Events on November 14 39
Year 1812
Napoleonic Wars: Battle of Smoliani, French Marshals Victor & Oudinot defeated by Wittgenstein.
Year 1862
American Civil War: President Abraham Lincoln approves General Ambrose Burnside's plan to capture the Confederate capital at Richmond, Virginia, leading to the Battle of Fredericksburg.
Year 1889
Pioneering female journalist Nellie Bly (aka Elizabeth Cochrane) begins a successful attempt to travel around the world in less than 80 days. She completes the trip in 72 days.
Year 1910
Aviator Eugene Burton Ely performs the first takeoff from a ship in Hampton Roads, Virginia. He took off from a makeshift deck on the USS Birmingham in a Curtiss pusher.
Year 1932
Al Shorta SC, one of Iraq's biggest football clubs, are founded as Montakhab Al Shorta.
Year 1938
The Lions Gate Bridge, connecting Vancouver to the North Shore region, opens to traffic.
Year 1940
World War II: In England, Coventry is heavily bombed by German Luftwaffe bombers. Coventry Cathedral is almost completely destroyed.
Year 1941
World War II: The aircraft carrier HMS Ark Royal sinks due to torpedo damage from the German submarine U-81 sustained on November 13.
Year 1941
World War II: In Slonim, German forces engaged in Operation Barbarossa murder 9,000 Jews in a single day.
Year 1957
The "Apalachin Meeting" in rural Tioga County in upstate New York is raided by law enforcement; many high level Mafia figures are arrested while trying to flee.
Year 1960
Ruby Bridges becomes the first black child to attend an all-white elementary school in Louisiana.
Year 1965
Vietnam War: The Battle of Ia Drang begins: The first major engagement between regular American and North Vietnamese forces.
Year 1967
The Congress of Colombia, in commemoration of the 150 years of the death of Policarpa Salavarrieta, declares this day as "Day of the Colombian Woman".
Year 1967
American physicist Theodore Maiman is given a patent for his ruby laser systems, the world's first laser.
Year 1969
Apollo program: NASA launches Apollo 12, the second crewed mission to the surface of the Moon.
Year 1970
Soviet Union enters ICAO, making Russian the fourth official language of organization.
Year 1970
Southern Airways Flight 932 crashes in the mountains near Huntington, West Virginia, killing 75, including members of the Marshall University football team.
Year 1973
In the United Kingdom, Princess Anne marries Captain Mark Phillips, in Westminster Abbey.
Year 1973
The Athens Polytechnic uprising, a massive demonstration of popular rejection of the Greek military junta of 1967-74, begins.
Year 1979
Iran hostage crisis: US President Jimmy Carter issues Executive order 12170, freezing all Iranian assets in the United States in response to the hostage crisis.
Year 1982
Lech Wałęsa, the leader of Poland's outlawed Solidarity movement, is released after eleven months of internment near the Soviet border.
Year 1984
Zamboanga City mayor Cesar Climaco, a prominent critic of the government of Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos, is assassinated in his home city.
Year 1990
After German reunification, the Federal Republic of Germany and Poland sign a treaty confirming the Oder-Neisse line as the border between Germany and Poland.
Year 1991
American and British authorities announce indictments against two Libyan intelligence officials in connection with the downing of the Pan Am Flight 103.
Year 1991
Cambodian Prince Norodom Sihanouk returns to Phnom Penh after thirteen years of exile.
Year 1995
A budget standoff between Democrats and Republicans in the U.S. Congress forces the federal government to temporarily close national parks and museums and to run most government offices with skeleton staffs.
Year 2001
War in Afghanistan: Afghan Northern Alliance fighters take over the capital Kabul.
Year 2003
Astronomers Michael E. Brown, Chad Trujillo, and David L. Rabinowitz discover 90377 Sedna, a Trans-Neptunian object.
Year 2012
Israel launches a major military operation in the Gaza Strip, as hostilities with Hamas escalate.