1528 - Shipwrecked Spanish conquistador Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca becomes the first known European to set foot in Texas.
1632 - Death of King Gustavus Adolphus the Great of Sweden in the Battle of Lützen during the Thirty Years War.
1844 - The first constitution of the Dominican Republic is adopted.
1856 - The first work of fiction by the author later known as George Eliot is submitted for publication.
1861 - American Civil War: Jefferson Davis is elected president of the Confederate States of America.
1865 - American Civil War: CSS Shenandoah is the last Confederate combat unit to surrender after circumnavigating the globe on a cruise on which it sank or captured 37 vessels.
1869 - In New Brunswick, New Jersey, Rutgers University defeats Princeton University, 6-4, in the first official intercollegiate American football game.
1913 - Mohandas Gandhi is arrested while leading a march of Indian miners in South Africa.
1917 - World War I: Third Battle of Ypres ends: After three months of fierce fighting, Canadian forces take Passchendaele in Belgium.
1918 - The Second Polish Republic is proclaimed in Poland.
1925 - Secret agent Sidney Reilly is executed by the OGPU, the secret police of the Soviet Union.
1928 - Sweden begin a tradition of eating Gustavus Adolphus pastries to commemorate the king.
1934 - Memphis, Tennessee becomes the first major city to join the Tennessee Valley Authority.
1935 - Edwin Armstrong presents his paper "A Method of Reducing Disturbances in Radio Signaling by a System of Frequency Modulation" to the New York section of the Institute of Radio Engineers.
1939 - World War II: Sonderaktion Krakau takes place.
1941 - World War II: Soviet leader Joseph Stalin addresses the Soviet Union for only the second time during his three-decade rule. He states that even though 350,000 troops were killed in German attacks so far, the Germans had lost 4.5 million soldiers and that Soviet victory was near.
1942 - World War II: Carlson's patrol during the Guadalcanal Campaign begins.
1943 - World War II: the Soviet Red Army recaptures Kiev. Before withdrawing, the Germans destroy most of the city's ancient buildings.
1944 - Plutonium is first produced at the Hanford Atomic Facility and subsequently used in the Fat Man Atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki, Japan.
1947 - Meet The Press makes its television debut (the show went to a weekly schedule on September 12, 1948).
1962 - Apartheid: The United Nations General Assembly passes a resolution condemning South Africa's racist apartheid policies and calls for all UN member states to cease military and economic relations with the nation.
1963 - Vietnam War: Following the November 1 coup and execution of President Ngo Dinh Diem, coup leader General Duong Van Minh takes over leadership of South Vietnam.
1965 - Cuba and the United States formally agree to begin an airlift for Cubans who want to go to the United States. By 1971, 250,000 Cubans made use of this program.
1971 - The United States Atomic Energy Commission tests the largest U.S. underground hydrogen bomb, code-named Cannikin, on Amchitka Island in the Aleutians.
1975 - Green March begins: 300,000 unarmed Moroccans converge on the southern city of Tarfaya and wait for a signal from King Hassan II of Morocco to cross into Western Sahara.
1977 - The Kelly Barnes Dam, located above Toccoa Falls Bible College near Toccoa, Georgia, fails, killing 39.
1985 - In Colombia, leftist guerrillas of the April 19 Movement seize control of the Palace of Justice in Bogotá, eventually killing 115 people, 11 of them Supreme Court justices.
1985 - The Iran-Contra Affair: The American press reveals that U.S. President Ronald Reagan had authorized the shipment of arms to Iran.
