What Happened on November 8th in History
30 historical events on this date
Pan Am Flight 7 disappears between San Francisco and Honolulu. Wreckage and bodies are discovered a week later.
Pan Am Flight 7 was a westbound round-the-world flight operated by Pan American World Airways. On November 8, 1957, the Boeing 377 Stratocruiser 10-29 serving the flight, named Clipper Romance of...
Operation Grapple X, Round C1: The United Kingdom conducts its first successful hydrogen bomb test over Kiritimati in the Pacific.
Operation Grapple was a set of four series of British nuclear weapons tests of early atomic bombs and hydrogen bombs carried out in 1957 and 1958 at Malden Island and Kiritimati in the Gilbert and...
John F. Kennedy is elected as the 35th President of the United States, defeating incumbent Vice President Richard Nixon, who would later be elected president in 1968 and 1972.
John Fitzgerald Kennedy, also known as JFK, was the 35th president of the United States, serving from 1961 until his assassination in 1963. He was the youngest person elected president, at 43 years,...
Finnair's Aero Flight 217 crashes near Mariehamn Airport in Jomala, Åland, killing 22 people.
Finnair Plc is the flag carrier and largest full-service legacy airline of Finland, with headquarters in Vantaa on the grounds of Helsinki Airport, its hub. Finnair and its subsidiaries dominate...
The British Indian Ocean Territory is created, consisting of Chagos Archipelago, Aldabra, Farquhar and Des Roches islands.
The British Indian Ocean Territory (BIOT) is a British Overseas Territory situated in the Indian Ocean. The territory comprises the seven atolls of the Chagos Archipelago with over 1,000 individual...
The Murder (Abolition of Death Penalty) Act 1965 is given Royal Assent, formally abolishing the death penalty in the United Kingdom for almost all crimes.
The Murder Act 1965 is an act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. It abolished the death penalty for murder in Great Britain. The act replaced the penalty of death with a mandatory sentence of...
The 173rd Airborne is ambushed by over 1,200 Viet Cong in Operation Hump during the Vietnam War, while the 1st Battalion, Royal Australian Regiment fight one of the first set-piece engagements of the war between Australian forces and the Viet Cong at the Battle of Gang Toi.
The 173rd Mobile Brigade Combat Team (Airborne) ("Sky Soldiers") is an airborne mobile Brigade Combat Team (MBCT) of the United States Army based in Vicenza, Italy. It is the United States European...
American Airlines Flight 383 crashes in Constance, Kentucky, killing 58.
American Airlines Flight 383 was a nonstop flight from New York City to Cincinnati on November 8, 1965. The aircraft was a Boeing 727, with 57 passengers, and 5 crew on board. The aircraft crashed...
Former Massachusetts Attorney General Edward Brooke becomes the first African American elected to the United States Senate since Reconstruction.
Massachusetts, officially the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, is a state in the New England region of the Northeastern United States. It borders the Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf of Maine to its east,...
U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson signs into law an antitrust exemption allowing the National Football League to merge with the upstart American Football League.
Lyndon Baines Johnson, also known as LBJ, was the 36th president of the United States from 1963 to 1969. Johnson was vice president under John F. Kennedy from 1961 until Kennedy's assassination in...
The Vienna Convention on Road Traffic is signed to facilitate international road traffic and to increase road safety by standardising the uniform traffic rules among the signatories.
The Vienna Convention on Road Traffic is an international treaty designed to facilitate international road traffic and to increase road safety by establishing standard traffic rules among the...
American pay television network Home Box Office (HBO) launches.
Home Box Office (HBO) is an American premium television network and service, which is the flagship property of namesake parent Home Box Office, Inc., a subsidiary of Warner Bros. Discovery. The...
The right ear of John Paul Getty III is delivered to a newspaper outlet along with a ransom note, convincing his father to pay US$2.9 million.
John Paul Getty III was the grandson of the American-born British oil tycoon J. Paul Getty, who was once the richest man in the world. While living in Rome in 1973, he was kidnapped by the...
Manolis Andronikos, a Greek archaeologist and professor at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, discovers the tomb of Philip II of Macedon at Vergina.
Manolis Andronikos was a Greek archaeologist and a professor at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki.
Aeroméxico Flight 110 crashes near Zihuatanejo, Mexico, killing all 18 people on board.
Aeroméxico Flight 110 was a scheduled domestic commercial flight from Acapulco to Guadalajara. On November 8, 1981, the McDonnell Douglas DC-9 operating the flight experienced a cabin decompression...
TAAG Angola Airlines Flight 462 crashes after takeoff from Lubango Airport killing all 130 people on board. UNITA claims to have shot down the aircraft, though this is disputed.
