November 19 - Events

Events

• 1095 – The Council of Clermont, called by Pope Urban II to discuss sending the First Crusade to theHoly Land, begins.
• 1493 – Christopher Columbus goes ashore on an island he first saw the day before. He names it San Juan Bautista (later renamed Puerto Rico).
• 1794 – The United States and the Kingdom of Great Britain sign Jay's Treaty, which attempts to resolve some of the lingering problems left over from the American Revolutionary War.
• 1816 – Warsaw University is established.
• 1847 – The second Canadian railway line, the Montreal and Lachine Railway, is opened.
• 1863 – American Civil War: U.S. President Abraham Lincoln delivers the Gettysburg Address at the dedication of the military cemetery ceremony at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania.
• 1881 – A meteorite lands near the village of Grossliebenthal, southwest of Odessa, Ukraine.
• 1911 – The Doom Bar in Cornwall claimed two ships, Island Maid and Angele, the latter killing the entire crew except the captain.
• 1916 – Samuel Goldwyn and Edgar Selwyn establish Goldwyn Pictures.
• 1930 – Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow commit their first robbery, the first in a long series of robberies and other criminal acts.
• 1941 – World War II: Battle between HMAS Sydney and HSK Kormoran. The two ships sink each other off the coast of Western Australia, with the loss of 645 Australians and about 77 German seamen.
• 1942 – World War II: Battle of Stalingrad – Soviet Union forces under General Georgy Zhukov launch the Operation Uranus counterattacksat Stalingrad, turning the tide of the battle in the USSR's favor.
• 1943 – Holocaust: Nazis liquidate Janowska concentration camp in Lemberg (Lviv), western Ukraine, murdering at least 6,000 Jews after a failed uprising and mass escape attempt.
• 1944 – World War II: U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt announces the 6th War Loan Drive, aimed at selling $14 billion USD in war bonds to help pay for the war effort.
• 1946 – Afghanistan, Iceland and Sweden join the United Nations.
• 1950 – US General Dwight D. Eisenhower becomes supreme commander of NATO-Europe
• 1954 – Télé Monte Carlo, Europe's oldest private television channel, is launched by Prince Rainier III.
• 1955 – National Review publishes its first issue.
• 1959 – The Ford Motor Company announces the discontinuation of the unpopular Edsel.
• 1967 – The establishment of TVB, the first wireless commercial television station in Hong Kong.
• 1969 – Apollo program: Apollo 12 astronauts Pete Conrad and Alan Bean land at Oceanus Procellarum (the "Ocean of Storms") and become the third and fourth humans to walk on the Moon.
• 1969 – Football player Pelé scores his 1,000th goal.
• 1977 – Egyptian President Anwar Sadat becomes the first Arab leader to officially visit Israel, when he meets Israeli prime ministerMenachem Begin and speaks before the Knesset in Jerusalem, seeking a permanent peace settlement.
• 1977 – Transportes Aéreos Portugueses Boeing 727 crashes in the Madeira Islands, killing 130.
• 1979 – Iran hostage crisis: Iranian leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini orders the release of 13 female and black American hostagesbeing held at the US Embassy in Tehran.
• 1984 – San Juanico Disaster: A series of explosions at the PEMEX petroleum storage facility at San Juan Ixhuatepec in Mexico Citystarts a major fire and kills about 500 people.
• 1985 – Cold War: In Geneva, U.S. President Ronald Reagan and Soviet Union leader Mikhail Gorbachev meet for the first time.
• 1985 – Pennzoil wins a $10.53 billion USD judgment against Texaco, in the largest civil verdict in the history of the United States, stemming from Texaco executing a contract to buy Getty Oil after Pennzoil had entered into an unsigned, yet still binding, buyout contract with Getty.
• 1988 – Serbian communist representative and future Serbian and Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic publicly declares that Serbia is under attack from Albanian separatists in Kosovo as well as internal treachery within Yugoslavia and a foreign conspiracy to destroy Serbia and Yugoslavia.
• 1990 – Pop group Milli Vanilli are stripped of their Grammy Award because the duo did not sing at all on the Girl You Know It's Truealbum. Session musicians had provided all the vocals.
• 1994 – In the United Kingdom, the first National Lottery draw is held. A £1 ticket gave a one-in-14-million chance of correctly guessing the winning six out of 49 numbers.
• 1996 – Lt. Gen. Maurice Baril of Canada arrives in Africa to lead a multi-national policing force in Zaire.
• 1998 – Lewinsky scandal: The United States House of Representatives Judiciary Committee begins impeachment hearings against U.S. President Bill Clinton.
• 1998 – Vincent van Gogh's Portrait of the Artist Without Beard sells at auction for $71.5 million USD.
• 1999 – Shenzhou 1: The People's Republic of China launches its first Shenzhou spacecraft.