November 20: Meaning (information, definition, explanation, facts)

November 20 is the 324th day of the year (325th in leap years) in the Gregorian Calendar. There are 41 days remaining.

Events

• 284 - Diocletian was chosen as Roman Emperor.
• 1407 - A solemn truce between John, Duke of Burgundy and Louis of Valois, Duke of Orléans is agreed under the auspicies of John, Duke of Berry. Orléans would be assassinated three days later by Burgundy.
• 1490 - Joanot Martorell's book Tirant lo Blanc is published for the first time.
• 1695 - Zumbi, the last of the leaders of Quilombo dos Palmares in early Brazil, was executed.
• 1700 - Great Northern War: Battle of Narva - King Charles XII of Sweden defeats the army of Tsar Peter the Great at Narva.
• 1789 - New Jersey becomes the first U.S. state to ratify the Bill of Rights.
• 1820 - An 80-ton sperm whale attacks the Essex (a whaling ship from Nantucket, Massachusetts) 2,000 miles from the western coast of South America (Herman Melville's 1851 novel Moby-Dick was in part inspired by this story).
• 1902 - Henri Desgrange and fellow journalist Géo Lefèvre dream up the idea of the Tour de France over lunch at the Café de Madrid in Paris.
• 1910 - Mexican Revolution: Francisco I. Madero denounces President Porfirio Díaz, declares himself president, and calls for a revolution to overthrow the government of Mexico.
• 1917 - World War I: Battle of Cambrai begins - British forces make early progress in an attack on German positions but are later pushed back.
• 1917 - Ukraine is declared a republic.
• 1940 - World War II: Hungary, Romania and Slovakia join the Axis Powers.
• 1943 - World War II: Battle of Tarawa begins - United States Marines land on Tarawa atoll in the Gilbert Islands and suffer heavy fire from Japanese shore guns and machine guns.
• 1945 - Nuremberg Trials: Trials against 24 Nazi war criminals start at the Nuremberg Palace of Justice.
• 1947 - The Princess Elizabeth marries Lieutenant Philip Mountbatten at Westminster Abbey in London.
• 1952 - Prague Trials - a series of Stalinist and anti-Semitic show trials in Czechoslovakia.
• 1955 - Bo Diddley becomes the first African American performer to appear on The Ed Sullivan Show. Apparently Sullivan was infuriated when Diddley sang his self-titled song instead of Tennessee Ernie Ford's hit, "Sixteen Tons".
• 1955 - RCA offers a $35,000 contract for Elvis Presley.
• 1962 - Cuban Missile Crisis ends: In response to the Soviet Union's agreeing to remove its missiles from Cuba, U.S. President John F. Kennedy ends the quarantine of the Caribbean nation.
• 1966 - Cabaret opens at the Imperial Theatre, New York.
• 1968 - Vietnam War: Eleven men comprising a Long Range Patrol team from F Company, 58th Infantry, 101st Airborne are surrounded and nearly wiped out by North Vietnamese army regulars from the 4th and 5th Regiment. The seven wounded survivors are rescued after several hours by an impromptu force made of other men from their unit.
• 1969 - Vietnam War: The Cleveland Plain Dealer publishes explicit photographs of dead villagers from the My Lai massacre in Vietnam.
• 1974 - The United States Department of Justice files its final anti-trust suit against AT&T. This suit later leads to the break up of AT&T and its Bell System.
• 1982 - Andy Kaufman was forever voted off of Saturday Night Live by a live phone poll.
• 1983 - In the U.S., an estimated 100 million people watch the controversial made-for-television movie The Day After, depicting a nuclear war and its effects on the United States.
• 1989 - Velvet Revolution: The number of protestors assembled in Prague, Czechoslovakia swells from 200,000 the day before to an estimated half-million.
• 1992 - In England, a fire breaks out in the Private Chapel room of Windsor Castle, rages for 15 hours, and seriously damages the northwest side of the building (an investigation found that the fire was ignited after a spotlight came into contact with a curtain over an extended period).
• 1993 - Savings and Loan scandal: The United States Senate Ethics Committee issues a stern censure of California senator Alan Cranston for his "dealings" with savings-and-loan executive Charles Keating.
• 1994 - The Angolan government and UNITA rebels sign the Lusaka Protocol in Zambia, ending 19 years of civil war (in 1995 localized fighting resumed).
• 1998 - A court in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan declares accused terrorist Osama bin Laden "a man without a sin" in regard to the 1998 U.S. embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania.
• 1998 - The first module of the International Space Station, Zarya, was launched.
• 2001 - In Washington, D.C., U.S. President George W. Bush dedicates the United States Department of Justice headquarters building as the Robert F. Kennedy Justice Building, honoring the late Robert F. Kennedy on what would have been his 76th birthday.
• 2003 - After the November 15 bombings, a second day of the 2003 Istanbul Bombings occurs in Istanbul, Turkey, destroying the Turkish head office of HSBC Holdings and the British consulate.
• 2003 - Michael Jackson is arrested by police on charges of child molestation.

