This day in history – November 15

• 1492 Christopher Columbus notes first recorded reference to tobacco.

• 1577 Sir Francis Drake, aboard Pelican, travels from Chile to Washington.

• 1620 Myles Standish leads 16 men in a foot exploration of the northern portion of Cape Cod.

• 1660 First kosher butcher (Asser Levy) licensed in New Amsterdam (now New York City).

• 1813 Tax revolt in Amsterdam.

• 1824 Series of fires kill 10 in Edinburgh, Scotland.

• 1832 Felix Mendelssohn’s “Symphony No. 5 (Reformation)” premieres

• 1835 Charles Darwin reaches Tahiti on board HMS Beagle

• 1837 Isaac Pitman introduces his shorthand system.

• 1854 In Egypt, the Suez Canal, linking the Mediterranean Sea with the Red Sea, is given the necessary royal concession.

• 1884 Colonization of Africa organized at international conference in Berlin.

• 1899 Morning Post reporter Winston Churchill captured by Boers in Natal.

• 1920 League of Nations holds first meeting in Geneva.

• 1934 Nobel for chemistry awarded to Harold C Urey (deuterium).

• 1939 Nazis begin mass murder of Warsaw Jews.

• 1956 “Love Me Tender” (The Reno Brothers) with Elvis Presley premieres in the US.

• 1959 Richard “Dick” Hickock and Perry Smith murder four members of the Clutter Family at their farm outside Holcomb, Kansas (subject of Truman Capote book In Cold Blood).

• 1961 UN bans nuclear arms

• 1969 Janis Joplin, accused of vulgar and incident language in Tampa, Florida.

• 1973 Egypt and& Israel exchange prisoners of war

• 1974 Ringo Starr releases “Goodnight Vienna” & “Only You” in UK

• 1975 “Mammas Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Cowboys” single released by Ed Bruce

• 1978 183 die as Icelandic Airlines DC-8 crashes in Colombo, Sri Lanka.

• 1979 In Parliament Sir Anthony Blunt, art adviser to the Queen, exposed as 4th man in Soviet spy ring. He was then stripped of his knighthood and fellowship of Trinity College, Cambridge.

• 1979 A package from the Unabomber Ted Kaczynski begins smoking in the cargo hold of a flight from Chicago to Washington, forcing the plane to make an emergency landing.

• 1985 A research assistant is injured when a package from the Unabomber addressed to a University of Michigan professor explodes

• 1989 “Batman” is released on video tape

• 1990 Producers confirm that Milli Vanilli didn’t sing on their album

• 1993 13 Cuban refugees land in Florida after stealing a crop-duster in Cuba.

• 2000 New state of Jharkhand comes into existence in India.

• 2003 First day of the Istanbul Bombings takes place, followed by additional bombings on November 20th.

• 2007 A devastating Cyclone named Sidr hit Bangladesh, killing an estimated 5 000 people and destroyed the world’s largest mangrove forest, Sundarbans.

• 2013 Sony launches the Playstation Four, selling one million units on the first day.

• 2014 The parents of 43 Mexican students who disappeared start a nationwide bus tour in protest at the government’s handling of the case.

• 2014 A 7.3 magnitude earthquake strikes under the Molucca Sea in eastern Indonesia, triggering a tsunami warning.

• 2015 France launches air strikes on Isis stronghold Raqqa in Syria in wake of terror attack on Paris.

Source: https://www.onthisday.com/