Historical Events on November 4

Events 1 - 200 of 205

• 922 Richarius becomes bishop of Luik
• 1333 Flood of the Arno River, causing massive damage in Florence as recorded by the Florentine chronicler Giovanni Villani

• 1501 Philip de Blank & Juana "la Loca" depart to Spain
• 1519 Flood ravages Dutch and Friese coast

• 1529 English cardinal Thomas Wolsey arrested on charges of treason
• 1576 Eighty Years' War: In Flanders, Spanish defeat Walloon and capture Antwerp
• 1619 Frederick V crowned king of Bohemia
• 1631 Ferdinand of Austria installed as land guardian of South Netherlands

• 1646 Massachusetts uses death penalty for denying that Holy Bible is God's word
• 1675 Storm hits Western Europe: flood in Amsterdam
• 1737 The Teatro di San Carlo in Naples is inaugurated
• 1771 Carlo Goldoni's prose comedy "Le Bourru Bienfaisant" premieres in Paris

• 1819 Māori Chiefs Hongi Hika and Rewa sell 13,000 acres (5260 hectares) at Kerikeri to the Church Missionary Society for 48 felling axes, New Zealand
• 1839 The Newport Rising is the last large-scale armed rebellion against authority in mainland Britain

• 1845 First nationally observed uniform election day in the United States, the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November
• 1846 American inventor Benjamin Palmer from Meredith, New Hampshire, patents the artificial leg
• 1852 Count Camillo Benso di Cavour becomes the prime minister of Piedmont-Sardinia, which soon expands to become Italy
• 1854 Lighthouse built on Alcatraz Island, San Francisco Bay

• 1861 University of Washington founded in Seattle

• 1864 Battle at Reynoldsburg Island near Johnsonville, Tennessee: Confederate troops bombard Union supplies and fleet destroying four gunboats
• 1864 Confederate assault on Johnsonville, Tennessee
• 1866 Kingdom of Italy annexes Venetia
• 1867 90 kegs of powder used to get rock from Telegraph Hill, San Francisco, for seawall
• 1873 Dentist John Beers of San Francisco patents the gold crown
• 1874 Samuel J. Tilden elected governor of New York
• 1875 Massachusetts Rifle Association is founded in Boston
• 1875 Passenger Steamship "Pacific" collides with sailing vessel "Orpheus" off Cape Flattery, Washington, 236 die
• 1875 Tonga adopts constitution

• 1879 James Ritty patents first cash register, to combat stealing by bartenders in his saloon in Dayton, Ohio

• 1886 Edward MacDowell's orchestra suite "Ophelia" premieres
• 1889 Players League begins, declaring independence from baseball's NL
• 1890 Alexander Borodin's opera "Prince Igor" debuts at Mariinsky Theatre, St. Petersburg, Russia
• 1890 Great Britain proclaims Zanzibar as a protectorate
• 1890 Prince of Wales opens first underground station at Stockwell, South London
• 1893 British South Africa Company troops under Dr Jamesons occupy Bulawayo, Matabeleland
• 1903 Panama and Colombia wake up to news that the insurrectionists have declared an independent Republic of Panama
• 1904 First stadium built specifically for football (Harvard Stadium)
• 1905 Dock strike against importing grain elevators in Rotterdam
• 1908 Brooklyn Academy of Music opens in NYC

• 1910 Start of South Africa's 1st F-C game in Aust (v S Aust). It rained
• 1911 France & Germany sign treaty about Morocco & Congo
• 1914 Vogue holds 1st model show ("Fashion Fete", NYC)
• 1918 The Allied armistice with Austria-Hungary, signed 3 November, goes into effect
• 1921 Japanese Prime Minister Hara Takashi is assassinated by a right wing fanatic in Tokyo

• 1924 California legalizes professional boxing (illegal since 1914)

• 1924 Miriam (Ma) Ferguson one of the first two women elected US governor (of Texas) [See also Nellie Tayloe Ross, of Wyoming]
• 1924 Nellie Tayloe Ross one of the first two women elected US governor (Wyoming) [See also Miriam (Ma) Ferguson, of Texas]

• 1928 Jose Moncada elected president of Nicaragua
• 1928 Titanic Thompson participates in a high-stakes poker game that leads to the murder of Arnold Rothstein
• 1929 John L. Balderston's play "Berkeley Square" starring Leslie Howard premieres in NYC

