November 20



Events

Up to 1900 
 284 – Diocletian becomes Roman Emperor.
 1194 - Palermo is conquered by Emperor Henry VI.
 1272 – Following Henry III of England's death on November 16, his son Prince Edward becomes King of England.
 1316 - King John I of France dies at the age of only 5 days old.
 1695 - Zumbi, the last of the leaders of Quilombo dos Palmares in Brazil, is executed by the forces of Portuguese bandeirante Domingos Jorge Velho.
 1739 - Start of the Battle of Porto Bello between British and Spanish forces during the War of Jenkins' Ear.
 1776 - American Revolutionary War: British forces land at the Palisades and then attack Fort Lee. The Continental Army starts to retreat across New Jersey.  
 1789 – New Jersey becomes the first U.S. state to ratify the Bill of Rights.
 1805 - Ludwig van Beethoven's only opera, Fidelio, is performed for the first time in Vienna.
 1820 - An 80-ton sperm whale attacks the ship Essex, 2,000 miles from the west coast of South America.
 1845 - Anglo-French blockade of the Río de la Plata: Battle of Vuelta de Obligado.
 1861 - American Civil War: The Secession Ordinance is filed by Kentucky's Confederate Governor.

1901  2000 
 1902 – Henri Desgrange and fellow journalist Géo Lefèvre dream up the idea of the Tour de France over lunch at the Cafe de Madrid in Paris.
 1910 – From exile in Texas, Francisco I. Madero calls for a Revolution against the rule of Mexican President Porfirio Díaz, starting the Mexican Revolution.
 1917 – Ukraine is declared a republic.
 1917 - World War I: Battle of Cambrai begins.
 1929 – Salvador Dalí, a Spanish artist, opens his first one-man show.
 1936 - In Spain, José Antonio Primo de Rivera is killed by a Republican execution squad.
 1940 – World War II: Hungary, Romania and Slovakia join the Axis Powers.
 1942 – The Alaska Highway is opened to traffic.
 1945 – Nuremberg Trials begin: Trials against 24 Nazi war criminals of World War II start at the Nuremberg Palace of Justice.
 1947 – The Princess Elizabeth marries Lieutenant Philip Mountbatten at Westminster Abbey in London.
 1955 – Bo Diddley makes his TV debut on Ed Sullivan's Toast Of The Town show on CBS.
 1962 – Cuban Missile Crisis ends: In response to the Soviet Union agreeing to remove its missiles from Cuba, US President John F. Kennedy ends the quarantine of the Caribbean nation.
 1968 - 78 miners are killed in an explosion at Consolidated Coal Company's No. 9 mine in Farmington, West Virginia. 
 1969 – Vietnam War: The Cleveland Plain Dealer publishes explicit photographs of dead villagers from the My Lai massacre in Vietnam.
 1974 - A Lufthansa Boeing 747-130 crashes during take-off from Nairobi, Kenya, killing 59 people.
 1975 – Spanish dictator Francisco Franco dies, after more than three-and-a-half decades in power.
 1977 – In a speech at the Knesset (Israel's parliament), Egypt's President Anwar Sadat recognises the state of Israel's right to exist.
 1979 - Grand Mosque Seizure: 200 Sunni Muslims revolt in Mecca, Saudi Arabia, the holiest place in Islam, during the Pilgrimage, taking about 6,000 hostages. French special forces help Saudi Arabia to put down the uprising.
 1985 – Microsoft Windows 1.0 is released.
 1989 - Velvet Revolution: The number of protesters in Prague, then the capital city of Czechoslovakia, increases to an estimated 500,000.
 1991 - An Azrebaijani MI-8 helicopter carrying 19 people - members of a peacekeeping team and journalists from Russia, Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan - is shot down by Armenian military forces in Khojavend district of Azerbaijan.
 1992 – Windsor Castle, one of the residences of Elizabeth II, is damaged by fire.
 1993 - A plane crash near Ohrid, present-day Republic of Macedonia, kills 115 people, with only one person on board surviving.
 1994 – The Angolan government and UNITA rebels sign the Lusaka Protocol in Zambia, ending 19 years of civil war (in 1995 localized fighting resumed).
 1998 – A court in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan declares accused terrorist Osama bin Laden "a man without a sin" in regards to the 1998 U.S. embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania.
 2000 – Honda introduces the humanoid robot ASIMO.

