November 18 is the 322nd day of the year (323rd in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 43 days remaining until the end of the year.
Holidays
Christian Feast Day:
- Abhai of Hach (Syriac Orthodox Church)
- Dedication of the Basilicas of Saints Peter and Paul
- Juthwara (Roman Catholic Church)
- Mabyn (Roman Catholic Church and Anglican communion)
- Rose Philippine Duchesne (Roman Catholic Church)
- November 5 (Eastern Orthodox liturgics)
Independence Day, celebrates the independence of Latvia from Russia in 1918.
Independence Day, celebrates the independence of Morocco from France and Spain in 1956.
The main day of the Feast of the Virgen de Chiquinquirá or Chinita’s Fair (Maracaibo, Venezuela)
History
In 326, The old St. Peter’s Basilica is consecrated.
In 401, The Visigoths, led by king Alaric I, cross the Alps and invade northern Italy.
In 1095, The Council of Clermont begins: called by Pope Urban II, it led to the First Crusade to the Holy Land.
In 1105, Maginulfo is elected the Antipope as Sylvester IV.
In 1180, Phillip II becomes king of France.
In 1210, Pope Innocent III excommunicates Holy Roman Emperor Otto IV
In 1247, Robin Hood, heroic outlaw in English folklore (b. 1160) dies. He was a heroic outlaw in English folklore who, according to legend, was a highly skilled archer and swordsman. Traditionally depicted dressed in Lincoln green, he is said to rob from the rich and give to the poor. Alongside his band of Merry Men in Sherwood Forest and against the Sheriff of Nottingham, he became a popular folk figure in the Late Middle Ages, and continues to be widely represented in literature, film and television.
At Kirklees Priory in Yorkshire stands an alleged grave with a spurious inscription, which relates to Robin Hood. The fifteenth-century ballads relate that before he died, Robin told Little John where to bury him. He shot an arrow from the Priory window, and where the arrow landed was to be the site of his grave. The Gest states that the Prioress was a relative of Robin’s. Robin was ill and staying at the Priory where the Prioress was supposedly caring for him. However, she betrayed him, his health worsened, and he eventually died there. The inscription on the grave reads, Hear underneath dis laitl stean Laz robert earl of Huntingtun Ne’er arcir ver as hie sa geud An pipl kauld im robin heud Sick [such] utlawz as he an iz men Vil england nivr si agen Obiit 24 kal: Dekembris, 1247
In 1302, Pope Boniface VIII issues the Papal bull Unam sanctam (One Faith).
In 1307, William Tell shoots an apple off his son’s head.
In 1421, A seawall at the Zuiderzee dike in the Netherlands breaks, flooding 72 villages and killing about 10,000 people. This event will be known as Sint-Elisabethsvloed.
In 1493, Christopher Columbus first sights the island now known as Puerto Rico.
In 1494, French King Charles VIII occupies Florence, Italy
In 1601, Tiryaki Hasan Pasha, provincial governor of Ottoman Empire, utterly defeats Habsburg forces, commanded by Ferdinand the Archduke of Austria during the Siege of Nagykanizsa.
In 1626, St. Peter’s Basilica is consecrated.
In 1686, Charles Francois Felix operates on King Louis XIV of France‘s anal fistula after practicing the surgery on several peasants.
In 1730, Frederick II (known as Frederick the Great), King of Prussia, is granted a royal pardon and released from confinement.
In 1785, David Wilkie, Scottish painter (d. 1841) joined us this day. Wilkie was the son of the parish minister of Cults in Fife. He developed a love for art at an early age. In 1799, after he had attended school at Pitlessie, KingsKettle and Cupar, his father reluctantly agreed to his becoming a painter. Through the influence of the Earl of Leven Wilkie was admitted to the Trustees’ Academy in Edinburgh, and began the study of art under John Graham. From William Allan (afterwards Sir William Allan and president of the Royal Scottish Academy) and John Burnet, the engraver of Wilkie’s works, we have an interesting account of his early studies, of his indomitable perseverance and power of close application, of his habit of haunting fairs and marketplaces, and transferring to his sketchbook all that struck him as characteristic and telling in figure or incident, and of his admiration for the works of Carse and David Allan, two Scottish painters of scenes from humble life.
In 1803, The Battle of Vertières, the last major battle of the Haitian Revolution, is fought, leading to the establishment of the Republic of Haiti, the first black republic in the Western Hemisphere.
In 1809, In a naval action during the Napoleonic Wars, French frigates defeat British East Indiamen in the Bay of Bengal.
In 1812, Napoleonic Wars: The Battle of Krasnoi ends in French defeat, but Marshal of France Michel Ney‘s leadership leads to him becoming known as “the bravest of the brave”.
In 1861, Dorothy Dix, was born this day, was the pseudonym of U.S. journalist Elizabeth Meriwether Gilmer. As the forerunner of today’s popular advice columnists, Dorothy Dix was America’s highest paid and most widely read female journalist at the time of her death. Her advice on marriage was syndicated in newspapers around the world. With an estimated audience of 60 million readers, she became a popular and recognized figure on her travels abroad. Her reputed practice of framing questions herself to allow her to publish prepared answers gave rise to the Australian-English term “Dorothy Dixer“, an expression widely used in Australia to refer to a question from a member of Parliament to a minister that enables the minister to make an announcement in the form of a reply (while in Australian rhyming slang, a “Dorothy”, or “Dorothy Dix”, refers to a hit for six in cricket). She died in 1951.
