November 21

Judas Maccabeus rededicates the Second Temple in Jerusalem, an event commemorated annually as Hanukkah.

Judas Maccabeus led a successful Jewish revolt against the Seleucid Greek Empire, reclaiming and rededicating the Second Temple in Jerusalem after it had been desecrated. The rededication and the legendary miracle of oil lasting eight days rather than one became the basis for the annual Jewish festival of Hanukkah, celebrated ever since.

English Pilgrim colonists aboard the Mayflower sign the Mayflower Compact off the coast of what is now Massachusetts.

Before going ashore to found Plymouth Colony, 41 adult male passengers, English Separatists and other settlers who had sailed from Plymouth, England, agreed to a basic framework of self-government and mutual cooperation. Though brief, the compact is often cited as an early precedent for constitutional self-rule in what would become the United States.

Jean-Francois Pilatre de Rozier and Francois Laurent d'Arlandes complete the first untethered hot air balloon flight over Paris.

French balloonists Pilatre de Rozier and the Marquis d'Arlandes drifted for roughly 25 minutes over Paris in a hot air balloon built by the Montgolfier brothers, marking humanity's first sustained flight carrying passengers. Their successful demonstration launched intense public fascination with ballooning and opened the modern era of human flight.

Pilâtre de Rozier and the Marquis d'Arlandes make the first untethered hot air balloon flight, rising over Paris.

Flying a balloon built by the Montgolfier brothers, the two men drifted about 9 kilometres across the city in a flight lasting around 25 minutes, reaching an altitude of roughly 900 metres. The flight proved sustained human flight was possible and launched a wave of public fascination with ballooning across Europe.

Thomas Edison publicly announces his invention of the phonograph, a device capable of recording and reproducing sound.

Thomas Edison's announcement of a device capable of both recording and reproducing sound stunned contemporaries, who had assumed such a feat was scientifically impossible. The phonograph's invention, achieved after Edison had already gained fame for the telegraph and telephone improvements, further cemented his reputation as one of history's most prolific inventors.

Thomas Edison announces his invention of the phonograph, the first device able to record and reproduce sound.

Edison stumbled upon the idea while working on improvements to the telegraph and telephone, and built a working prototype using a tinfoil-wrapped cylinder within days of conceiving it. The phonograph astonished contemporaries and laid the technical foundation for the recorded-music industry that would emerge in the following decades.

Albert Einstein publishes the paper introducing what would become known as the mass-energy equivalence formula, E=mc².

Appearing in Annalen der Physik as a short follow-up to his special relativity paper earlier that year, the work proposed that mass and energy are fundamentally interchangeable. The relationship, later popularized as E=mc², would prove essential to understanding nuclear reactions and became one of the most famous equations in science.

A German mine sinks HMHS Britannic in the Aegean Sea, the largest ship lost in the First World War.

Built as the third Olympic-class liner alongside Titanic and Olympic, Britannic had been requisitioned as a hospital ship and was carrying medical staff toward the Dardanelles when it struck a mine laid by the German submarine SM U-73. Quick evacuation limited the loss of life to around 30 of the more than 1,000 people aboard, far fewer than Titanic's disaster four years earlier.

The UK Parliament passes the Qualification of Women Act, allowing women to stand for election to the House of Commons.

Passed just weeks after the Armistice and shortly before the general election in which some women had already won the right to vote, the short act removed the legal bar on women becoming MPs. Constance Markievicz became the first woman elected under the new law that December, though as a Sinn Féin member she never took her seat at Westminster; Nancy Astor became the first woman to actually sit in the Commons the following year.

On "Bloody Sunday" in Dublin, Irish republican forces kill British intelligence agents while British troops fire into a crowd at a football match, killing fourteen civilians.

Bloody Sunday saw an IRA assassination squad kill several British intelligence operatives across Dublin in coordinated morning attacks, followed by British auxiliary forces firing into a crowd at a Gaelic football match that afternoon in apparent retaliation, killing fourteen civilians and players. The violent day marked a significant escalation in the Irish War of Independence.

