This day in history: 8 Nov

1519: Hernando Cortes and his conquistadors entered Tenochtitlan.

1620: Protestant forces led by Prince Christian of Anhalt were defeated by the Catholics in the Battle of White Mountain.

1861: In what became known as the Trent Affair, RMS Trent - a neutral ship - was stopped by USS San Jacinto (commanded by Captain Charles Wilkes, after whom Wilkes Land in Antarctica was named) and two Confederate diplomats, James M Mason and John Slidell, were taken prisoner.

1889: Montana was admitted to the Union as the 41st state.

1923: Adolf Hitler and the NSDAP attempted to take power in Munich in the abortive "Beer Hall Putsch."

1939: Two British SIS agents, Captain Sigismund Payne Best and Major Richard H Stevens, were captured by German counterintelligence officers in the Dutch city of Venlo.

1939: A bomb planted by Georg Elser exploded in the Bürgerbräukeller, in Munich, where Hitler was making a speech marking the 16th anniversary of the Putsch. Eight others were killed, but Hitler had unfortunately changed his plans and left early.

1942: US and British forces landed in the Vichy-controlled territories of Morocco and Algeria in Operation TORCH.

1950: Lt Russell J Brown, USAF, was credited with shooting down two North Korean MiG-15 fighters whilst flying a Lockheed F-80 Shooting Star in the first jet-on-jet dogfight in history. (Russian sources disagree.)

1965: The US 173rd Airborne Brigade was ambushed by Viet Cong forces near Bien Hoa, South Vietnam, whilst participating in Operation HUMP.

1966: Edward W Brooke (R-Mass) became the first black man elected to the US Senate by popular vote. (The first black to serve in the Senate was Hiram Rhodes Revels, who was elected in 1870 by the Mississippi legislature to fill Jefferson Davis' unexpired term.)

Abraham Lincoln (1864), Grover Cleveland (1892), Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1932), John F Kennedy (1960) and George H W Bush (1988) were elected President on this date.

Witte Cornelisz de With (1599-1658), Dr John Holliday (1851-1887), August von Mackensen (1849-1945) and Norman Rockwell (1894-1978) died on this date.






And happy birthday to Edmund Halley (1656-1742)*, Milton Bradley (1836-1911), Bram Stoker (1847-1912), Herbert Austin (1866-1941), Patti Page (1927-TBD) and Lady Louise Windsor (2003-TBD).

* Born 29 October, OS.