Nov. 13
1775: During the Revolutionary War, American forces under Continental Army Gen. Richard Montgomery captured Montreal.
1956: The U.S. Supreme Court affirmed a lower court ruling that struck down Alabama’s bus segregation laws as illegal.
1971: The U.S. space probe Mariner 9 entered orbit around Mars, becoming the first spacecraft to orbit another planet.
Nov. 14
1851: Herman Melville’s novel “Moby-Dick; Or The Whale” was published in the United States, almost a month after its release in Britain.
1889: Journalist Nellie Bly began her attempt to travel around the world in 80 days; she would complete the journey in a little more than 72 days by ships, trains and other means of transport.
1960: Ruby Bridges, 6, under escort by federal marshals, became the first Black child to desegregate an all-white elementary school in New Orleans.
Nov. 15
1806: Explorer Zebulon Pike sighted the mountain now known as Pikes Peak in present-day Colorado.
1959: Four members of the Clutter family of Holcomb, Kansas, were found murdered in their home; two men were later convicted and hanged in a case made famous by Truman Capote’s “In Cold Blood.”
1969: A quarter of a million protesters staged a peaceful demonstration in Washington against the Vietnam War.
Nov. 16
1907: Oklahoma became the 46th state of the union.
1914: The newly created Federal Reserve Banks opened in 12 cities.
1973: President Richard Nixon signed the Trans-Alaska Pipeline Authorization Act into law, authorizing construction of an 800-mile oil pipeline from the Alaska North Slope to the port of Valdez.
Nov. 17
1869: The Suez Canal opened in Egypt.
1973: President Richard Nixon told a gathering of Associated Press managing editors at a televised news conference in Orlando, Florida, “People have got to know whether or not their president is a crook. Well, I’m not a crook.”
1989: An estimated 10,000 to 15,000 Czechoslovakian students demonstrated in Prague against Communist rule, sparking the nonviolent “Velvet Revolution.”
2003: Arnold Schwarzenegger, the Austrian-born actor who had become one of America’s biggest movie stars, was sworn in as the 38th governor of California.
Nov. 18
1928: “Steamboat Willie,” the first cartoon with synchronized sound and the debut of Mickey Mouse, premiered at the Colony Theater in New York.
1987: An underground fire broke out at the King’s Cross St. Pancras subway station in London, killing 31 people.
1978: U.S. Rep. Leo J. Ryan of California and four others were killed on an airstrip in Jonestown, Guyana, by members of the Peoples Temple; the attack was followed by a night of mass murder and suicide that left more than 900 cult members dead.
Nov. 19
1863: President Abraham Lincoln delivered the Gettysburg Address at the dedication of a national cemetery on the Civil War battlefield in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania.
1977: Egyptian President Anwar Sadat became the first Arab leader to visit Israel.
1985: President Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev met for the first time as they began their summit in Geneva.
