565 – Justin II succeeds his uncle, Justinian I, as emperor of the Byzantine Empire.
1777 – American Revolutionary War: After 16 months of debate the Continental Congress approves the Articles of Confederation.
1791 – The first U.S. Catholic college, Georgetown University, opens its doors.
1864 – American Civil War: Union General William Tecumseh Sherman begins Sherman’s March to the Sea.
1915 – Winston Churchill resigns from his Government, and soon commands the 6th Battalion of the Royal Scots Fusiliers on the Western Front.
1939 – In Washington, D.C., President Franklin D. Roosevelt lays the cornerstone of the Jefferson Memorial.
1959 – The murders of the Clutter Family in Holcomb, Kansas, which inspired Truman Capote’s non-fiction book In Cold Blood.
1966 – Project Gemini: Gemini 12 completes the program’s final mission, when it splashes down safely in the Atlantic Ocean.
1971 – Intel releases the world’s first commercial single-chip microprocessor, the 4004.
1979 – A package from Unabomber Ted Kaczynski begins smoking in the cargo hold of a flight from Chicago to Washington, D.C., forcing the plane to make an emergency landing.
1985 – A research assistant is injured when a package from the Unabomber addressed to a University of Michigan professor explodes.
2006 – Al Jazeera English launches worldwide.
Births
1757 – Heinrich Christian Friedrich Schumacher, Danish surgeon, botanist, and academic (d. 1830)
1882 – Felix Frankfurter, Austrian-American lawyer and jurist (d. 1965)
1887 – Georgia Totto O’Keeffe, was an American artist best known for her paintings of enlarged flowers, New York skyscrapers, and New Mexico landscapes. O’Keeffe has been recognized as the “Mother of American modernism” (d. 1986)
1891 – W. Averell Harriman, American businessman and politician, 11th United States Secretary of Commerce (d. 1986)
1891 – Erwin Rommel, German field marshal (d. 1944)
1906 – Curtis LeMay, American general and politician (d. 1990)
1925 – Howard Baker, American lawyer, politician, and diplomat, 12th White House Chief of Staff (d. 2014)
Deaths
1280 – Albertus Magnus, German bishop, theologian, and philosopher (b. 1193)
1630 – Johannes Kepler, German astronomer and mathematician (b. 1571)
1945 – Frank Chapman, American ornithologist and photographer (b. 1864)
1978 – Margaret Mead, American anthropologist and author (b. 1901)
1996 – Alger Hiss, American lawyer and diplomat (b. 1904)
Holidays and Observances
America Recycles Day (United States)
Day of the Imprisoned Writer (International observance)
Earliest day on which Beaujolais Day can fall, while November 21 is the latest; observed on the third Thursday in November (International)