11 November History
- 1499 - Pretender to the throne Perkin Warbeck is executed.
- 1778 - Indians, led by William Butler, massacre the inhabitants of Cherry Valley, N.Y.
- 1831 - Nat Turner, a slave who led a revolt against slave owners, is hanged in Jerusalem, Virginia.
- 1889 - Washington becomes the 42nd state of the Union.
- 1909 - Construction begins on the naval base at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii.
- 1918 - The German leaders sign the armistice ending World War I.
- 1919 - The first two-minutes' silence is observed in Britain to commemorate those who died in the Great War.
- 1921 - The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at Arlington Cemetery is dedicated.
- 1922 - Canada's Vernon McKenzie urges to fight U.S. propaganda with taxes on U.S. magazines.
- 1933 - The first of the great dust storms of the 1930s hits North Dakota.
- 1935 - Albert Anderson and Orvil Anderson set a new altitude record in South Dakota, when they float to 74,000 feet in a balloon.
- 1938 - Irving Berlin's "God Bless America" is performed for the first time by singer Kate Smith.
- 1940 - Britain's Royal Navy attacks the Italian fleet at Taranto.
- 1944 - Private Eddie Slovik is convicted of desertion and sentenced to death for refusing to join his unit in the European Theater of Operations.
- 1953 - The polio virus is identified and photographed for the first time in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
- 1966 - The United States launches Gemini 12, a two-man orbiter, into orbit.
- 1970 - U.S. Army Special Forces raid the Son Tay prison camp in North Vietnam but find no prisoners.
- 1973 - Israel and Egypt sign a cease-fire.
- 1973 - The Soviet Union is kicked out of World Cup soccer for refusing to play Chile.
- 1987 - An unidentified buyer buys Vincent Van Gogh's painting "Irises" from the estate of Joan Whitney Payson for $53.9 million at Sotheby's in New York.
11 November Birthdays
- 1050 - Henry IV, Holy Roman Emperor.
- 1821 - Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky, Russian novelist and political revolutionary (The Brothers Karamazov, Crime and Punishment).
- 1885 - George S. Patton, U.S. Army commander in World War II.
- 1898 - Rene Clair, French film director.
- 1922 - Kurt Vonnegut, American novelist (Slaughterhouse Five).
- 1925 - Jonathan Winters, comedian.
- 1928 - Carlos Fuentes, Mexican novelist.