In 1863, King Christian IX of Denmark signs the November constitution that declares Schleswig to be part of Denmark. This is seen by the German Confederation as a violation of the London Protocol and leads to the German–Danish war of 1864.
In 1865, Mark Twain‘s short story The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County is published in the New York Saturday Press.
In 1883, American and Canadian railroads institute five standard continental time zones, ending the confusion of thousands of local times.
In 1886, Chester A. Arthur, American general, lawyer, and politician, 21st President of the United States (b. 1829) dies after suffering a cerebral hemorrhage and never regained consciousness; he died at the age of 57. He was diagnosed three years earlier with Bright’s disease, a kidney ailment now referred to as nephritis. was an American attorney and politician who served as the 21st President of the United States (1881–1885); he succeeded James A. Garfield upon the latter’s assassination. At the outset, Arthur struggled to overcome a slightly negative reputation, which stemmed from his early career in politics as part of New York’s Republican political machine. He succeeded by embracing the cause of civil service reform. His advocacy for, and subsequent enforcement of, the Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act was the centerpiece of his administration.
Arthur was born in Fairfield, Vermont, grew up in upstate New York, and practiced law in New York City. He served as quartermaster general in the New York Militia during the American Civil War. Following the war, he devoted more time to Republican politics and quickly rose in the political machine run by New York Senator Roscoe Conkling. Appointed by President Ulysses S. Grant to the lucrative and politically powerful post of Collector of the Port of New York in 1871, Arthur was an important supporter of Conkling and the Stalwart faction of the Republican Party. In 1878 the new president, Rutherford B. Hayes, fired Arthur as part of a plan to reform the federal patronage system in New York. When Garfield won the Republican nomination for president in 1880, Arthur, an eastern Stalwart, was nominated for vice president to balance the ticket.
After just half a year as vice president, Arthur found himself in the executive mansion due to the assassination of his predecessor. To the surprise of reformers, Arthur took up the cause of reform, though it had once led to his expulsion from office. He signed the Pendleton Act into law and strongly enforced its provisions. He gained praise for his veto of a Rivers and Harbors Act that would have appropriated federal funds in a manner he thought excessive. He presided over the rebirth of the United States Navy but was criticized for failing to alleviate the federal budget surplus, which had been accumulating since the end of the Civil War.
Suffering from poor health, Arthur made only a limited effort to secure the Republican Party’s nomination in 1884; he retired at the close of his term. Journalist Alexander McClure later wrote, “No man ever entered the Presidency so profoundly and widely distrusted as Chester Alan Arthur, and no one ever retired … more generally respected, alike by political friend and foe.
In 1903, The Hay–Bunau-Varilla Treaty is signed by the United States and Panama, giving the United States exclusive rights over the Panama Canal Zone.
In 1904, General Esteban Huertas steps down after the government of Panama fears he wants to stage a coup.
In 1905, Prince Carl of Denmark becomes King Haakon VII of Norway.
In 1909, Two United States warships are sent to Nicaragua after 500 revolutionaries (including two Americans) are executed by order of José Santos Zelaya.
In 1916, World War I: First Battle of the Somme – in France, British Expeditionary Force commander Douglas Haig calls off the battle which started on July 1, 1916.
In 1918, Latvia declares its independence from Russia.
In 1926, George Bernard Shaw refuses to accept the money for his Nobel Prize, saying, “I can forgive Alfred Nobel for inventing dynamite, but only a fiend in human form could have invented the Nobel Prize”.
In 1928, Release of the animated short Steamboat Willie, the first fully synchronized sound cartoon, directed by Walt Disney and Ub Iwerks, featuring the third appearances of cartoon characters Mickey Mouse and Minnie Mouse. This is also considered by the Disney corporation to be Mickey’s birthday.
In 1929, 1929 Grand Banks earthquake: off the south coast of Newfoundland in the Atlantic Ocean, a Richter magnitude 7.2 submarine earthquake, centered on Grand Banks, breaks 12 submarine transatlantic telegraph cables and triggers a tsunami that destroys many south coast communities in the Burin Peninsula.
In 1930, Soka Kyoiku Gakkai, a Buddhist association later renamed Soka Gakkai, is founded by Japanese educators Tsunesaburo Makiguchi and Josei Toda.
In 1938, Trade union members elect John L. Lewis as the first president of the Congress of Industrial Organizations.
In 1940, World War II: German leader Adolf Hitler and Italian Foreign Minister Galeazzo Ciano meet to discuss Benito Mussolini‘s disastrous invasion of Greece.
In 1943, World War II– Battle of Berlin: 440 Royal Air Force planes bomb Berlin causing only light damage and killing 131. The RAF loses nine aircraft and 53 air crew.