From 2001 
 2003 – A second set of bombings in five days hits Istanbul, with the British Consulate as one of the targets. 27 people are killed.
 2008 - The Dow Jones Industrial Average reaches its lowest level since 1997.
 2009 - The Large Hadron Collider is switched back on, after faults caused it to be shut down over a year earlier.
 2011 – Mariano Rajoy is elected Prime Minister in Spain, as the Partido Popular wins the most seats in parliament.
 2015 - 19 people are killed in a terrorist attack and siege on a hotel in Bamako, Mali.
 2016 - Pukhrayan train derailment: At least 146 people are killed when a train derails (comes off the rail track) near Kanpur, Uttar Pradesh, India.
 2019 - Prince Andrew, Duke of York announces that he is withdrawing from public duties because of the controversy surrounding his friendship with the financier and sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

Births

Up to 1900 
 270 – Maximinus, Roman Emperor (d. 313)
 1602 – Otto von Guericke, German physicist (d. 1686)
 1620 - Avvakum, Russian priest and saint (d. 1682)
 1715 - Pierre Charles Le Monnier, French astronomer (d. 1799)
 1750 – Tipu Sultan, Indian ruler (d. 1799)
 1761 – Pope Pius VIII (d. 1830)
 1765 - Thomas Fremantle, English naval officer (d. 1819)
 1787 - Johann Nicolaus von Dreyse, German inventor (d. 1867)
 1801 - Mungo Ponton, Scottish inventor (d. 1880)
 1825 - Antonio de Serpa Pimentel, Prime Minister of Portugal (d. 1900)
 1841 - Victor D'Hondt, Belgian jurist (d. 1901)
 1841 – Wilfrid Laurier, Prime Minister of Canada (d. 1919)
 1851 – Margherita of Savoy, Queen of Italy (d. 1926)
 1858 – Selma Lagerlöf, Swedish writer, Nobel Prize in Literature winner (d. 1940)
 1860 - José Figueroa Alcorta, 16th President of Argentina (d. 1931) 
 1862 - Georges Palante, French philosopher, author and anarchist (d. 1925)
 1866 - Kenesaw Mountain Landis, American judge and baseball commissioner (d. 1944)
 1867 - Patrick Joseph Hayes, Archbishop of New York City (d. 1938)
 1869 – Zinaida Gippius, Russian poet and writer (d. 1945)
 1873 - Ramon Castillo, President of Argentina (d. 1944)
 1873 - Walter Evans Edge, Governor of New Jersey (d. 1956)
 1874 - James Michael Curley, 53rd Governor of Massachusetts (d. 1958)
 1875 - Friedrich Werner von der Schulenburg, German diplomat and Resistance activist (d. 1944)
 1877 - Herbert Pitman, English 3rd Officer of the RMS Titanic (d. 1968)
 1880 - Walter Brack, German swimmer (d. 1919)
 1880 - George McBride, American baseball player (d. 1973)
 1886 – Karl von Frisch, Austrian zoologist (d. 1982)
 1889 – Edwin Hubble, American astronomer (d. 1953)
 1892 – James Collip, Canadian biochemist (d. 1965)
 1896 – Chiyono Hasegawa, Japanese supercentenarian (d. 2011)
 1900 - Chester Gould, American cartoonist (d. 1985)