TAAG Flight 462 was a TAAG Angola Airlines flight which crashed just after the Boeing 737-200 took off from Lubango Airport in Lubango, Angola, on a regular domestic service as Flight DT 462 to...
Remembrance Day bombing: A Provisional IRA bomb explodes in Enniskillen, Northern Ireland during a ceremony honouring those who had died in wars involving British forces. Twelve people are killed and sixty-three wounded.
The Remembrance Day bombing took place on 8 November 1987 in Enniskillen, County Fermanagh, Northern Ireland. A Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) bomb exploded near the town's war memorial...
U.S. Vice President George H. W. Bush is elected as the 41st president.
The vice president of the United States is the second-highest office in the executive branch of the U.S. federal government, after the president of the United States, and ranks first in the...
Republican Revolution: On the night of the 1994 United States midterm elections, Republicans make historic electoral gains by securing massive majorities in both houses of Congress (54 seats in the House and eight seats in the Senate, additionally), thus bringing to a close four decades of Democratic domination.
The Republican Revolution, also known as the Revolution of '94 or Gingrich Revolution are political slogans that refer to the Republican Party's (GOP) success in the 1994 U.S. midterm elections,...
Eritrea adopts the nakfa as its official currency.
Eritrea, officially the State of Eritrea, is a country in the Horn of Africa region of East Africa. Its capital and largest city is Asmara. The country is bordered by Ethiopia to the south, Sudan to...
Bruce Miller is killed at his junkyard near Flint, Michigan. His wife Sharee Miller, who convinced her online lover Jerry Cassaday to kill him (before later killing himself) was convicted of the crime, in what became the world's first Internet murder.
Sharee Paulette Kitley Miller is an American woman convicted of plotting the murder of her husband, Bruce Miller, over the internet with her online lover Jerry Cassaday, who later died by suicide.
Iraq disarmament crisis: UN Security Council Resolution 1441: The United Nations Security Council unanimously approves a resolution on Iraq, forcing Saddam Hussein to disarm or face "serious consequences".
In the Iraq disarmament crisis of the early 2000s, Iraq, led by president Saddam Hussein, was pressured by the United States and its other adversaries to destroy alleged stockpiles of weapons of...
Iraq War: More than 10,000 U.S. troops and a small number of Iraqi army units participate in a siege on the insurgent stronghold of Fallujah.
The Iraq War, also referred to as the Second Gulf War, was a protracted armed conflict in Iraq from 2003 to 2011. It began with the invasion by a United States–led coalition, which resulted in the...
Israeli-Palestinian conflict: The Israeli Defense Force kill 19 Palestinian civilians in their homes during the shelling of Beit Hanoun.
Israel and the Palestinians are engaged in an ongoing military and political conflict about land and self-determination within the former territory of Mandatory Palestine. Key aspects of the...
The potentially hazardous asteroid 2005 YU55 passes 0.85 lunar distances from Earth (about 324,600 kilometres or 201,700 miles), the closest known approach by an asteroid of its brightness since 2010 XC15 in 1976.
A potentially hazardous object (PHO) is a near-Earth object – either an asteroid or a comet – with an orbit that can make close approaches to the Earth and which is large enough to cause significant...
Typhoon Haiyan, one of the strongest tropical cyclones ever recorded, strikes the Visayas region of the Philippines; the storm left at least 6,340 people dead with over 1,000 still missing, and caused $2.86 billion (2013 USD; equivalent to $3.95 billion in 2025) in damage.
Typhoon Haiyan, known in the Philippines as Super Typhoon Yolanda, was an extremely powerful and catastrophic tropical cyclone that is among the most intense tropical cyclones ever recorded. Upon...
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi publicly announces the withdrawal of ₹500 and ₹1000 denomination banknotes.
On 8 November 2016, the Government of India announced the demonetisation of all ₹500 and ₹1,000 banknotes of the Mahatma Gandhi Series. It also announced the issuance of new ₹500 and ₹2000...
Donald Trump is elected the 45th President of the United States, defeating Hillary Clinton, the first woman ever to receive a major party's nomination.
Donald John Trump is an American politician, media personality, and businessman who is the 47th president of the United States. A member of the Republican Party, he served as the 45th president from...
The Louvre Abu Dhabi was inaugurated by the French president Emmanuel Macron and then-crown prince of Abu Dhabi Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan.
The Louvre Abu Dhabi is an art museum located on Saadiyat Island in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates. It runs under an agreement between the UAE and France, signed in March 2007, that allows it to...
Myanmar holds the 2020 general election, re-electing a government led by the National League for Democracy, which is deposed by the Burmese military the following February during the 2021 Myanmar coup d'état.
General elections were held in Myanmar on 8 November 2020. Voting occurred in all constituencies, excluding seats appointed by or reserved for the military, to elect members to both the upper house...