TODAY IN HISTORY

TODAY IS SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 30, 2019

On this day in history:

1700 - 8000 Swedish troops under King Charles XII defeated an army of at least 50,000 Russians at the Battle of Narva. King Charles XII died on this day.

1782 - The United States and Britain signed preliminary peace articles in Paris, ending the Revolutionary War.

1803 - Spain completed the process of ceding Louisiana to France.

1831 - Sir Thomas Mitchell sets out to investigate rumours of a vast river allegedly flowing north from New South Wales. 1838 - Three days after the French occupation of Vera Cruz Mexico declared war on France. 1853 - During the Crimean War, the Russian fleet attacked and destroyed the Turkish fleet at the battle of Sinope.

1854 - Peter Lalor is elected to lead the gold-diggers in the movement that would become the Eureka Stockade.

1878 - Advance Australia Fair, the song that would become Australia’s National Anthem over a century later, is performed for the first time in public.

1906 - George Parker Bidder, President of the Marine Biological Association (UK) released a glass bottle with a message into the North Sea. The bottle spent 108 years and 38 days at sea before it was found on the shores of Germany in 2015.

1920 - The first south to north transcontinental flight across Australia occurs.

1928 - Australian cricket icon Donald Bradman makes his Test debut.

1936 - London’s famed Crystal Palace was destroyed in a fire. The structure had been constructed for the International Exhibition of 1851. 1939 - The Russo-Finnish War began when 20 divisions of Soviet troops invaded Finland. 1949 - Chinese Communists captured Chungking.

1954 - In Sylacauga, AL, Elizabeth Hodges was injured when a meteorite crashed through the roof of her house. The rock weighed 8½-pounds. 1962 - U Thant of Burma was elected secretary-general of the United Nations, succeeding the late Dag Hammarskjold.