2010 - Henryk Gorecki, Polish composer (born 1933)
Events
764 - Tibetan troops occupy Chang'an, the capital of the Chinese Tang Dynasty, for fifteen days.
1028 - Future Byzantine empress Zoe marries Romanus Argyrus according to the wishes of the dying Constantine VIII.
1439 - Plymouth, England, becomes the first town incorporated by the English Parliament.
1555 - The English Parliament re-establishes Catholicism.
1793 - Jean Sylvain Bailly, the first Mayor of Paris, is guillotined.
1847 - Sir James Young Simpson, a British physician, is the first to use chloroform as an anaesthetic.
1892 - William "Pudge" Heffelfinger becomes the first professional American football player, participating in his first paid game for the Allegheny Athletic Association.
1893 - The treaty of the Durand Line is signed between present day Pakistan and Afghanistan
1905 - (November 12 & November 13) Norway holds a referendum in favor of monarchy over republic.
1912 - The frozen bodies of Robert Scott and his men are found on the Ross Ice Shelf in Antarctica.
1938 - Hermann Göring announces Nazi Germany plans to make Madagascar the "Jewish homeland", an idea that actually was first considered by 19th century journalist Theodor Herzl.
1941 - World War II: Temperatures around Moscow drop to -12 ° C and the Soviet Union launches ski troops for the first time against the freezing German forces near the city.
1941 - The Soviet cruiser "Chervona Ukraina" is destroyed during the Battle of Sevastopol.
1942 - World War II: The Naval Battle of Guadalcanal between Japanese and American forces begins near Guadalcanal, which would last for three days.
1944 - World War II: The Royal Air Force launches 29 Avro Lancaster bombers in one of the most successful precision bombing attacks of war and sinks the German battleship Tirpitz, with 12,000 lb Tallboy bombs off Tromsø, Norway.
1946 - A branch of the Exchange National Bank in Chicago, Illinois opens the first ten drive-up teller windows.
1948 - In Tokyo, an international war crimes tribunal sentences seven Japanese military and government officials to death, including General Hideki Tojo, for their roles in World War II.
1970 - The Oregon Highway Division attempts to destroy a rotting beached Sperm whale with explosives, leading to the now infamous exploding whale incident.
1971 - Vietnam War: As part of Vietnamization, US President Richard M. Nixon sets February 1, 1972 as the deadline for the removal of another 45,000 American troops from Vietnam.
1978 - As Bishop of Rome Pope John Paul II took possession of his Cathedral Church, the Basilica of St. John Lateran
1979 - Iran hostage crisis: In response to the hostage situation in Tehran, US President Jimmy Carter orders a halt to all petroleum imports into the United States from Iran.
1980 - The NASA space probe Voyager I makes its closest approach to Saturn and takes first images of its rings.
1981 - The Space Shuttle Columbia becomes the first spacecraft to be launched twice.
1982 - In the Soviet Union, Yuri Andropov becomes the general secretary of the Soviet Communist Party's Central Committee, succeeding Leonid I. Brezhnev.
1982 - Lech Wałęsa, a Solidarity leader, is released from a Polish prison after eleven months.
1990 - Tim Berners-Lee publishes a formal proposal for the World Wide Web.
1991 - Dili Massacre, Indonesian forces open fire on a crowd of student protesters in Dili, East Timor.
1993 - Decree of President of Kazakhstan "About introducing national currency of Republic of Kazakhstan" is issued.
1996 - A Saudi Arabian Airlines Boeing 747 and a Kazakh Ilyushin Il-76 cargo plane collide in mid-air near New Delhi, killing 349.
1997 - Ramzi Yousef is found guilty of masterminding the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.
1998 - Vice President of the United States Al Gore symbolically signs the Kyoto Protocol.
1998 - Daimler-Benz completes a merger with Chrysler to form Daimler-Chrysler.
1999 - The Düzce earthquake strikes Turkey with a magnitude of 7.2 on the Richter scale.
2001 - In New York City, American Airlines Flight 587, an Airbus A300 on its way to the Dominican Republic, crashes minutes after takeoff from John F. Kennedy International Airport, killing all 260 on board and five on the ground.
2001 - 2001 Attack on Afghanistan: Taliban forces abandon Kabul, Afghanistan, ahead of advancing Afghan Northern Alliance troops.
2003 - Iraq war: In Nasiriya, Iraq, at least 23 people, among them the first Italian casualties of the 2003 Iraq war are killed in a suicide bomb attack on an Italian police base.
2003 - With 501 km/h (311 mph) Shanghai Transrapid sets up a new world record for commercial railway systems.
2006 - The former Soviet republic of South Ossetia holds a referendum on independence from Georgia.
