Historical Events on November 15

  • 1777: The Continental Congress finally approves the Articles of Confederation after a year and four months of solid debate during the American Revolutionary War.
  • 1791: The first Catholic college in the United States – Georgetown University – opens for the first time on this day.
  • 1864: Union General William Sherman makes his now famous March to the Sea.
  • 1920: In Geneva, Switzerland, the League of Nations is assembled for the first time.
  • 1922: At a general strike in Guayaquil, Ecuador, approximately a thousand people are massacred during a strike.
  • 1926: NBC Radio Network starts 24 stations.
  • 1933: The first election is held in the country of Thailand.
  • 1942: During WWII, the Battle of Guadalcanal comes to a end. It’s an overwhelming victory for the Allies.
  • 1943: Under order from Nazi SS leader Heinrich Himmler, all Gypsies are ordered to be put into concentration camps as if they were Jews.
  • 1959: Members of the Clutter family in Holcomb, Kansas occur. These events lead Truman Capote to pen his non-fiction book “In Cold Blood.”
  • 1966: Gemini 12 lands safely in the Atlantic Ocean thereby completing Project Gemini’s final mission.
  • 1971: The microprocessor – the 4004 – is released by Intel. It’s the first single-chip processor to be released.
  • 1985: A package from the Unabomber that was addressed to a professor of the University of Michigan explodes – injuring a research assistant.
  • 1988: The unmanned space shuttle Buran is launched into space by the Soviet Union.
  • 1990: Flight STS-38 of the Space Shuttle Atlantis launches on this date.

Famous Birthdays on November 15

  • German-English astronomer William Herschel is born in 1738.
  • French-Canadian poet and playwright, Joseph Quesnel is born in 1746.
  • German lawyer and politician, Friedrich Ernst Scheller is born in 1791.
  • German novelist, playwright, poet and Nobel Prize laureate, Gerhart Hauptmann is born in 1862.
  • American physician Sara Josephine Baker is born in 1873.