1901  1950 
 1902 – Gianpiero Combi, Italian footballer (d. 1956)
 1902 - Erik Eriksen, Prime Minister of Denmark (d. 1972)
 1903 - Alexandra Danilova, Russian ballerina (d. 1997)
 1904 - John MacCormick, Scottish lawyer and politician (d. 1961)
 1908 - Alistair Cooke, British-born American journalist (d. 2004)
 1911 - Jean Shiley, American high jumper (d. 1958)
 1912 – Otto von Habsburg, Austrian aristocrat, nobleman and politician (d. 2011)
 1913 - Judy Canova, American actress (d. 1986)
 1913 - Kostas Choumis, Greek footballer (d. 1981)
 1914 - Emilio Pucci, Italian fashion designer and politician (d. 1993)
 1915 – Kon Ichikawa, Japanese movie director (d. 2008)
 1916 - Michael J. Ingelido, American air force general (d. 2015)
 1917 - Bobby Locke, South African golfer (d. 1987)
 1917 – Robert Byrd, American politician (d. 2010)
 1919 - Phyllis Thaxter, American actress (d. 2012)
 1920 - Shlomo Erell, Israeli military general (d. 2018)
 1921 - Jim Garrison, American attorney and judge (d. 1992)
 1923 – Nadine Gordimer, South African writer and activist, Nobel Prize in Literature winner (d. 2014)
 1924 – Benoit Mandelbrot, Polish-born French-American mathematician (d. 2010)
 1924 - Karen Harup, Danish swimmer (d. 2009)
 1925 – Robert F. Kennedy, American politician (d. 1968)
 1925 - Kaye Ballard, American actress and singer (d. 2019)
 1925 - Maya Plisetskaya, Russian ballerina and choreographer (d. 2015)
 1925 - George Barris, American automobile designer (d. 2015)
 1927 - Estelle Parsons, American actress
 1927 - Wolfgang Schreyer, German writer (d. 2017)
 1927 - Mikhail Ulyanov, Russian actor (d. 2007)
 1928 - Aleksey Batalov, Russian actor and movie director (d. 2017)
 1929 - Don January, American golfer
 1930 - Bernard Horsfall, English actor (d. 2013)
 1932 - Richard Dawson, British-born American actor and game show host (d. 2012)
 1934 - Jimmy Millar, Scottish footballer
 1935 – Imre Makovecz, Hungarian architect (d. 2011)
 1936 - Charles R. Larson, American admiral (d. 2014)
 1937 - Viktoriya Tokareva, Russian playwright
 1937 - Eero Mantyranta, Finnish skier (d. 2013)
 1939 – Dick Smothers, American comedian (The Smothers Brothers)
 1939 - Copi, Argentine comic artist and author (d. 1987)
 1940 - Arieh Warshel, Israeli-American chemist, winner of the 2013 Nobel Prize in Chemistry
 1940 - Helma Sanders-Brahms, German movie director, screenwriter, producer and actress (d. 2014)
 1941 - Dr. John, American musician (d. 2019)
 1941 - Haseena Moin, Pakistani screenwriter and playwright
 1942 – Joe Biden, 47th Vice President of the United States/soon-to-be 46th President of the United States
 1942 - Bob Einstein, American actor (d. 2019)
 1942 - Norman Greenbaum, American singer-songwriter
 1942 - Meredith Monk, American composer and choreographer
 1943 – Veronica Hamel, American actress
 1944 - Donald DiFrancesco, American politician, 51st Governor of New Jersey
 1945 - Nanette Workman, American-Canadian singer-songwriter and actress
 1946 - Patriarch Kirill I of Moscow
 1946 - Duane Allman, American guitarist (d. 1971)
 1947 - Joe Walsh, American singer-songwriter, guitarist, producer and actor
 1948 - John R. Bolton, American politician and diplomat
 1948 - Barbara Hendricks, American-Swedish soprano
 1948 - Richard Masur, American actor
 1949 - Ulf Lundell, Swedish singer and musician