• 1602 - Otto von Guericke, German physicist and inventor (d. 1686)
• 1620 - Peregrine White, first English child born in the Massachusetts Bay Colony (d. 1704)
• 1621 - Avvakum, Russian priest and writer (d. 1682)
• 1625 - Paulus Potter, Dutch painter (d. 1654)
• 1660 - Daniel Ernst Jablonski, German theologian (d. 1741)
• 1761 - Pope Pius VIII (d. 1830)
• 1762 - Pierre André Latreille, French entomologist (d. 1833)
• 1765 - Sir Thomas Fremantle, British naval captain and politician (d. 1819)
• 1841 - Victor D'Hondt, Belgian mathematician (d. 1901)
• 1841 - Wilfrid Laurier, seventh Prime Minister of Canada (d. 1919)
• 1851 - Queen Margherita of Italy (d. 1926)
• 1858 - Selma Lagerlöf, Swedish author, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1940)
• 1864 - Erik Axel Karlfeldt, Swedish writer (d. 1931)
• 1866 - Kenesaw Mountain Landis, American judge and first baseball commissioner, named for Kenesaw Mountain in Georgia (d. 1944)
• 1884 - Norman Thomas, American social reformer (d. 1968)
• 1886 - Karl von Frisch, Austrian zoologist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (d. 1982)
• 1889 - Edwin Hubble, American astronomer. Discoverer of the wide prevelance of the Red Shift in astronomy, at Mt. Wilson Observatory in California, and for whom the Hubble Space Telescope is named (d. 1953)
• 1903 - Alexandra Danilova, Russian ballerina (d. 1997)
• 1904 - Yevgenia Ginzburg, Russian writer (d. 1977)
• 1908 - Alistair Cooke, British-born journalist who covered the United States extensively, and who became an American citizen. (d. 2004)
• 1910 - Willem Jacob van Stockum, Dutch physicist (d. 1944)
• 1912 - Otto von Habsburg, German head of the Austrian imperial family
• 1913 - Judy Canova, American actress (d. 1983)
• 1914 - Emilio Pucci, Italian fashion designer (d. 1992)
• 1917 - Robert Byrd, Long-time U.S. Senator from West Virginia, and a leader in the Senate
• 1917 - Bobby Locke, South African golfer (d. 1987)
• 1919 - Evelyn Keyes, American actress
• 1921 - Jim Garrison, American detective, author, and politician (d. 1992)
• 1923 - Nadine Gordimer, South African writer, Nobel Prize laureate
• 1924 - Benoît Mandelbrot, Polish-born mathematician who made discoveries in fracals. For whom the Mandelbrot set is named
• 1925 - Kaye Ballard, American comic actress
• 1925 - Robert F. Kennedy, U.S. Attorney General, Senator from New York State, and brother of President John F. Kennedy (d. 1968)
• 1925 - Maya Plisetskaya, Russian ballet dancer
• 1926 - Andrzej W. Schally, Polish-born endocrinologist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine
• 1927 - Estelle Parsons, American actress
• 1928 - Aleksey Batalov, Russian actor
• 1932 - Richard Dawson, British actor and game show host. Played Corporal Newkirk on "Hogan's Heroes"
• 1936 - Don DeLillo, American author
• 1937 - René Kollo, German tenor
• 1937 - Eero Mäntyranta, Finnish cross-country skier
• 1939 - Dick Smothers, American comedian - member of the Smothers Brothers duo
• 1940 - Bob Einstein, American actor better known as Super Dave Osborne
• 1942 - Joseph Biden, Long-time U.S. Senator from Delaware, and a leader in the Senate.
• 1942 - Norman Greenbaum, American singer
• 1943 - Veronica Hamel, American actress
• 1946 - Duane Allman, American guitarist. Member of the "Allman Brothers" band (d. 1971)
• 1946 - Greg Cook, American football player
• 1947 - Joe Walsh, American musician
• 1948 - John R. Bolton, U.S. Ambassador to the UN
• 1948 - Barbara Hendricks, American-born soprano
• 1948 - Richard Masur, American actor
• 1949 - Thelma Drake, U.S. Congresswoman from Virginia
• 1951 - David Walters, Governor of Oklahoma
• 1956 - Bo Derek, American actress, model, and all-around sex-symbol. Star of the movie "10"
• 1957 - Margaret Spellings, U.S. Secretary of Education
• 1959 - James P. McGovern, U.S. Congressman from Massachusetts
• 1959 - Sean Young, Noted American actress
• 1960 - Cathy Moriarty, American actress
• 1963 - Timothy Gowers, British mathematician
• 1963 - Ming-Na Wen, Macau-born actress
• 1965 - Mike D, American musician (Beastie Boys)
• 1966 - Kevin Gilbert, American musician (d. 1996)
• 1970 - Matt Blunt, Governor of Missouri
• 1970 - Delia Gonzalez, American boxer
• 1971 - Joey Galloway, American football wide receiver
• 1975 - Dierks Bentley, American singer
• 1975 - Timea Vagvoelgyi, Hungarian model
• 1975 - Davey Havok, singer AFI
• 1976 - Dominique Dawes, American gymnast