• 1933 Young Park (1) in the Bronx named in honor of James Young
• 1934 After posting 7 straight shutouts to start the NFL season, Detroit Lions beat Pittsburgh, 40-7 at University of Detroit Stadium; scored upon for the first time of the season; rush for NFL single game record 426 yards
• 1939 First air conditioned automobile (Packard) exhibited, Chicago, Illinois
• 1939 US allows "cash & carry" arms sales during WW II
• 1940 Eggs & cake rationed in Netherlands
• 1942 13th day of battle at El Alamein: Afrika Korps draws back
• 1944 German troops reconquer Schmidt Hurtgenwald
• 1944 RAF bombs Dinteloord (Netherlands), 54 killed
• 1946 United Nations Educational, Scientific, & Cultural Organization (UNESCO) formed

• 1949 "One Man's Family" premieres on TV in the US, after running as a radio show since 1932
• 1950 Indonesian troops reconquer Ambon
• 1950 US troops vacate Pyongyang, North Korea
• 1951 NY Giants & NY Yanks score back-to-back TDs on kickoff returns
• 1951 Vijay Merchant scores 154 v England in his last Test Cricket innings
• 1952 Earthquake & flood strike Kamshatka-South America

• 1953 New baseball balk rule gives the batter option of accepting the outcome of the pitch or the balk
• 1954 Philadelphia A's move to Kansas City
• 1956 200,000 Russian troops attack anti-Soviet movement in Budapest, Hungary
• 1957 2nd Soviet Earth-satellite launched

• 1958 Democrats win US congressional election

• 1961 Konstantinos Karamanlis becomes premier of Greece
• 1962 US performs atmospheric nuclear test at Johnston Island

• 1965 Lee Breedlove sets female land speed record (308.56 MPH) in Utah
• 1966 Flooding of Arno River (Florence, Italy) destroys countless art works, kills 113

• 1968 Battles between Jordanian army & Al Fatah-arm forces

• 1968 WRDU (now WPTF) TV channel 28 in Raleigh-Durham, NC (NBC) 1st broadcast
• 1968 WTOG TV channel 44 in St Petersburg-Tampa, FL (IND) 1st broadcast
• 1970 Genie, a 13-year-old feral child is found in Los Angeles, California, having been locked in her bedroom by her father for most of her life

• 1972 "I Can See Clearly Now" single by Johnny Nash begins a 3-week run on the top of the charts
• 1972 Bangladesh adopts constitution
• 1972 Kings score 3 goals within 45 seconds against Islanders

• 1973 Mark Medoff's "When You Comin' Back, Red Ryder?" premieres in NYC
• 1973 New Orleans Saints 1st shutout victory, 13-0 vs Buffalo Bills
• 1973 The Netherlands experiences the first Car Free Sunday caused by the 1973 oil crisis. Highways are deserted and are solely used by cyclists and roller skaters.
• 1973 Thousands commemorate former Greek premier Georgios Papandreou

• 1977 UN Security council proclaims weapon embargo against South Africa

• 1978 Iranian troops fire on anti-Shah student protesters by Tehran University
• 1978 Islanders start 15 game undefeated streak (12-0-3)
• 1978 USSR performs nuclear test at the Semipalatinsk Test Site in northeast Kazakhstan

• 1980 Islanders start 15 game undefeated streak (13-0-2)
• 1980 Libyan invasion in Chad

• 1980 Sadaharu Oh, 40, pro-baseball's all-time HR run king with 868, retires
• 1981 Beth Henley's "Crimes of the Heart" premieres in NYC
• 1981 Columbia shuttle launch scrubbed with 31 secs remaining
• 1981 Dr George Nichopoulas is acquitted of overprescribing addictive drugs for Elvis Presley
• 1982 Ruud Lubbers becomes Dutch premier
• 1983 Bomb attack on Israeli headquarter in Tyrus Lebanon, 60 killed

• 1983 Washington Capitals first NHL overtime victory beating Vancouver 5-4

• 1984 Nicaragua holds first free elections in 56 years; Sandinistas win 63%
• 1985 "Edge of Darkness" first airs on BBC Two, featuring Bob Peck and Joanne Whalley
• 1987 Benito Santiago, Padres catcher, wins NL Rookie of Year
• 1987 Lisa Steinberg, battered into coma by her adoptive father Joel
• 1987 NBA announces 4 new franchises; Charlotte & Miami for 1988 & Minneapolis & Orlando for 1989
• 1988 First NBA game at Charlotte Coliseum - Hornets lose to Cavs, 133-93