1951  1975 
 1951 - David Walters, American politician, 24th Governor of Oklahoma
 1954 - Aneka, Scottish folk singer
 1954 - Berit Andnor, Swedish politician
 1956 – Bo Derek, American actress
 1956 - Gareth Chilcott, English rugby player
 1957 – Goodluck Jonathan, former President of Nigeria
 1957 - Wylie Stateman, American sound editor
 1957 - John Eriksen, Danish footballer (d. 2002)
 1959 - James P. McGovern, American politician
 1959 - Franz-Peter Tebartz-van Elst, German Roman Catholic Bishop, of Limburg
 1959 - Diane James, English politician, leader of UKIP for 18 days in 2016
 1961 - Tim Harvey, British racing driver
 1962 - Gerardo Martino, Argentine footballer and manager
 1963 - Timothy Gowers, British mathematician
 1963 - Wan Yanhai, Chinese activist
 1964 - Doug Ford, Canadian politician, 26th Premier of Ontario
 1965 - Yoshiki, Japanese musician, songwriter and producer
 1965 - Sen Dog, Cuban rapper
 1965 – Mike D, American hip hop musician
 1968 - Tommy Asinga, Surinamese track athlete
 1970 – Matt Blunt, American politician, former Governor of Missouri
 1970 - Melissa Disney, American actress
 1970 - Sabrina Lloyd, American actress
 1970 - Phife Dawg, American rapper (d. 2016)
 1971 – Joel McHale, American actor and comedian
 1973 - Neil Hodgson, English motorcycle racer

From 1976 
 1976 – Ji Yun-nam, North Korean footballer
 1977 - Fábio Júnior Pereira, Brazilian footballer
 1978 – Nadine Velazquez, American actress and model
 1979 – Dmitri Bulykin, Russian footballer
 1980 - Malachy Tallack, Scottish singer-songwriter, journalist and writer
 1981 - Carlos Boozer, American basketball player
 1981 - Espen Hoff, Norwegian footballer
 1981 – Kimberley Walsh, English singer (Girls Aloud)
 1982 - Nathan Vetterlein, American voice actor and Internet personality
 1984 – Justin Hoyte, English footballer
 1985 – Dan Byrd, American actor
 1986 - Jared Followill, American musician
 1988 - Rhys Wakefield, Australian actor
 1988 - Roberto Rosales, Venezuelan footballer
 1989 - Eduardo Vargas, Chilean footballer
 1989 - Cody Linley, American actor
 1993 - Sumire Sato, Japanese singer (AKB48)
 1995 - Michael Clifford, Australian singer, 5 Seconds of Summer.
 2000 – Connie Talbot, British singer
 2002 - Madisyn Shipman, American actress

Deaths

Up to 1900 
 811 - Li Fan, Chinese statesman (b. 754)
 869 - Edmund of East Anglia (b. 841)
 996 - Richard I, Duke of Normandy (b. 938)
 1316 - King John I of France (b. November 15, 1316)
 1559 – Lady Frances Brandon, mother of Jane Grey, Queen of England (b. 1517)
 1591 - Christopher Hatton, Lord Chancellor of England (b. 1540)
 1662 - Archduke Leopold Wilhelm of Austria (b. 1614)
 1695 - Zumbi, Brazilian King (b. 1655)
 1737 – Caroline of Ansbach, Queen of George II of Great Britain (b. 1683)
 1742 – Melchior de Polignac, French diplomat (b. 1661)
 1758 - Johan Helmich Roman, Swedish composer (b. 1694)
 1764 - Christian Goldbach, Prussian mathematician (b. 1690)
 1778 - Francesco Cetti, Italian Jesuit scientist (b. 1726)
 1856 - Farkas Bolyai, Hungarian mathematician (b. 1775)
 1894 – Anton Rubinstein, Russian pianist and composer (b. 1829)

