NOW & THEN
NOVEMBER 20
1616: Cardinal Richelieu appointed minister of state in France.
1780: Britain declared war on Holland.
1795: The government of Curacao prohibited work by slaves on a Sunday.
1805: Beethoven’s Fidelio premiered in Vienna.
1873: The rival cities of Buda and Pest united to become Budapest, the capital city of Hungary.
1892: The union was broken and nine were left dead as 3,000 workers called off a five-month strike at Carnegie Steel Works, Pennsylvania.
1902: French sports journalist Geo Lefevre and editor Henri Desgrange created the Tour de France cycle race. The first race was staged the following year.
1906: Charles Rolls and Henry Royce collaborated to form their car company, Rolls-royce Ltd.
1917: British forces broke through the German lines at the Battle of Cambrai in the First World War, the first successful use of tanks in battle.
1920: The Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to US president Woodrow Wilson.
1929: Painter Salvador Dali put on his first one-man show.
1944: The lights were switched on again in Piccadilly, The Strand and Fleet Street, London, after five years of wartime blackout.
1947: Princess Elizabeth married Lieutenant Philip Mountbatten in Westminster Abbey. She was 21. The BBC covered the occasion in 42 different languages.
1951: Snowdonia in Wales was designated a national park.
1968: Alcatraz Island, the abandoned former penitentiary off San Francisco, was seized by a group of 89 Native Americans, and held for 19 months before the occupation was forcibly ended by the US government.
1969: Brazilian football great Pelé scored his 1,000th career goal, a penalty, while playing for visiting Santos against Vasco da Gama in the Maracana Stadium, Rio de Janiero. With the score at 1-1, his goal proved to be the winner.;
1970: The 50p coin replaced the ten-shilling note.
1977: Egyptian president Sadat became the first Arab leader to address the Knesset, the Israeli parliament.
1990: Saddam Hussein ordered 250,000 more Iraqi troops into Kuwait.
1992: A fire caused extensive damage to the state apartments at Windsor Castle.
1993: The New Zealand All Blacks beat Scotland 51-15 at Murrayfield, the home team’s biggest ever home defeat.
1995: In a BBC Panorama interview, Diana, the Princess of Wales admitted she had had an extra-marital affair with Major James Hewitt and that she had known of Prince Charles’ affair with Camilla Parker Bowles, saying: “There were three of us in this marriage, so it was a bit crowded.”
2007: US billionaire Donald Trump’s plan for a £1 billion golf resort with two championship courses, a five-star hotel, 500 private homes and 1,000 holiday homes on 1,400 acres of coastline at Balmedie was thrown out by Aberdeenshire Council’s planning authority.