• 380 - Theodosius I makes his adventus, or formal entry, into Constantinople.
• 1190 - Isabella of Jerusalem marries Conrad of Montferrat at Acre, making him de jure King.
• 1639 - Jeremiah Horrocks observes the transit of Venus, an event he'd predicted.
• 1642 - Abel Tasman becomes the first European to discover the island Van Diemen's Land (later renamed Tasmania).
• 1859 - Charles Darwin publishes The Origin of Species.
• 1863 - American Civil War: Battle of Lookout Mountain - Near Chattanooga, Tennessee, Union forces under General Ulysses S. Grant capture Lookout Mountain and begin to break the Confederate siege of the city led by General Braxton Bragg.
• 1898 - The International Conference of Rome for the Social Defense Against Anarchists opens.
• 1917 - Nine police officers and one civilian are killed when a bomb explodes at the Milwaukee, Wisconsin police headquarters building.
• 1922 - Author and Irish Republican Army member Robert Erskine Childers is executed by an Irish Free State firing squad for illegally carrying a revolver.
• 1932 - In Washington, D.C., the FBI Scientific Crime Detection Laboratory (better known as the FBI Crime Lab) officially opens.
• 1935 - The Senegalese Socialist Party holds its second congress.
• 1941 - World War II: The United States grants Lend-Lease to the Free French.
• 1943 - World War II: The USS Liscome Bay is torpedoed near Tarawa and sinks with nearly 650 men killed.
• 1944 - World War II: Bombing of Tokyo - The first bombing raid against the Japanese capital from the east and by land is carried out by 88 American aircraft.
• 1947 - Red Scare: After the so-called Hollywood 10 refuse to co-operate with the House Un-American Activities Committee concerning allegations of Communist influence in the movie industry, the United States House of Representatives votes 346 to 17 to approve citations of contempt of Congress against them.
• 1962 - The West Berlin branch of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany forms a separate party, the Socialist Unity Party of West Berlin.
• 1963 - Lee Harvey Oswald is assassinated by Jack Ruby in the basement of Dallas police department headquarters on live television.
• 1963 - Vietnam War: Newly sworn-in US President Lyndon B. Johnson confirms that the United States intends to continue supporting South Vietnam both militarily and economically.
• 1965 - Joseph Désiré Mobutu seizes power in the Congo and becomes President; he goes on to rule the country (which he renames Zaire in 1971) for over 30 years, until being overthrown by rebels in 1997.
• 1966 - A Bulgarian plane with 82 people on board crashes near Bratislava, Slovakia.
• 1966 - New York City experiences the smoggiest day in the city's history.
• 1969 - Apollo program: The Apollo 12 command module splashes down safely in the Pacific Ocean, ending the second manned mission to the Moon.
• 1971 - During a severe thunderstorm over Washington state, a hijacker calling himself Dan Cooper (AKA D.B. Cooper) parachutes from a Northwest Orient Airlines plane with US$200,000 in ransom money - neither he nor the money have ever been found.
• 1974 - Donald Johanson and Tom Gray discover the 40% complete Australopithecus afarensis skeleton, nicknamed "Lucy" after The Beatles song "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds," in the Awash Valley of Ethiopia's Afar Depression.
• 1992 - In the People's Republic of China, a China Southern Airlines domestic flight crashes, killing all 141 people on-board.
• 1993 - In Liverpool, 11-year-olds Robert Thompson and Jon Venables are convicted of the murder of 2-year-old James Bulger.
• 2005 - Conservative leader Stephen Harper, the leader of the Official Opposition in the Canadian Parliament, introduces a motion of no confidence, which NDP leader Jack Layton seconds. The motion is passed on November 28 leading to the dissolution of the 38th Canadian Parliament.
• 2006 - Israeli rapist Benny Sela escapes from police custody while being transferred to a court hearing.

Births