12 November History
- 1035 - King Canute of Norway dies.
- 1276 - Suspicious of the intentions of Llywelyn ap Gruffydd, the Prince of Wales, English King Edward I resolves to invade Wales.
- 1859 - The first flying-trapeze circus act is performed by Jules Leotard at the Circus Napoleon.
- 1863 - Confederate General James Longstreet arrives at Loudon, Tennessee, to assist the attack on Union General Ambrose Burnside's troops at Knoxville.
- 1867 - Mount Vesuvius erupts.
- 1903 - The Lebaudy brothers of France set an air-travel distance record of 34 miles in a dirigible.
- 1923 - Adolf Hitler is arrested for his attempted German coup.
- 1927 - Canada is admitted to the League of Nations.
- 1928 - The ocean liner Vestris sinks off the Virginia cape with 328 aboard, killing 111.
- 1938 - Mexico agrees to compensate the United States for land seizures.
- 1941 - Madame Lillian Evanti and Mary Cardwell Dawson establish the National Negro Opera Company.
- 1944 - U.S. fighters wipe out a Japanese convoy near Leyte, consisting of six destroyers, four transports and 8,000 troops.
- 1944 - The German battleship Tirpitz is sunk in a Norwegian fjord.
- 1948 - Hikedi Tojo, Japanese prime minister, and seven others are sentenced to hang by an international tribunal.
- 1951 - The U.S. Eighth Army in Korea is ordered to cease offensive operations and begin an active defense.
- 1960 - The satellite Discoverer XVII is launched into orbit from California's Vandenberg AFB.
- 1968 - The U.S. Supreme Court voids an Arkansas law banning the teaching of evolution in public schools.
- 1971 - President Richard Nixon announces the withdrawal of about 45,000 U.S. troops from Vietnam by February.
- 1987 - Boris Yeltsin is fired as head of Moscow's Communist Party for criticizing the slow pace of reform.
12 November Birthdays
- 1815 - Elizabeth Cady Stanton, political reformer and founder of the Women's Rights Convention.
- 1817 - Mirza Hoseyn 'Ali Nuri (Baha' Ullah), founder of the Baha'i faith.
- 1840 - Auguste Rodin, French sculptor.
- 1866 - Sun Yat-Sen, Chinese revolutionary who founded the Nationalist Party.
- 1889 - DeWitt Wallace, founder of Reader's Digest.
- 1911 - Buck Clayton, jazz trumpeter.
- 1922 - Charlotte MacLeod, mystery writer (Rest You Merry, Maid of Honor).
- 1929 - Grace Kelly, American actress and Princess of Monaco.
- 1945 - Tracy Kidder, writer (Among Schoolchildren, Old Friends).