November 20

869 On November 20, 869 the Danes defeated the king of East Anglia, St Edmund at an unidentified place known as Haegelisdun. He was taken captive by them, tied to a tree and when he refused to deny his Christian faith or surrender his kingdom, shot with arrows. Edmund's shrine became one of the most famous in Europe and for a time he was the official Patron Saint of England.

A medieval illumination depicting the death of Edmund the Martyr 

1739 During The "War of Jenkins' Ear" between England and Spain, a British naval force, commanded by Admiral Edward Vernon, captured the port of Portobello in the Spanish Main (modern Panama) between November 20-22, 1739. The British victory created an outburst of popular acclaim throughout the British Empire. More medals were struck for Vernon than for any other 18th-century British figure.

1789 The Bill of Rights, consisting of the first ten amendments to the United States Constitution, was proposed by Congress on September 25, 1789, and sent to the states for ratification. On November 20, 1789, New Jersey became the first in the newly formed Union to ratify the Bill of Rights. 23 months earlier, New Jersey had become the third state to ratify the United States Constitution.

1805 Beethoven's only opera, Fidelio premiered at Vienna's Theater an der Wien on November 20, 1805 with additional performances the following two nights. A story of a wife who dressed as a female jailer so she could join her husband in prison its underlying struggle for liberty and justice mirrored contemporary political movements in Europe.

Fidelio, playbill  at the Kärntnertortheater in Vienna, 23 May 1814

1820 On November 20, 1820 an 80-ton sperm whale attacked the whaling ship Essex 2,000 miles from the western coast of South America. First mate Owen Chase, one of eight survivors, recorded the events in his 1821 Narrative of the Most Extraordinary and Distressing Shipwreck of the Whale-Ship Essex. Herman Melville's 1851 novel Moby-Dick was in part inspired by this story.

1844 The first detective story published in Britain was Edgar Allan Poe's The Purloined Letter, which appeared in the Edinburgh Journal on November 20, 1844. It was the third of Poe's three detective stories featuring the fictional C. Auguste Dupin, the other two being The Murders in the Rue Morgue and The Mystery of Marie Rogêt.

1902 Stagnating sales for sports newspaper L'Auto led to a crisis meeting on November 20, 1902. The last to speak was their chief cycling journalist, a 26-year-old named Géo Lefèvre, who suggested holding a cycling race across France. The editor Henri Desgrange announced the race a couple of months later. The plan worked. Before the first Tour De France race started in July 1903 L'Auto sold 25,000 copies. Afterwards it stood at 65,000. Five years later it had surpassed the 250,000 mark.

1910 After Leo Tolstoy had a row with his wife, he stealthily left home one evening. After a day's journey by train south, the Russian author caught pneumonia and lay dying in a waiting room siding at Astapovo Railway Station. He passed away on November 20, 1910 at the station master's apartment. Tolstoy hated the concept of wills and the last one he wrote on a forest stump to avoid family spying. His land and literary estates went "to the people" through his sole family ally, his daughter Shaha. 

1910 Politician Francisco I. Madero issued the Plan de San Luis Potosí on November 20, 1910, denouncing Mexican President Porfirio Díaz. He called for a revolution to overthrow the government of Mexico, effectively starting the Mexican Revolution. The armed conflict lasted for the better part of a decade, until around 1920.

1923 After witnessing a serious accident between a motor vehicle and a horse-drawn carriage at an intersection, African American inventor, Garrett Morgan set out to come up with a three-position traffic signal. What he came up with was a T-shaped pole unit that featured Stop, Go and an all-directional stop position. This "third position" halted traffic in all directions to allow pedestrians to cross streets more safely. The patent was granted on November 20, 1923.
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1940 Ernest Hemingway's marriage to his second wife, Pauline Pfeiffer was doomed after the American writer met journalist Martha Gellhorn in Key West during Christmas 1936. Once Hemingway's divorce from Pauline was finalized, he and Martha were married on November 20, 1940, Hemingway and Martha separated after the novelist met the boyish war correspondent Mary Welsh in London during World War II.

1942 President Joe Biden was born November 20, 1942, at St. Mary's Hospital in Scranton, Pennsylvania. Joe Biden had an extremely audible stutter when he was a child, from stumbling over his words to not being able to voice them at all. Biden has worked hard throughout his life to solve this problem - he even practiced public speaking holding pebbles in his mouth - and can now manage the speech condition. 

Biden at age 10 (1953)

1945 24 Nazi leaders went on trial before an international war crimes tribunal at the Palace of Justice at Nuremberg on November 20, 1945. Not included were Adolf Hitler, Heinrich Himmler, and Joseph Goebbels, all of whom had committed suicide in the spring of 1945.

1947 Princess Elizabeth first fell in love with Philip Mountbatten after they met at the Royal Naval College in Dartmouth in July 1939, They were married on November 20, 1947 at Westminster Abbey before 2,000 guests. Because Britain had not yet completely recovered from the devastation of the war, Elizabeth required ration coupons to buy the material for her wedding dress, which was designed by Norman Hartnell.

1985 Windows is an operating system for computers made by Microsoft. Their first operating system, Windows 1.0, was released on November 20, 1985. Microsoft Windows came to dominate the world's personal computer market with over 90% market share, overtaking Mac OS, which had been introduced in 1984.

1992 On November 20, 1992, a devastating fire engulfed much of Windsor Castle, one of the official residences of Queen Elizabeth II. The fire started in the Queen's Private Chapel due to a spotlight coming into contact with a curtain. The fire quickly spread, engulfing the castle's Upper Ward. The intense heat and strong winds fueled the flames, causing significant damage to the historic structure. It caused about £36.5 million worth of damage.

1998 The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, one of the world's most successful video games, was released on November 20, 1998. On its initial Nintendo 64 release, the review aggregator website Metacritic ranked the original Nintendo 64 version of Ocarina of Time as the highest reviewed game of all time, with average scores of 99/100.

1998 A court in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan declared accused terrorist Osama bin Laden "a man without a sin" on November 20, 1998 in regard to the U.S. embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania. The court's ruling sparked outrage from the United States and its allies, and it served to further isolate the Taliban regime.

2014 American artist Georgia O'Keeffe holds the record for the most expensive painting by a female artist sold at auction. Her 1936 work Jimson Weed/White Flower No. 1, which once hung in George W. Bush’s dining room, made $44,405,000 at Sotheby’s in New York on November 20, 2014, more than three times the previous world auction record for any female artist.

Jimson Weed by Georgia O'Keeffe photographed by zambonia 29 Sep 2011

2015 Adele's 25 album was released on November 20, 2015.  It sold over 3.38 million copies in its first week of release in the US, surpassing the previous record held by NSYNC's No Strings Attached. It still holds the record for the biggest ever single sales week.