IRA gunmen assassinate more than a dozen British intelligence operatives across Dublin, and British forces retaliate by firing into the crowd at a Gaelic football match at Croke Park, killing 14 civilians.

Michael Collins's intelligence unit killed at least 14 undercover British agents and informers in coordinated dawn raids during the Irish War of Independence. In apparent reprisal that afternoon, Royal Irish Constabulary Auxiliaries opened fire on spectators at Croke Park, killing 14 civilians, including a player, in one of the conflict's most notorious episodes, remembered as Bloody Sunday.

Rebecca Latimer Felton of Georgia becomes the first woman to serve in the United States Senate.

Rebecca Latimer Felton was appointed to a brief, largely symbolic vacancy in the U.S. Senate at age 87, making her the first woman ever to serve in that chamber, though she held the seat for only a single day before her successor was sworn in. Her appointment nonetheless represented a significant symbolic milestone for women's political representation.

London's Natural History Museum announces that the celebrated 'Piltdown Man' fossil is an elaborate forgery.

Discovered in Sussex in 1912 and long presented as a crucial 'missing link' in human evolution, the skull was exposed by fluorine dating and other tests as a composite of a modern human cranium and an orangutan jaw, deliberately aged and filed to deceive. The revelation remains one of the most notorious scientific hoaxes in British history, though its perpetrator was never conclusively identified.

The Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge opens to traffic in New York, briefly the longest suspension bridge span in the world.

The Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge, connecting Staten Island and Brooklyn, briefly held the title of the world's longest suspension bridge span upon its completion, a significant engineering achievement led by renowned bridge designer Othmar Ammann. The bridge remains a vital transportation link and a recognizable feature of the New York City skyline.

Bombs explode in two Birmingham pubs, killing 21 people in one of the deadliest attacks of the Troubles.

Bombs planted in two crowded Birmingham pubs by the Provisional IRA killed 21 people and injured nearly 200 others in one of the deadliest attacks of the Troubles on English soil. The bombings led to a wrongful conviction of six men, later exonerated after spending sixteen years imprisoned, in a notorious miscarriage of British justice.

IRA bombs at two Birmingham pubs kill 21 people and injure over 180 in one of the deadliest attacks of the Troubles.

The blasts at the Mulberry Bush and the Tavern in the Town targeted crowded city-centre pubs on a Thursday night. Six Irish men were wrongly convicted of the bombings and spent 16 years in prison before their convictions were quashed in 1991 as a notorious miscarriage of justice; the actual perpetrators have never been successfully prosecuted.

The Dayton Agreement is initialed, ending roughly three and a half years of war in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

The Dayton Agreement, negotiated at an American air base in Ohio, brought an end to the brutal Bosnian War by establishing a complex political framework dividing the country into two largely autonomous entities under a unified national government. The accord, formally signed weeks later in Paris, remains the foundational governing structure for Bosnia and Herzegovina today.

Negotiators initial the Dayton Agreement at an Ohio air base, bringing an end to the Bosnian War.

After three weeks of intensive US-brokered talks among the presidents of Bosnia, Croatia, and Serbia, the accord divided Bosnia and Herzegovina into two largely autonomous entities while preserving it as a single state. Formally signed in Paris the following month, the agreement ended a conflict that had killed around 100,000 people.

Robert Mugabe resigns as President of Zimbabwe after ruling the country for thirty-seven years.

Robert Mugabe's resignation came after nearly four decades in power, following a military intervention and the ruling party's decision to begin impeachment proceedings against him amid widespread public protests. His departure ended one of Africa's longest-running and most controversial presidencies, marked by both early achievements and later economic collapse and repression.

An SUV drives into a Christmas parade in Waukesha, Wisconsin, killing six people and injuring dozens more.

A driver deliberately steered an SUV through barricades into a Christmas parade in Waukesha, Wisconsin, striking marching bands and dancers, killing six people including children and injuring dozens more. The attack shocked the small Milwaukee suburb and led to a high-profile murder trial resulting in numerous convictions against the perpetrator.