Events on November 12 50
Year 954
The 13-year-old Lothair III is crowned at the Abbey of Saint-Remi as king of the West Frankish Kingdom.
Year 1028
Future Byzantine empress Zoe takes the throne as empress consort to Romanos III Argyros.
Year 1330
Battle of Posada: Wallachian Voievode Basarab I defeats the Hungarian army by ambush.
Year 1555
The Second Statute of Repeal re-establishes Roman Catholicism in England under Queen Mary I.
Year 1892
William Heffelfinger becomes the first professional American football player on record, participating in his first paid game for the Allegheny Athletic Association.
Year 1893
Abdur Rahman Khan accepts the Durand Line as the border between Afghanistan and the British Raj.
Year 1905
Norway holds a referendum resulting in popular approval of the Storting's decision to authorise the government to make the offer of the throne of the newly-independent country.
Year 1912
King George I of Greece makes a triumphal entry into Thessaloniki after its liberation from 482 years of Ottoman rule.
Year 1912
The frozen bodies of Robert Scott and his men are found on the Ross Ice Shelf in Antarctica.
Year 1927
Leon Trotsky is expelled from the Soviet Communist Party, leaving Joseph Stalin in undisputed control of the Soviet Union.
Year 1928
SS Vestris sinks approximately 200 miles (320 km) off Hampton Roads, Virginia, killing at least 110 passengers, mostly women and children who die after the vessel is abandoned.
Year 1940
World War II: The Battle of Gabon ends as Free French Forces take Libreville, Gabon, and all of French Equatorial Africa from Vichy French forces.
Year 1940
World War II: Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov arrives in Berlin to discuss the possibility of the Soviet Union joining the Axis Powers.
Year 1941
World War II: Temperatures around Moscow drop to -12 °C as the Soviet Union launches ski troops for the first time against the freezing German forces near the city.
Year 1941
World War II: The Soviet cruiser Chervona Ukraina is destroyed during the Battle of Sevastopol.
Year 1942
World War II: Naval Battle of Guadalcanal between Japanese and American forces begins near Guadalcanal. The battle lasts for three days and ends with an American victory.
Year 1944
World War II: The Royal Air Force launches 29 Avro Lancaster bombers, which sink the German battleship Tirpitz, with 12,000 lb Tallboy bombs off Tromsø, Norway.
Year 1948
In Tokyo, the International Military Tribunal for the Far East sentences seven Japanese military and government officials, including General Hideki Tojo, to death for their roles in World War II.
Year 1956
In the midst of the Suez Crisis, Palestinian refugees are shot dead in Rafah by Israeli soldiers following the invasion of the Gaza Strip.
Year 1958
A team of rock climbers led by Warren Harding completes the first ascent of The Nose on El Capitan in Yosemite Valley.
Year 1969
Vietnam War: Independent investigative journalist Seymour Hersh breaks the story of the My Lai Massacre.
Year 1970
The Oregon Highway Division attempts to destroy a rotting beached Sperm whale with explosives, leading to the now infamous "exploding whale" incident.
Year 1970
The 1970 Bhola cyclone makes landfall on the coast of East Pakistan becoming the deadliest tropical cyclone in history.
Year 1971
Vietnam War: As part of Vietnamization, US President Richard Nixon sets February 1, 1972 as the deadline for the removal of another 45,000 American troops from Vietnam.
Year 1979
Iran hostage crisis: In response to the hostage situation in Tehran, US President Jimmy Carter orders a halt to all petroleum imports into the United States from Iran.
Year 1980
The NASA space probe Voyager I makes its closest approach to Saturn and takes the first images of its rings.
Year 1981
Space Shuttle program: Mission STS-2, utilizing the Space Shuttle Columbia, marks the first time a manned spacecraft is launched into space twice.
Year 1982
USSR: Yuri Andropov becomes the General Secretary of the Communist Party's Central Committee, succeeding Leonid I. Brezhnev.
Year 1990
Crown Prince Akihito is formally installed as Emperor Akihito of Japan, becoming the 125th Japanese monarch.
Year 1991
Santa Cruz massacre: Indonesian forces open fire on a crowd of student protesters in Dili, East Timor.
Year 1995
Erdut Agreement regarding the peaceful resolution to the Croatian War of Independence was reached.
Year 1996
A Saudi Arabian Airlines Boeing 747 and a Kazakh Ilyushin Il-76 cargo plane collide in mid-air near New Delhi, killing 349. The deadliest mid-air collision to date.
Year 1997
Ramzi Yousef is found guilty of masterminding the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.
Year 1999
The 7.2 Mw Düzce earthquake shakes northwestern Turkey with a maximum Mercalli intensity of IX (Violent). At least 845 people were killed and almost 5,000 were injured.
Year 2001
In New York City, American Airlines Flight 587, an Airbus A300 en route to the Dominican Republic, crashes minutes after takeoff from John F. Kennedy International Airport, killing all 260 on board and five on the ground.
Year 2001
War in Afghanistan: Taliban forces abandon Kabul, ahead of advancing Afghan Northern Alliance troops.
Year 2003
Iraq War: In Nasiriyah, Iraq, at least 23 people, among them the first Italian casualties of the 2003 invasion of Iraq, are killed in a suicide bomb attack on an Italian police base.
Year 2003
Shanghai Transrapid sets a new world speed record (501 kilometres per hour (311 mph)) for commercial railway systems, which remains the fastest for unmodified commercial rail vehicles.
Year 2011
Silvio Berlusconi tenders his resignation as Prime Minister of Italy, effective November 16, due in large part to the European sovereign debt crisis.
Year 2011
A blast in Iran's Shahid Modarres missile base leads to the death of 17 of the Revolutionary Guards members, including Hassan Tehrani Moghaddam, a key figure in Iran's missile program.
Year 2014
The Philae lander, deployed from the European Space Agency's Rosetta probe, reaches the surface of Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko.
Year 2015
Two suicide bombers detonated explosives in Bourj el-Barajneh, Beirut, killing 43 people and injuring over 200 others.