1492 – Christopher Columbus becomes the first European to set foot on the island of Hispaniola, now Haiti and the Dominican Republic.
1766 - James Christie, founder of the famous auctioneers, held his first sale in London.
1933 - German physicist Albert Einstein was granted a visa, making it possible for him to travel to the United States.
1945 – Flight 19 is lost in the Bermuda Triangle -
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flight_19
1958 – Subscriber Trunk Dialling (STD) is inaugurated in the UK by Queen Elizabeth II when she speaks to the Lord Provost in a call from Bristol to Edinburgh.
1991 - Robert Maxwell's business empire collapsed with huge debts of more than £1bn and revelations about misappropriation of money in pension funds.
2005 – The Civil Partnership Act comes into effect in the United Kingdom, and the first civil partnership is registered.
1768 – The first edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica is published.
1877 - Thomas Edison made the first sound recording, of Mary Had a Little Lamb, on the phonograph he invented.
1884 - Army engineers completed construction of the Washington Monument, placing the 3300-pound marble capstone atop it.
1897 - The world's first fleet of motorised taxi cabs started operating in London.
1957 - America's first attempt at putting a satellite into orbit blew up on the launch pad at Cape Canaveral, Florida.
1983 - Surgeons successfully completed the first heart and lung transplant operation to be performed in Britain. Swedish journalist, Lars Ljungberg underwent the transplant, receiving the organs of a woman from the south of England who had died the previous day.
1994 - The Queen gave the go ahead for oil drilling to take place in the grounds of Windsor Castle. The move came after studies showed there could be up to £1bn of oil lying beneath the castle.
1998 - Endeavour's astronauts connected the first two building blocks of the International Space Station in the shuttle cargo bay.
2006 – NASA reveals photographs taken by Mars Global Surveyor suggesting the presence of liquid water on Mars.
1431 - Henry VI of England was crowned King of France.
1941 - Japanese forces attacked the home base of the U.S. Pacific fleet at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii, along with other British and American territories and possessions in the Pacific.
1950 - The first six figure win on the football pools was £104,990 and was won by Mrs. Evelyn Knowlson of Manchester.
1972 - America's last manned moon mission to date was launched as Apollo 17 blasted off from Cape Canaveral.
1979 - Production of MG sports cars came to an end after 50 years.
1982 – In Texas, Charles Brooks, Jr. becomes the first person to be executed by lethal injection in the United States.
1988 - A 6.9 magnitude earthquake in the Soviet Union devastated northern Armenia; official estimates put the death toll at 25,000.
1995 – The Galileo spacecraft arrives at Jupiter, a little more than six years after it was launched by Space Shuttle Atlantis during Mission STS-34.
2006 – A tornado strikes Kensal Green, North West London, seriously damaging about 150 properties.
1542 - The birth of Mary Queen of Scots, Scottish Queen who ascended to the throne when she was just 6 days old. A rebellion led to her abdication and later Elizabeth I imprisoned her for the plot to restore the Roman Catholic religion and to take the throne from her.
1864 - The Clifton Suspension Bridge over the River Avon at Bristol, designed by Isambard Kingdom Brunel, was opened.
1941 - The US, Britain and Australia declared war on Japan following the Pearl Harbour attack the previous day.
1965 - The new Race Relations Act came into force making racial discrimination unlawful in public places.
1980 – John Lennon, an English musician and peace activist, is assassinated by Mark David Chapman, a mentally unstable fan, in front of the Dakota apartment building in New York City.
2004 – Darrell Lance Abbott, also known as "Diamond Darrell" "Dimebag Darrell", "Dimebag" or simply "Dime" was murdered onstage during a Damageplan performance at the Alrosa Villa in Columbus, Ohio. He was 38.
2008 – Kirsty Williams is elected as Leader of the Welsh Liberal Democrats. She becomes the first female leader of a political party in Wales.
Just wanted to add:
1943 - James Douglas Morrison better known as Jim Morrison of The Doors was born.
1820 - Antarctica was first sighted by Englishman Edward Bransfield.
1854 - Lord Tennyson's poem, Charge of the Light Brigade was published.
1950 – Harry Gold is sentenced to thirty years in jail for helping Klaus Fuchs pass information about the Manhattan Project to the Soviet Union. His testimony is later instrumental in the prosecution of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg.
