On November 19, 1977, Egyptian President Anwar Sadat visited Israel, becoming the first leader of an Arab nation to officially visit. Two years later, President Sadat became the first Arab leader to recognize Israel by signing the Egyptian-Israeli Peace Treaty. Read President Sadat’s address to the Israeli Knesset.
READ MORE ▸
On November 18, 1903, Panama and the United States signed a treaty on the proposed Panama Canal. Read the full text of the Convention for the Construction of a Ship Canal.
On November 18, 1976, the largely-appointed Parliament of Spain voted to transition to elective democracy. The vote came almost a year after the death of dictator Francisco Franco, who had governed the nation since 1936. Learn more about the Spanish transition to democracy.
On November 17, 1973, President Richard Nixon defended his actions in the Watergate affair, urging the nation to put Watergate behind it and telling a press conference “I’m not a crook.”
On November 17, 1989, riot police put down student protests against the communist government in Czechoslovakia. The incident started a series of non-violent protests that finally forced the communists from power two weeks later. Learn more about the Velvet Revolution.
On November 16, 1973, US President Richard Nixon signed the Trans-Alaska Pipeline Act into law. In addition to creating an oil pipeline across the state, the Act also quashed all environmental-legal challenges regarding its construction.
On November 16, 1885, the Canadian government executed Metis leader Louis Riel for high treason in the wake of the “Northwest Rebellion” that had pitted the Metis (descendants of French traders and native tribes) in what is now Saskatchewan against Canadian troops. Although Riel has lately been rehabilitated as an Indigenous francophone patriot of the [...]
On November 15, 1777, the Continental Congress adopted the Articles of Confederation, the first Constitution of the United States.
On November 15, 1949, Nathuram Godse and Narayan Apte were executed at Ambala jail in India for the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi.
On November 14, 1881, Charles Guiteau went on trial for the assassination of US President James A. Garfield. The trial of Guiteau pointed to problems with nineteenth-century law’s treatment of insanity; Guiteau’s trial is also problematic in retrospect as Garfield’s death was immediately attributable not to Guiteau, but to Garfield’s doctors who—before sterilization was well [...]
