Week of November 14 in History

November 14 is the 318th day of the year. There are 47 days remaining until the end of the year.

November 14 is International World Diabetes Day.

• 1863 – Leo Baekeland, Flemish-American chemist & inventor of Bakelite. He died in 1944.
• 1889 – Pioneering journalist Nellie Bly began a successful around-the-world trip in less than 80 days. She completed the trip in 72 days.
• 1889 – Jawaharlal Nehru, first Prime Minister of India, was born. He died in 1964.
• 2003 – Astronomers discovered 90377 Sedna, a Trans-Neptunian object.
• 2007 – The last direct-current electrical distribution system in the US was shut down in NYC.

November 15 is the 319th day of the year. There are 46 days remaining until the end of the year.

• 1859 – The first modern revival of the Olympic Games took place in Athens, Greece.
• 1887 – Georgia O’Keeffe, American painter, was born. She died in 1986.
• 1920 – The first assembly of the League of Nations was held in Geneva.
• 1939– President Franklin D. Roosevelt laid the cornerstone of the Jefferson Memorial in Washington, D.C.
• 1969 – In Washington, D.C., 250,000-500,000 protesters staged a peaceful demonstration against the Vietnam war.
• 1971 – Intel released the world's first commercial single-chip microprocessor.

November 16 is the 320th day of the year. There are 45 days remaining until the end of the year

• 1821 – Missouri trader William Becknell arrived in Santa Fe, New Mexico over a route that became known as the Santa Fe Trail. 
• 1849 – Fyodor Dostoevsky was sentenced to death for anti-government activities.
• 1907 – Indian Territory and Oklahoma Territory join to form Oklahoma and  is admitted as the 46th U.S. state.
• 1914  – The U.S. Federal Reserve Bank officially opened.
• 1945 – UNESCO was founded.
• 2000 – Bill Clinton became the first U.S. President to visit Vietnam since the end of the Vietnam War.

November 17 is the 321st day of the year. There are 44 days remaining until the end of the year.

• 1558 – Elizabeth I ascends the English throne upon the death of her half-sister Mary I.
• 1800 – The US Congress held its first session in Washington, D.C.
• 1855 – David Livingstone became the first European to see the Victoria Falls in present-day Zambia-Zimbawe, Africa.
• 1947 – The US Screen Actors Guild implemented an anti-Communist loyalty oath.
• 1947 – American scientists observed the basic principles of the transistor, a key element for the electronics revolution of the 20th century.
• 1962 – Dulles International Airport, serving the Washington, D.C., opened to traffic.
• 1964 – Susan Rice, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations.
• 1970 – The computer mouse is patented by Douglas Engelbart.

November 18 is the 322nd day of the year. There are 43 days remaining until the end of the year

• 1477 – Dictes or Sayengis of the Philosophres was the first book printed on a printing press in England.
• 1626 – St. Peter’s Basilica was consecrated.
• 1793 – The Louvre officially opened in Paris, France.
• 1865 – Mark Twain’s story The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County was published in the New York Saturday Press.
• 1883 – American and Canadian railroad companies instituted five standard continental time zones, ending the confusion caused by thousands of local times.
• 1926 – George Bernard Shaw refused to accept the money for his Nobel Prize, saying, "I can forgive Alfred Nobel for inventing dynamite, but only a fiend in human form could have invented the Nobel Prize."
• 1928 – Release of the animated short Steamboat Willie, the first fully synchronized sound cartoon, directed by Walt Disney and Ub Iwerks, featuring the third appearances of cartoon characters Mickey Mouse and Minnie Mouse. This is also considered by the Disney corporation to be Mickey's birthday.
• 1963 – The first push-button telephone went into service.

November 19 is the 323rd day of the year. There are 42 days remaining until the end of the year.

• 1863 – President Abraham Lincoln delivered the Gettysburg Address at the dedication of the military cemetery at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania.
• 1943 – During the evacuation of the Janowska concentration camp in Lemberg (Lviv), western Ukraine, the Jews staged an uprising and mass escape attempt. The Nazis murdered 6,000 Jews in retaliation.
• 1977 – Egyptian President Anwar Sadat became the first Arab leader to officially visit Israel, when he met Israeli prime minister Menachem Begin and spoke before the Knesset in Jerusalem seeking a permanent peace settlement in the region.
• 1985 – Pennzoil won a $10.53 billion judgment against Texaco as a result of Texaco executing a contract to buy Getty Oil after Pennzoil had entered into an unsigned, yet binding, buyout contract with Getty. It was the largest civil verdict in the history of the US.

November 20 is the 324th day of the year. There are 41 days remaining until the end of the year.

• 1789 – New Jersey became the first US state to ratify the Bill of Rights.
• 1820 – An 80-ton sperm whale attacked the Essex, a whaling ship from Nantucket, MA, 2,000 miles from the western coast of South America. Herman Melville was inspired to write Moby Dick.
• 1910 – Leo Nikolayevich Tolstoy, Russian novelist, died. He was born in 1828
• 1945 – The Nuremberg Trials began against 24 Nazi war criminals at the Palace of Justice in Nuremberg, Germany.
• 1974 – The US Department of Justice filed its final anti-trust suit against suit against AT&T resulting in the break up of AT&T and its Bell System.
• 1984 – The SETI Institute was founded.
• 1992 – In England, a fire broke out in Windsor Castle causing over £50 million worth of damage.