1960 – The first episode of Britain's longest running television soap opera Coronation Street is broadcast live.
1965 – The Kecksburg UFO incident: a fireball is seen from Michigan to Pennsylvania; witnesses report something crashing in the woods near Pittsburgh. In 2005 NASA admits that it examined an object.
1979 – The eradication of the smallpox virus is certified, making smallpox the first and to date only human disease driven to extinction.
1719 - The first recorded sighting of the Aurora Borealis took place in New England.
1845 - Pneumatic tires were patented by Scottish civil engineer Robert Thompson.
1868 – The first traffic lights are installed, outside the Palace of Westminster in London. Resembling railway signals, they use semaphore arms and are illuminated at night by red and green gas lamps.
1901 – The first Nobel Prizes are awarded, in Oslo, Norway.
1907 - Author Rudyard Kipling was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. It was the first time it had been bestowed on an English writer.
1958 - The first domestic passenger jet flight took place in the United States as a National Airlines Boeing 707 flew passengers from New York City to Miami.
1968 – Japan's biggest heist, the still-unsolved 300 million yen robbery, is carried out in Tokyo.
1979 - Twenty year old stuntman Eddie Kidd accomplished a death-defying motorcycle leap when he crossed an 80ft gap over a 50ft sheer drop above a viaduct at Maldon, Essex. He jumped the Great Wall of China in 1993, but his career ended after he suffered serious head injuries in 1996 at a Hell's Angels rally in Warwickshire.
1991 - The leaders of the 12 EC nations agreed on the treaty of Maastricht, pledging closer political and economic union.
1688 - James II was forced to abdicate after William of Orange had landed in England on 5th November.
1769 - Edward Beran of London patented Venetian blinds.
1844 - Nitrous oxide was first used in dentistry.
1914 - The Royal Flying Corps, which later became the RAF, adopted the red, white and blue roundel to identify its aircraft more easily during World War I.
1936 - After ruling for less than one year, Edward VIII becomes the first English monarch to voluntarily abdicate the throne. Edward planned to marry divorcee Mrs. Wallis Simpson and, before he left for France, he made a final radio broadcast to the nation. He was succeeded by his brother, George, who became George VI.
1946 – The United Nations International Children's Emergency Fund (UNICEF) is established.
1967 - The Concorde, created by the British and French and the world's first supersonic airliner, was unveiled in Toulouse, France.
1972 – Apollo 17 becomes the sixth and last Apollo mission to land on the Moon.
1997 - More than 150 countries agreed to control the Earth's greenhouse gases at a global warming conference in Kyoto, Japan.
1896 - Guglielmo Marconi gave the first public demonstration of radio at Toynbee Hall, London. The same day in 1901, Marconi carried out the first transatlantic radio transmission from Poldhu, Cornwall, to St John's, Newfoundland.
1913 - The "Mona Lisa" painting, stolen in 1911 from the Louvre in Paris, was recovered in Florence, Italy.
1948 - Britain introduced National Service for all men aged between 18 and 26.
1955 - Christopher Cockerell patented his prototype of the hovercraft.
1988 - The first satellite pictures were beamed to 2,200 London betting shops to allow them to watch the races live from many race courses.
1988 – The Clapham Junction rail crash kills thirty-five and injures hundreds after two collisions of three commuter trains – one of the worst train crashes in the United Kingdom.
1577 - Sir Francis Drake of England set out with five ships on a nearly three year journey around the world.
1642 - Dutch navigator Abel Tasman arrived in present-day New Zealand.
1847 - Wuthering Heights by Ellis Bell (Emily Brontë) was published.
1878 - The Holborn Viaduct in London was illuminated by electricity, the first street lighting in Britain.
1903 - Molds for ice cream cones were patented by Italo Marcione of New York.
1962 – NASA "Relay 1" launch, first active repeater communications satellite in orbit.
1972 – Apollo program: Eugene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt begin the third and final Extra-vehicular activity (EVA) or "Moonwalk" of Apollo 17. This is the last manned mission to the moon of the 20th century.
1972 - More than 300 British victims of the Thalidomide drug were offered a compensation deal said to be worth £11.85m.
1989 - South African President F.W. de Klerk met for the first time with imprisoned African National Congress leader Nelson Mandela, in Cape Town.
2006 - The Baiji, or Chinese River Dolphin, is announced as extinct.