular American and North Vietnamese forces begins.
• 1969 - Apollo program: NASA launches Apollo 12, the second manned mission to the surface of the Moon.
• 1970 - Southern Airways DC-9 crashes in the mountains near Huntington, West Virgina killing 75
• 1971 - Mariner program: Mariner 9 reaches Mars, becoming the first spacecraft to orbit another planet.
• 1972 - The Dow Jones Industrial Average closes above 1,000 (1,003.16) for the first time.
• 1973 - In the United Kingdom, Princess Anne marries a commoner, Captain Mark Phillips, in Westminster Abbey (they divorced in 1992).
• 1975 - Spain abandons Western Sahara.
• 1979 - Iran hostage crisis: US President Jimmy Carter issues Executive Order 12170, freezing all Iranian assets in the United States and US banks in response to the hostage crisis.
• 1982 - The leader of Poland's outlawed Solidarity movement, Lech Walesa, is released from 11 months of internment near the Soviet border.
• 1990 - Germany and Poland sign a treaty confirming the border at the Oder-Neisse line.
• 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 13 years of exile.
• 1995 - A budget standoff between Democrats and Republicans in the United States Congress forces the federal government to temporarily close national parks and museums and run most government offices with skeleton staff.
• 2000 - Netscape Navigator version 6.0 is launched following two years of open source development creating a stable Mozilla browser upon which it is based.
• 2001 - Attack on Afghanistan: Northern Alliance fighters takeover the capital Kabul.
• 2002 - Argentina defaults on a US$805 million World Bank payment.
• 2002 - The US House of Representatives votes 215 to 203, not to create an independent commission to investigate the September 11 attacks.

Births

• 1668 - Johann von Hildebrandt, Austrian architect (d. 1745)
• 1719 - Leopold Mozart, Austrian musician, father of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
• 1765 - Robert Fulton, American inventor (d. 1815)
• 1776 - Henri Dutrochet, French physiologist (d. 1847)
• 1779 - Adam Oehlenschlager, Danish poet
• 1797 - Charles Lyell, British geologist
• 1803 - Jacob Abbott, American writer
• 1805 - Fanny Mendelssohn, composer and pianist (d. 1847)
• 1828 - James McPherson, American (Union) general (d. 1864)
• 1840 - Claude Monet, French impressionist painter (d. 1926)
• 1883 - Fred Quimby, American producer
• 1889 - Jawaharlal Nehru, Prime Minister of India (d. 1964)
• 1891 - Frederick Banting, Canadian physician, recipient of the Nobel Prize in medicine 1923 (d. 1941)
• 1896 - Mamie Eisenhower, First Lady of the United States (d. 1979)
• 1900 - Aaron Copland, American composer (d. 1990)
• 1904 - Dick Powell, actor (d. 1963)
• 1906 - Louise Brooks, actress (d. 1985)
• 1907 - Astrid Lindgren, Swedish writer (d. 2002)
• 1908 - Joseph McCarthy, American politician (d. 1957)
• 1916 - Sherwood Schwartz, television writer, producer
• 1919 - Veronica Lake, actress (d. 1973)
• 1921 - Brian Keith, actor (d. 1997)
• 1922 - Boutros Boutros-Ghali, UN Secretary-General
• 1929 - Jimmy Piersall, baseball star
• 1929 - McLean Stevenson, actor (d. 1996)
• 1930 - Edward White, American astronaut (d. 1967)
• 1935 - King Hussein of Jordan (d. 1999)
• 1939 - Wendy Carlos, American composer
• 1947 - P. J. O'Rourke, writer
• 1948 - Prince Charles, later Prince of Wales
• 1951 - Stephen Bishop, musician
• 1954 - Condoleezza Rice, U.S. National Security Advisor
• 1954 - Yanni, musician
• 1959 - Paul McGann, British actor
• 1966 - Curt Schilling, Arizona Diamondbacks pitcher, baseball star

Deaths

• 1716 - Gottfried Leibniz, philosopher, mathematician
• 1746 - Georg Steller, German naturalist (* 1709)
• 1844 - John Abercrombie, British physician
• 1907 - Andrew Inglis Clark, Australian politician
• 1915 - Booker T. Washington, inventor
• 1916 - H.H. "Saki" Munro, British writer
• 1946 - Manuel de Falla, composer
• 2000 - Robert Trout, journalist

Holidays and Observances

• India - Birthday of Jawaharlal Nehru: Children's day

See Also

November 13 - November 15 - October 14 - December 14 -- listing of all days

January, February, March, April, May, June, July, August, September, October, November, December

Referenced By