Events on November 15 54
Year 1315
Battle of Morgarten: The Schweizer Eidgenossenschaft ambushes the army of Leopold I.
Year 1532
Commanded by Francisco Pizarro, Spanish conquistadors under Hernando de Soto meet Inca Empire leader Atahualpa for the first time outside Cajamarca, arranging a meeting on the city plaza the following day.
Year 1760
The secondly-built Castellania in Valletta is officially inaugurated with the blessing of the interior Chapel of Sorrows.
Year 1777
American Revolutionary War: After 16 months of debate the Continental Congress approves the Articles of Confederation.
Year 1806
Pike expedition: Lieutenant Zebulon Pike sees a distant mountain peak while near the Colorado foothills of the Rocky Mountains. (It is later named Pikes Peak.)
Year 1864
American Civil War: Union General William Tecumseh Sherman begins Sherman's March to the Sea.
Year 1889
Brazil is declared a republic by Marshal Deodoro da Fonseca as Emperor Pedro II is deposed in a military coup.
Year 1914
Harry Turner becomes the first player to die from game-related injuries in the "Ohio League", the direct predecessor to the National Football League.
Year 1915
Winston Churchill resigns from his Government, and soon commands the 6th Battalion of the Royal Scots Fusiliers on the Western Front.
Year 1928
The RNLI lifeboat Mary Stanford capsized in Rye Harbour with the loss of the entire 17-man crew.
Year 1939
In Washington, D.C., US President Franklin D. Roosevelt lays the cornerstone of the Jefferson Memorial.
Year 1943
The Holocaust: German SS leader Heinrich Himmler orders that Gypsies are to be put "on the same level as Jews and placed in concentration camps"
Year 1951
Greek resistance leader Nikos Beloyannis, along with 11 resistance members, is sentenced to death by the court-martial.
Year 1959
The murders of the Clutter Family in Holcomb, Kansas, which inspired Truman Capote's non-fiction book In Cold Blood.
Year 1966
Project Gemini: Gemini 12 completes the program's final mission, when it splashes down safely in the Atlantic Ocean.
Year 1966
A Boeing 727 carrying Pan Am Flight 708 crashes near Berlin, Germany, killing all three people on board.
Year 1967
The only fatality of the North American X-15 program occurs during the 191st flight when Air Force test pilot Michael J. Adams loses control of his aircraft which is destroyed mid-air over the Mojave Desert.
Year 1969
Cold War: The Soviet submarine K-19 collides with the American submarine USS Gato in the Barents Sea.
Year 1969
Vietnam War: In Washington, D.C., 250,000-500,000 protesters staged a peaceful demonstration against the war, including a symbolic "March Against Death".
Year 1971
Intel releases the world's first commercial single-chip microprocessor, the 4004.
Year 1976
René Lévesque and the Parti Québécois take power to become the first Quebec government of the 20th century clearly in favor of independence.
Year 1979
A package from Unabomber Ted Kaczynski begins smoking in the cargo hold of a flight from Chicago to Washington, D.C., forcing the plane to make an emergency landing.
Year 1983
Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus declared independence. Recognized only by Turkey.
Year 1985
A research assistant is injured when a package from the Unabomber addressed to a University of Michigan professor explodes.
Year 1985
The Anglo-Irish Agreement is signed at Hillsborough Castle by British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and Irish Taoiseach Garret FitzGerald.
Year 1987
In Brașov, Romania, workers rebel against the communist regime of Nicolae Ceaușescu.
Year 1988
Israeli-Palestinian conflict: An independent State of Palestine is proclaimed by the Palestinian National Council.
Year 1990
The Communist People's Republic of Bulgaria is disestablished and a new republican government is instituted.
Year 2000
A chartered Antonov An-24 crashes after takeoff from Luanda, Angola, killing more than 40 people.
Year 2002
Hu Jintao becomes General Secretary of the Communist Party of China and a new nine-member Politburo Standing Committee is inaugurated.
Year 2003
The first day of the 2003 Istanbul bombings, in which two car bombs, targeting two synagogues, explode, killing 25 people and wounding about 300.
Year 2007
Cyclone Sidr hits Bangladesh, killing an estimated 5,000 people and destroying parts of the world's largest mangrove forest, the Sundarbans.
Year 2012
Xi Jinping becomes General Secretary of the Communist Party of China and a new seven-member Politburo Standing Committee is inaugurated.
Year 2016
Hong Kong High Court bans elected politicians Yau Wai-ching and Baggio Leung from the city's Parliament.[1]