1901  2000 
 1907 – Paula Modersohn-Becker, German painter (b. 1876)
 1908 - Georgy Voronoy, Russian mathematician (b. 1868)
 1910 – Leo Tolstoy, Russian writer (b. 1828)
 1925 – Alexandra of Denmark, Queen of the United Kingdom (b. 1844)
 1934 - Willem de Sitter, Dutch mathematician, physicist and astronomer (b. 1877)
 1936 – Buenaventura Durruti, Spanish anarchist (b. 1896)
 1936 – José Antonio Primo de Rivera, Spanish politician (b. 1903)
 1938 - Enzo Matsunaga, Japanese writer (b. 1895)
 1938 – Maud of Wales, Queen of Norway (b. 1869)
 1945 – Francis William Aston, British chemist (b. 1877)
 1950 - Francesco Gilea, Italian composer (b. 1866)
 1952 - Benedetto Croce, Italian philosopher (b. 1866)
 1957 - Mstislav Dobuzhinsky, Russian-Lithuanian painter (b. 1875)
 1975 – Francisco Franco, Spanish dictator (b. 1892)
 1978 - Giorgio de Chirico, Italian-Greek painter (b. 1888)
 1980 – John McEwen, 18th Prime Minister of Australia (b. 1900)
 1984 - Kristian Djurhuus, 2nd Prime Minister of the Faroe Islands (b. 1895)
 1984 - Faiz Ahmed Faiz, Pakistani poet (b. 1911)
 1989 - Leonardo Sciascia, Italian writer (b. 1921)
 1998 - Galina Starovoytova, Russian politician (b. 1946)
 1999 – Amintore Fanfani, Prime Minister of Italy (b. 1908)

From 2001 
 2003 – David Dacko, Central African politician (b. 1930)
 2003 - Robert Addie, British actor (b. 1960)
 2005 - Chris Whitley, American musician (b. 1960)
 2006 – Robert Altman, American director (b. 1925)
 2007 – Ian Smith, Rhodesian politician (b. 1919)
 2008 - Boris Fyodorov, Russian economist and politician (b. 1958)
 2009 – Lino Lacedelli, Italian mountaineer (b. 1925)
 2012 - David O'Brien Martin, American politician (b. 1944)
 2013 - Dieter Hildebrandt, German performer (b. 1927)
 2013 - Pavel Bobek, Czech singer (b. 1937)
 2013 - Sylvia Browne, American author (b. 1936)
 2013 - Joseph Paul Franklin, American serial killer (b. 1950)
 2014 - Cayetana Fitz-James Stuart, 18th Duchess of Alba, Spanish aristocrat (b. 1926)
 2014 - Charlie Hall, American politician (b. 1930)
 2014 - Marian Brown, American media personality (b. 1927)
 2015 - Kitanoumi Toshimitsu, Japanese sumo wrestler (b. 1953)
 2015 - Keith Michell, Australian actor (b. 1926)
 2015 - Carlos Oroza, Spanish poet (b. 1923)
 2016 - Konstantinos Stephanopoulos, President of Greece (b. 1926)
 2017 - Terry Glenn, American football player (b. 1974)
 2017 - John Gordon, English author (b. 1925)
 2017 - Peter Berling, German actor and writer (b. 1934)
 2018 - Roy Bailey, American folk singer and guitarist (b. 1935)
 2018 - James H. Billington, American academic (b. 1929)
 2018 - Eddie C. Campbell, American blues singer and guitarist (b. 1939)
 2018 - Mac Collins, American politician (b. 1944)
 2018 - Shlomo Erell, Israeli military general (b. 1920)
 2018 - Anvar Khamei, Iranian sociologist, economist and journalist (b. 1917)
 2018 - Aaron Klug, Lithuanian-British chemist and biophysicist (b. 1926)
 2019 - Fábio Barreto, Brazilian film director (b. 1957)
 2019 - Fred Cox, American football player (b. 1938)
 2019 - Mary L. Good, American chemist (b. 1931)
 2019 - Amos Lapidot, Israeli fighter pilot (b. 1934)
 2019 - John Mann, Canadian actor, singer-songwriter and musician (b. 1962)
 2019 - John Martin, American racing driver (b. 1939)
 2019 - Wataru Misaka, American basketball player (b. 1923)

Observances 
 Revolution Day (Mexico)
 Teacher's Day (Vietnam)
 Day of National Sovereignty (Argentina)
 Black Awareness Day (Brazil)
 Universal Children's Day (United Nations)
 Transgender Day of Remembrance

Days of the year