On This Day in History ~ 30 November

Prídie Kaléndas Decémbris Luna vicésima octáva Anno Dómini 2024

November 30th 2024, the 28th day of the Moon

• 978 – Franco-German war of 978–980: Holy Roman Emperor Otto II lifts the siege of Paris and withdraws.

• 1707 – Queen Anne's War: The second Siege of Pensacola comes to end with the failure of the British Empire and their Creek allies to capture Pensacola, Spanish Florida.
• 1718 – Great Northern War: King Charles XII of Sweden dies during a siege of the fortress of Fredriksten in Norway.
• 1782 – American Revolutionary War: Treaty of Paris: In Paris, representatives from the United States and Great Britain sign preliminary peace articles (later formalized as the 1783 Treaty of Paris).
• 1786 – The Grand Duchy of Tuscany, under Pietro Leopoldo I, becomes the first modern state to abolish the death penalty (later commemorated as Cities for Life Day). As Joseph de Maistre said, “All grandeur, all power, and all subordination to authority rests on the executioner: he is the horror and the bond of human association. Remove this incomprehensible agent from the world and at that very moment order gives way to chaos, thrones topple and society disappears.”
• 1803 – The Balmis Expedition starts in Spain with the aim of vaccinating millions against smallpox in Spanish America and Philippines.
• 1803 – In New Orleans, Spanish representatives officially transfer the Louisiana Territory to the French First Republic.
• 1853 – Crimean War: Battle of Sinop: The Imperial Russian Navy under Pavel Nakhimov destroys the Ottoman fleet under Osman Pasha at Sinop, a sea port in northern Turkey.
• 1872 – The first-ever international football match takes place at Hamilton Crescent, Glasgow, between Scotland and England.

• 1916 – Costa Rica signs the Buenos Aires Convention, a copyright treaty.
• 1936 – In London, the Crystal Palace is destroyed by fire.
• 1939 – World War II: The Soviet Red Army crosses the Finnish border in several places and bomb Helsinki and several other Finnish cities, starting the Winter War.
• 1940 – World War II: Signing of the Sino-Japanese Treaty of 1940 between the Empire of Japan and the newly formed Wang Jingwei-led Reorganized National Government of the Republic of China. This treaty was considered so unfair to China that it was compared to the Twenty-One Demands.
• 1941 – The Holocaust: The SS-Einsatzgruppen round up roughly 25,000 Jews from the Riga Ghetto and kill them in the Rumbula massacre.
• 1942 – World War II: Battle of Tassafaronga; A smaller squadron of Imperial Japanese Navy destroyers led by Raizō Tanaka defeats a U.S. Navy cruiser force under Carleton H. Wright.
• 1947 – Civil War in Mandatory Palestine begins, leading up to the creation of the State of Israel and the 1948 Arab–Israeli War.
• 1953 – Edward Mutesa II, the kabaka (king) of Buganda is deposed and exiled to London by Sir Andrew Cohen, Governor of Uganda.
• 1954 – In Sylacauga, Alabama, United States, the Hodges meteorite crashes through a roof and hits a woman taking an afternoon nap; this is the only documented case in the Western Hemisphere of a human being hit by a rock from space.
• 1966 – Decolonization: Barbados becomes independent from the United Kingdom.
• 1967 – Decolonization: South Yemen becomes independent from the United Kingdom.
• 1967 – The Pakistan Peoples Party is founded by Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, who becomes its first chairman.
• 1967 – Pro-Soviet communists in the Philippines establish Malayang Pagkakaisa ng Kabataan Pilipino as its new youth wing.
• 1971 – Iran seizes the Greater and Lesser Tunbs from the Emirates of Sharjah and Ras Al Khaimah.
• 1972 – Vietnam War: White House Press Secretary Ron Ziegler tells the press that there will be no more public announcements concerning American troop withdrawals from Vietnam because troop levels are now down to 27,000.
• 1981 – Cold War: In Geneva, representatives from the United States and the Soviet Union begin to negotiate intermediate-range nuclear weapon reductions in Europe. (The meetings end inconclusively on December 17.)
• 1995 – Official end of Operation Desert Storm.
• 1995 – U.S. President Bill Clinton visits Northern Ireland and speaks in favour of the sell-out "Northern Ireland peace process" to a huge rally at Belfast City Hall; he calls IRA fighters "yesterday's men".
• 1999 – Exxon and Mobil sign a US$73.7 billion agreement to merge, thus creating ExxonMobil, the world's largest company.
• 1999 – In Seattle, United States, demonstrations against a World Trade Organization meeting by anti-globalization protesters catch police unprepared and force the cancellation of opening ceremonies.
• 1999 – British Aerospace and Marconi Electronic Systems merge to form BAE Systems, Europe's largest defense contractor and the fourth largest aerospace firm in the world.
• 2000 – NASA launches STS-97, the 101st Space Shuttle mission.
• 2005 – John Sentamu becomes the first black archbishop in the Church of England with his enthronement as the 97th Archbishop of York.
• 2021 – Barbados becomes a traitorous republic.
• 2022 – The AI chatbot ChatGPT is launched by OpenAI.