In 1944, The Popular Socialist Youth is founded in Cuba
In 1947, The Ballantyne’s Department Store fire in Christchurch, New Zealand, kills 41; it is the worst fire disaster in the history of New Zealand.
In 1949, The Iva Valley Shooting occurs after the coal miners of Enugu in Nigeria go on strike over withheld wages; 21 miners are shot dead and 51 are wounded by police under the supervision of the British colonial administration of Nigeria.
In 1961, United States President John F. Kennedy sends 18,000 military advisors to South Vietnam.
In 1963, The first push-button telephone goes into service.
In 1965, Henry A. Wallace, American academic and politician, 33rd Vice President of the United States (b. 1888) dies of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis of which he was diagnosed a year earlier. was the 33rd Vice President of the United States (1941–1945), the Secretary of Agriculture (1933–1940), and the Secretary of Commerce (1945–1946). In the 1948 presidential election, Wallace was the presidential nominee of the Progressive Party.
In 1933, President Franklin D. Roosevelt appointed Wallace United States Secretary of Agriculture in his Cabinet, a post Wallace’s father, Henry Cantwell Wallace, had occupied from 1921 to 1924. Henry A. Wallace was a registered Republican and would remain so until 1936, but he belonged to the progressive wing of the party and had campaigned for Democratic candidate Al Smith. Wallace was one of three Republicans whom Roosevelt appointed to his cabinet (the others were Harold Ickes, Secretary of the Interior, and William H. Woodin, Secretary of the Treasury). As Agriculture Secretary, Wallace’s policies were controversial: to raise prices of agricultural commodities he instituted the slaughtering of hogs, plowing up cotton fields, and paying farmers to leave some lands fallow. He also advocated the ever-normal granary concept. Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr, critical of Wallace in many respects, pronounced Wallace “the best secretary of agriculture the country has ever had.”
On May 8, 1942, Wallace delivered what became his most famous speech, to the Free World Association in New York City. The speech, delivered during the darkest days of the war, was formally titled “The Price of Free World Victory” but came to be identified by its phrase “the century of the common man”. This was Wallace’s answer to Republican publisher Henry Luce‘s call for an “American Century” after the war. For Wallace the war was a conflict between the slave states and the free world.
“The concept of freedom,” Wallace explained, was rooted in the Bible, with its “extraordinary emphasis on the dignity of the individual,” but only recently had it become a reality for large numbers of people. “Democracy is the only true political expression of Christianity,” he declared, adding that with freedom must come abundance. “Men and women can never be really free until they have plenty to eat, and time and ability to read and think and talk things over.”
For millions Wallace’s dangerously liberal speech defined America’s mission in the war and the vision of a peaceful and more equitable world to follow. Nevertheless, it roused the ire of the more conservative Democrats, of business leaders and conservatives, not to mention Winston Churchill, who was strongly committed to preserving Britain’s colonial empire.
In 1970, U.S. President Richard Nixon asks the U.S. Congress for $155 million in supplemental aid for the Cambodian government.
In 1978, In Jonestown, Guyana, Jim Jones led his Peoples Temple cult to a mass murder-suicide that claimed 918 lives in all, 909 of them in Jonestown itself, including over 270 children. Congressman Leo J. Ryan is murdered by members of the Peoples Temple hours earlier.
In 1987, King’s Cross fire: in London, 31 people die in a fire at the city’s busiest underground station, King’s Cross St Pancras.
In 1988, War on Drugs: U.S. President Ronald Reagan signs a bill into law allowing the death penalty for drug traffickers.
In 1991, Shiite Muslim kidnappers in Lebanon release Anglican Church envoys Terry Waite and Thomas Sutherland.
In 1991, After an 87-day siege, the Croatian city of Vukovar capitulates to the besieging Yugoslav People’s Army and allied Serb paramilitary forces.
In 1993, In the United States, the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) is ratified by the House of Representatives.
In 1993, In South Africa, 21 political parties approve a new constitution, expanding voting rights and ending white minority rule.
In 1999, In College Station, Texas, 12 are killed and 27 injured at Texas A&M University when the 59-foot-tall (18 m) Aggie Bonfire, under construction for the annual football game against the University of Texas, collapses at 2:42am.
In 2002, Iraq disarmament crisis: United Nations weapons inspectors led by Hans Blix arrive in Iraq.
In 2003, In the United Kingdom, the Local Government Act 2003, repealing controversial anti-gay amendment Section 28, becomes effective.
In 2003, The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court rules 4 to 3 in Goodridge v. Department of Public Health that the state’s ban on same-sex marriage is unconstitutional and gives the state legislature 180 days to change the law making Massachusetts the first state in the United States to grant marriage rights to same-sex couples.
In 2007, A humbled Gov. Eliot Spitzer, facing an insurrection from New York Democrats and a massive national backlash, ditched his plan to grant driver’s licenses to illegal immigrants. With two-thirds of the state’s voters opposing the plan, Spitzer was expected to tell New York’s congressional delegation that “immigration is a federal, not a state issue.“
In 2012, Pope Tawadros II of Alexandria becomes the 118th Pope of the Coptic Orthodox Church of Alexandria.