• 870 - King Edmund of East Anglia
• 1316 - King John I of France (d. 1316)
• 1518 - Marmaduke Constable, English soldier
• 1518 - Pierre de La Rue, Flemish composer
• 1529 - Karl von Miltitz, papal nuncio
• 1591 - Christopher Hatton, English politician (b. 1540)
• 1612 - John Harington, English writer (b. 1561)
• 1651 - Mikołaj Potocki, Polish soldier (b. 1595)
• 1662 - Archduke Leopold Wilhelm of Austria, Governor of the Spanish Netherlands (b. 1614)
• 1695 - Zumbi, Brazilian runaway slave
• 1737 - Caroline of Ansbach, Queen of George II of Great Britain (b. 1683)
• 1742 - Melchior de Polignac, French diplomat (b. 1661)
• 1758 - Johan Helmich Roman, Swedish composer (b. 1694)
• 1764 - Christian Goldbach, Prussian mathematician (b. 1690)
• 1778 - Francesco Cetti, Italian Jesuit scientist (b. 1726)
• 1894 - Anton Rubinstein, Russian pianist and composer (b. 1829)
• 1910 (N.S.) - Leo Tolstoy, Russian novelist (b. 1828)
• 1925 - Queen Alexandra of the United Kingdom (b. 1844)
• 1936 - Buenaventura Durruti, Spanish anarchist (b. 1896)
• 1936 - José Antonio Primo de Rivera, Spanish activist and politician (b. 1903)
• 1945 - Francis William Aston, British chemist, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1877)
• 1950 - Francesco Cilea, Italian composer (b. 1866)
• 1973 - Allan Sherman, American comedian (b. 1924)
• 1975 - Francisco Franco, Dictator of Spain (b. 1892)
• 1978 - Vasilisk Gnedov, Russian poet (b. 1890)
• 1980 - John McEwen, eighteenth Prime Minister of Australia (b. 1900)
• 1998 - Galina Starovoitova, Russian politician (b. 1946)
• 2000 - Mike Muuss, American computer programmer (b. 1958)
• 2000 - Kalle Päätalo, Finnish writer (b. 1919)
• 2003 - Robert Addie, British actor (cancer) (b. 1960)
• 2003 - David Dacko, first President of the Central African Republic (b. 1930)
• 2003 - Eugene Kleiner, American entrepreneur and venture capitalist (b. 1923)
• 2003 - Roger Short, British Consulate General in Istanbul (truck bomb) (b. 1944)
• 2003 - Jim Siedow, American actor (b. 1920)
• 2003 - Kerem Yilmazer, Turkish actor (b. 1945)
• 2004 - David Grierson, Canadian radio host (b. 1955)
• 2005 - Sheldon Gardner, American psychologist (b. 1934)
• 2005 - James King, American tenor (b. 1925)
• 2005 - Nora Denney, American actress from Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory (b. 1928)

• Church of England - Edmund the Martyr
• Brazil - Zumbi Day (Since 1978)
• United Kingdom - wedding day of Queen Elizabeth II (1947), official flag day
• Mexico - Anniversary of the Revolution (1910)
• UNICEF - Universal Children's Day
• Vietnam - Teacher's Day (Ngày nhà giáo Việt Nam)
• Transgender Day of Remembrance (since 1999) [1]

November 19 - November 21 - October 20 - December 20 -- listing of all days