Events on November 8 47
Year 960
Battle of Andrassos: Byzantines under Leo Phokas the Younger score a crushing victory over the Hamdanid Emir of Aleppo, Sayf al-Dawla.
Year 1278
Trần Thánh Tông, the second emperor of the Trần dynasty, decides to pass the throne to his crown prince Trần Khâm and take up the post of Retired Emperor.
Year 1519
Hernán Cortés enters Tenochtitlán and Aztec ruler Moctezuma welcomes him with a great celebration.
Year 1520
Stockholm Bloodbath begins: A successful invasion of Sweden by Danish forces results in the execution of around 100 people.
Year 1576
Eighty Years' War: Pacification of Ghent: The States General of the Netherlands meet and unite to oppose Spanish occupation.
Year 1614
Japanese daimyō Dom Justo Takayama is exiled to the Philippines by shogun Tokugawa Ieyasu for being Christian.
Year 1620
The Battle of White Mountain takes place near Prague, ending in a decisive Catholic victory in only two hours.
Year 1644
The Shunzhi Emperor, the third emperor of the Qing dynasty, is enthroned in Beijing after the collapse of the Ming dynasty as the first Qing emperor to rule over China.
Year 1745
Charles Edward Stuart invades England with an army of ~5000 that would later participate in the Battle of Culloden.
Year 1837
Mary Lyon founds Mount Holyoke Female Seminary, which later becomes Mount Holyoke College.
Year 1861
American Civil War: The "Trent Affair": The USS San Jacinto stops the British mail ship Trent and arrests two Confederate envoys, sparking a diplomatic crisis between the UK and US.
Year 1892
The New Orleans general strike begins, uniting black and white American trade unionists in a successful four-day general strike action for the first time.
Year 1901
Gospel riots: Bloody clashes take place in Athens following the translation of the Gospels into demotic Greek.
Year 1917
The first Council of People's Commissars is formed, including Vladimir Lenin, Leon Trotsky and Joseph Stalin.
Year 1923
Beer Hall Putsch: In Munich, Adolf Hitler leads the Nazis in an unsuccessful attempt to overthrow the German government.
Year 1933
Great Depression: New Deal: US President Franklin D. Roosevelt unveils the Civil Works Administration, an organization designed to create jobs for more than 4 million unemployed.
Year 1936
Spanish Civil War: Francoist troops fail in their effort to capture Madrid, but begin the 3-year Siege of Madrid afterwards.
Year 1939
In Munich, Adolf Hitler narrowly escapes the assassination attempt of Georg Elser while celebrating the 16th anniversary of the Beer Hall Putsch.
Year 1940
Greco-Italian War: The Italian invasion of Greece fails as outnumbered Greek units repulse the Italians in the Battle of Elaia-Kalamas.
Year 1942
World War II: French Resistance coup in Algiers, in which 400 civilian French patriots neutralize Vichyist XIXth Army Corps after 15 hours of fighting, and arrest several Vichyist generals, allowing the immediate success of Operation Torch in Algiers.
Year 1950
Korean War: United States Air Force Lt. Russell J. Brown, while piloting an F-80 Shooting Star, shoots down two North Korean MiG-15s in the first jet aircraft-to-jet aircraft dogfight in history.
Year 1957
Pan Am Flight 7 disappears between San Francisco and Honolulu. Wreckage and bodies are discovered a week later.
Year 1957
Operation Grapple X, Round C1: The United Kingdom conducts its first successful hydrogen bomb test over Kiritimati in the Pacific.
Year 1965
The British Indian Ocean Territory is created, consisting of Chagos Archipelago, Aldabra, Farquhar and Des Roches islands.
Year 1965
The Murder (Abolition of Death Penalty) Act 1965 is given Royal Assent, formally abolishing the death penalty in the United Kingdom, except in cases of high treason, "piracy with violence" (piracy with intent to kill or cause grievous bodily harm), arson in royal dockyards and espionage, as well as other capital offences under military law. The death penalty would be abolished in all cases in 1998.
Year 1965
The 173rd Airborne is ambushed by over 1,200 Viet Cong in Operation Hump during the Vietnam War, while the 1st Battalion, Royal Australian Regiment fight one of the first set-piece engagements of the war between Australian forces and the Viet Cong at the Battle of Gang Toi.
Year 1966
Former Massachusetts Attorney General Edward Brooke becomes the first African American elected to the United States Senate since Reconstruction.
Year 1966
U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson signs into law an antitrust exemption allowing the National Football League to merge with the upstart American Football League.
Year 1968
The Vienna Convention on Road Traffic is signed to facilitate international road traffic and to increase road safety by standardising the uniform traffic rules among the signatories.
Year 1972
HBO launches its programming, with the broadcast of the 1971 movie Sometimes a Great Notion, starring Paul Newman and Henry Fonda.
Year 1973
The right ear of John Paul Getty III is delivered to a newspaper together with a ransom note, convincing his father to pay US$2.9 million.
Year 1977
Manolis Andronikos, a Greek archaeologist and professor at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, discovers the tomb of Philip II of Macedon at Vergina.
Year 1987
Remembrance Day bombing: A Provisional IRA bomb explodes in Enniskillen, Northern Ireland during a ceremony honouring those who had died in wars involving British forces. Twelve people are killed and sixty-three wounded.
Year 1994
Republican Revolution: On the night of the 1994 United States midterm elections, Republicans make historic electoral gains by securing massive majorities in both houses of congress (54 seats in the House and eight seats in the Senate, additionally). Thus bringing a close to four decades of Democratic domination.
Year 1999
Bruce Miller is killed at his junkyard near Flint, Michigan. His wife Sharee Miller, who convinced her online lover Jerry Cassaday to kill him (before later killing himself) was convicted of the crime, in what became the world's first Internet murder.
Year 2002
Iraq disarmament crisis: UN Security Council Resolution 1441: The United Nations Security Council unanimously approves a resolution on Iraq, forcing Saddam Hussein to disarm or face "serious consequences".
Year 2004
Iraq War: More than 10,000 U.S. troops and a small number of Iraqi army units participate in a siege on the insurgent stronghold of Fallujah.
Year 2011
The potentially hazardous asteroid 2005 YU55 passes 0.85 lunar distances from Earth (about 324,600 kilometres or 201,700 miles), the closest known approach by an asteroid of its brightness since 2010 XC15 in 1976.
Year 2013
Typhoon Haiyan, one of the strongest tropical cyclones ever recorded, strikes the Visayas region of the Philippines; the storm left at least 6,340 people dead with over 1,000 still missing, and caused $2.86 billion (2013 USD) in damage.
Year 2016
Donald Trump is elected 45th President of the United States defeating Hillary Clinton. She is the fifth presidential candidate in U.S. history to win the popular vote but lose the election.
Year 2016
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi announces withdrawal of ₹500 and ₹1000 denomination banknotes effective midnight, making 86% of the currency in circulation invalid.