ON NOVEMBER 17 ...

In 1558 Elizabeth I ascended the English throne after Queen Mary I died.

In 1755 King Louis XVIII of France was born in Versailles.

In 1800 Congress held its first session in Washington in the partly completed Capitol.

In 1869 the Suez Canal opened in Egypt.

In 1889 the Union Pacific Railroad Co. began direct, daily service between Chicago and Portland, Oregon, and between Chicago and San Francisco.

In 1917 sculptor August Rodin died in Meudon, France; he was 77.

In 1926 the Chicago Blackhawks played their first hockey game, beating the Toronto St. Patricks 4-1.

In 1934 Lyndon Baines Johnson married Claudia Alta Taylor, better known as Lady Bird.

In 1942 film director Martin Scorsese was born in Flushing, New York.

In 1962 President John F. Kennedy dedicated the capital’s Dulles International Airport.

In 1968 NBC outraged football fans by cutting away from the closing minutes of a New York JetsOakland Raiders game to begin a television special, “Heidi,” on schedule. (Viewers were deprived of seeing the Raiders come from behind to beat the Jets, 43-32.)

In 1970 the Soviet Union landed an unmanned, remote-controlled vehicle on the moon, the Lunokhod I.

In 1973, speaking to a meeting of newspaper editors in Orlando, President Richard Nixon denied wrongdoing in the Watergate affair, asserting, “I am not a crook.”

In 1979 Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini ordered the release of 13 female and black American hostages being held at the U.S. Embassy in Tehran.

In 1992 Sens. John Kerry, of Massachusetts, Tom Daschle, of South Dakota, and Hank Brown, of Colorado, made an unprecedented tour of Vietnam’s military headquarters but found nothing to substantiate reports of American prisoners sighted there after the Vietnam War.

In 1993 the House of Representatives voted 234-200 to approve legislation implementing the North American Free Trade Agreement in what was seen as a major political victory for President Bill Clinton.

In 1997 militants used assault rifles to kill 62 people, most of them foreign tourists, at the Temple of Hatshepsut in the historic southern Egyptian town of Luxor; the six attackers were killed by police.

In 2000 the Florida Supreme Court froze the state’s presidential tally, forbidding Secretary of State Katherine Harris from certifying results of the marathon vote count just as Republican George W. Bush was advancing his minuscule lead over Democrat Al Gore. (Also, a federal appeals court refused to block recounts under way in two heavily Democratic counties.)

In 2001 the Taliban confirmed the death of Mohammed Atef, an al-Qaida chieftain, in a U.S. airstrike three days earlier.

In 2002 Abba Eban, the statesman who helped persuade the world to approve creation of Israel and dominated Israeli diplomacy for decades, died near Tel Aviv; he was 87.

In 2003 John Allen Muhammad was convicted of two counts of capital murder in the Washingtonarea sniper shootings. Also in 2003 Arnold Schwarzenegger was sworn in as the 38th governor of California. Also in 2003 Rush Limbaugh returned to radio after five weeks of rehabilitation for a painkiller addiction.

In 2004 it was announced that Kmart was acquiring Sears in a surprise $11 billion deal.

In 2005 U.S. Rep. John Murtha, of Pennsylvania, considered one of Congress’ most hawkish Democrats, called for an immediate U.S. withdrawal from Iraq.

In 2007 a Nobel-winning U.N. scientific panel said in a landmark report that the Earth was hurtling toward a warmer climate at a quickening pace.

In 2013 a string of tornadoes in central and southern Illinois killed six people, injured more than 100 and flattened large swaths of Washington, a city of 15,000 near Peoria. (Storms also killed two people in Michigan.) Also in 2013 a Boeing 737 crashed at the Kazan airport in central Russia, killing 44 passengers and six crew members.

In 2014 Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon activated the state’s National Guard and declared a state of emergency in anticipation of a grand jury decision on whether to indict Ferguson police Office Darren Wilson in the shooting death of African American teen Michael Brown.