• 1989 Alexanderplatz demonstrations for political reforms draw over half a million people in East Berlin, significant event that led to the fall of the Berlin Wall
• 1989 First NBA game at Orlando Arena, Orlando Magic loses to NJ Nets, 111-106
• 1989 Rene Muawad elected president of Lebanon
• 1989 The congress of the Solidarity Party is inaugurated in Sweden. The congress decides, contrary to the proposal of the central committee, not to disband the party.

• 1990 Iraq says it is preparing for a "dangerous war"
• 1990 US Secretary of State James Baker visits American troops in Saudi Arabia

• 1991 Mid East peace conference ends in Madrid Spain
• 1992 NY Giants announce they will quit WNEW Radio after 32 years for WOR
• 1992 NY Jets announce they are moving from WABC to WFAN radio
• 1993 Bolivia becomes a member of the Berne Convention copyright treaty

• 1994 San Francisco: First conference that focuses exclusively on the subject of the commercial potential of the World Wide Web.
• 1994 Soyuz TM-20 lands in Kazakhstan
• 1994 United Center in Chicago opens - Bulls beat Charlotte Hornets, 89-83
• 1995 KeyArena opens in Seattle, Supersonics beat the LA Lakers 103-89

• 2002 Chinese authorities arrest cyber-dissident He Depu for signing pro-democracy letter to the 16th Communist Party Congress

• 2003 Former HealthSouth CEO Richard Scrushy becomes the first person indicted under the Sarbanes-Oxley Act. He was eventually acquitted.
• 2003 The most powerful solar flare as observed by satellite instrumentation is recorded.
• 2004 12 French soldiers, 3 UN personnel and hundreds of civilians die during the Côte d'Ivoire civil war.
• 2008 American "Deftones" bassist Chi Cheng (38) suffers serious injuries in an automobile crash in Santa Clara, California, as a seatbelt-less passenger, dying 4-1/2 years later

• 2012 Bishop Tawadros appointed as the 118th Pope of the Coptic Orthodox Church
• 2012 Syrian rebels capture a major oil field in Deir ez-Zor Governorate
• 2014 Protectionist wins the 2014 Melbourne Cup
• 2014 The body of the last missing victim is found on board the wrecked Costa Concordia, during its dismantling in Genoa
• 2014 The US votes in mid-term elections: Republicans retain the house & regain the Senate
• 2014 Tim Scott becomes the first African-American Senator in the south since the Reconstruction

• 2015 Plane crashes after take-off from Juba international airport, South Sudan, killing 37, 1-year-old survives in father's arms
• 2015 Romanian Prime Minister Victor Ponta announces his resignation after protests over a Bucharest nightclub fire that killed 32

• 2016 Paris Agreement on climate change becomes effective
• 2017 Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri resigns in a shock TV broadcast from Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, amid concerns he is being forcibly detained
• 2017 Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Nusantara opens in Jakarta with items from the collection of Indonesian tycoon Haryanto Adikoesoemo
• 2017 Saudi Arabia arrests 11 princes and other ministers on corruption charges, including billionaire investor Prince Alwaleed bin Talal
• 2017 Scottish champions Celtic sets new all-time British record (63) for matches undefeated in all domestic football competitions beating St. Johnstone, 4-0 at McDiarmid Park

• 2018 Death toll from week-long storm in Italy rises to 29 with death of nine people in floods in Casteldaccia, Sicily
• 2018 New York City Marathon: Lelisa Desisa of Ethiopia runs 2:05:59, 2nd fastest men's time in history; Kenya's Mary Keitany captures her 4th women's NYC crown in 2:22:48
• 2019 Largest mass commutation in US history when 462 non-violent inmates freed from Oklahoma prisons as part of state prison reforms
• 2019 Major investigation finds unsafe lead levels in 11 Canadian cities between 2014 and 2018 mostly due to antiquated pipes
• 2019 Nine members of a US Mexican Mormon family, including six children, shot and killed in attack by criminal gang in Northern Mexico

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