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November 21

Events

164 BC - Judas Maccabaeus, son of Mattathias of the Hasmonean family, restores the Temple in Jerusalem. Events commemorated each year by the festival of Hanukkah.
1272 - Following Henry III of England's death on November 16, his son Prince Edward becomes King of England.
1620 - Plymouth Colony settlers sign the Mayflower Compact (November 11, O.S.).
1783 - In Paris, Jean-François Pilâtre de Rozier and François Laurent, Marquis d'Arlandes, make the first untethered hot air balloon flight.
1789 - North Carolina ratifies the United States Constitution and is admitted as the 12th U.S. state.
1791 - Colonel Napoléon Bonaparte is promoted to full general and appointed Commander-in-Chief of the Armies of the French Republic.
1861 - American Civil War: Confederate President Jefferson Davis appoints Judah Benjamin secretary of war.
1877 - Thomas Edison announces his invention of the phonograph, a machine that can record and play sound.
1894 - Port Arthur massacre: Port Arthur, Manchuria falls to the Japanese, a decisive victory of the First Sino-Japanese War.
1905 - Albert Einstein's paper, "Does the Inertia of a Body Depend Upon Its Energy Content?", is published in the journal "Annalen der Physik". This paper reveals the relationship between energy and mass. This leads to the mass–energy equivalence formula E = mc².
1916 - HMHS Britannic sinks in the Aegean Sea after a mine explodes, killing 30 people.
1920 - Bloody Sunday during the Anglo-Irish War.
1922 - Rebecca Latimer Felton of Georgia takes the oath of office, becoming the first female United States Senator.
1927 - Columbine Mine Massacre: Striking coal miners were allegedly attacked with machine guns by a detachment of state police dressed in civilian clothes.
1942 - The completion of the Alaska Highway (also known as the Alcan Highway) is celebrated (however, the highway was not usable by general vehicles until 1943).
1953 - Authorities at the British Natural History Museum announce that the "Piltdown Man" skull, held to be one of the most famous fossil skulls in the world, was a hoax.
1962 - The Chinese People's Liberation Army declares a unilateral cease-fire in the Sino-Indian War.
1964 - The Verrazano-Narrows Bridge opens to traffic (at the time it was the world's longest suspension bridge).
1964 - Second Vatican Council: The third session of the Roman Catholic Church's ecumenical council closes.
1967 - Vietnam War: American General William Westmoreland tells news reporters: "I am absolutely certain that whereas in 1965 the enemy was winning, today he is certainly losing."
1969 - U.S. President Richard Nixon and Japanese Premier Eisaku Sato agree in Washington, D.C. on the return of Okinawa to Japanese control in 1972. Under the terms of the agreement, the U.S. is to retain its rights to bases on the island, but these are to be nuclear-free.
1970 - Vietnam War: Operation Ivory Coast - A joint Air Force and Army team raids the Son Tay prison camp in an attempt to free American prisoners of war thought to be held there.
1971 - Indian troops partly aided by Mukti Bahini (Bengali guerrillas) defeat the Pakistan army in the Battle of Garibpur.
1974 - The Birmingham Pub Bombings by the IRA kill 21 people. The Birmingham Six were sentenced to life in prison for this but subsequently acquitted.
1977 - Minister of Internal Affairs Hon Allan Highet announces that 'the national anthems of New Zealand shall be the traditional anthem "God Save the Queen" and the poem "God Defend New Zealand", written by Thomas Bracken, as set to music by John Joseph Woods, both being of equal status as national anthems appropriate to the occasion.
1979 - The United States Embassy in Islamabad, Pakistan is attacked by a mob and set alight, killing four. (see: Foreign relations of Pakistan)
1980 - A deadly fire breaks out at the MGM Grand Hotel in Las Vegas, Nevada (now Bally's Las Vegas). 87 people are killed and more than 650 are injured in the worst disaster in Nevada history.
1980 - Lake Peigneur drained into an underlying salt deposit. A misplaced Texaco oil probe was drilled into the Diamond Crystal Salt Mine, causing water to flow down into the mine, eroding the edges of the hole. The resulting whirlpool sucked the drilling platform, several barges, houses and trees thousands of feet, to the bottom of the dissolving salt deposit.
1985 - United States Navy intelligence analyst Jonathan Pollard is arrested for spying (he was caught giving Israel classified information on Arab nations and was eventually sentenced to life in prison).
1986 - Iran-Contra Affair: National Security Council member Oliver North and his secretary start to shred documents implicating them in the sale of weapons to Iran and channeling the proceeds to help fund the Contra rebels in Nicaragua.
1988 - Canadian federal election, 1988 - Canadians re-elect the Progressive Conservative government of Brian Mulroney after an election campaign fought mainly over the issue of the Canada-United States Free Trade Agreement.
1990 - Charter of Paris for a New Europe refocusses the efforts of the Conference for Security and Co-operation in Europeon post-Cold War issues.
1995 - The Dayton Peace Agreement is initialled at the Wright Patterson Air Force Base, near Dayton, Ohio, ending three and a half years of war in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The agreement was formally ratified in Paris, on December 14 that same year.
1995 - The Dow Jones Industrial Average closes above 5,000 (5,023.55) for the first time.
1996 - A propane explosion at the Humberto Vidal shoe store and office building in San Juan, Puerto Rico kills 33.
2002 - NATO invites Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia to become members.
2004 - The second round of the Ukrainian presidential election is held, unleashing massive protests and controversy over the election's integrity.
2004 - The island of Dominica is hit by the most destructive earthquake in its history. The northern half of the island receives the most damage, especially the town of Portsmouth. It is also felt in neighboring Guadeloupe, where one person is killed as a result.
2004 - The Paris Club agrees to write off 80% (up to $100 billion) of Iraq's external debt.