On this day in History - Nov. 26

• 0597 - Pelagius II succeeded Benedict I as pope.
• 1288 - Emperor Go-Daigo of Japan was born (d. 1339)
• 1436 - Princess Catherine of Portugal was born (d. 1463). Writer
• 1504 - Isabella I , Catholic Queen of Castille and Aragon (1474-1504), patron of Columbus died, in Medina del Campo .
• 1607 - John Harvard was born (d. 1638). English-born clergyman
• 1609 - Henry Dunster was born (d. 1659). English president of Harvard College.
• 1678 - Jean Jacques d'Ortous de Mairan was born (d. 1771). French geophysicist.
• 1688 - Louis XIV declared war on the Netherland
• 1764 - A Companhia de Jesus (Jesuítas) is forbidden in França.
• 1778 - In the Hawaiian Islands, Captain James Cook becomes the first European to visit Maui.
• 1789 - George Washington proclaimed on Oct 3 that Nov 26 be a National Thanksgiving Day in honor of the new Constitution. He made it clear that the day should be one of prayer and giving thanks to God, to be celebrated by all the religious denominations. In 1863 Pres. Lincoln designated the last Thursday of November as Thanksgiving Day.
• 1805 - Official opening of Thomas Telford's Pontcysyllte Aqueduct.
• 1809 - José Estêvão was born. Portuguese parlamentar orator.
• 1847 - Maria Fyodorovna was born (d. 1928). Princess of Denmark and Empress of Russia.
• 1851 - Nicolas Soult dies. French general.
• 1855 - Adam Mickiewicz dies (b. 1798). Polish poet.
• 1865 - Battle of Papudo: The Spanish navy engages a combined Peruvian-Chilean fleet north of Valparaiso, Chile.
• 1869 - Maud, Queen of Norway was born (d. 1938)
• 1883 - Sojourner Truth dies. African American evangelist and reformer who applied her religious fervour to the abolitionist and women's rights movements.
• 1894 - Nicholas II, the last tsar of Russia, married Alexandra.
• 1897 - Las colonias españolas de Cuba y de Puerto Rico consiguen la autonomía.
• 1898 - Karl Ziegler was born (d. 1973). German chemist, Nobel Prize laureate.
• 1905 - Emlyn Williams was born in Pen-y-ffordd, Flintshire, NE Wales, UK (d.1987). Actor, playwright, and director, best known for his play 'Night Must Fall'.
• 1909 - Eugène Ionesco born (d. 1994), Romanian-born French playwright, one of the chief exponents of the movement known as theater of the absurd.
• 1911 - Mário Lago was born (d. 2002). Brazilian actor, composer and poet.
• 1922 - Charles Schulz was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA (d.2000). Strip cartoonist, creator of 'Peanuts'.
• 1923 - Pat Phoenix was born in Portnum, County Galway, Ireland (d.1986). British actress best known as Elsie Tanner in the television soap 'Coronation Street'
• 1931 - Adolfo Perez Esquivel (1980 Nobel Peace Prize) born in Buenos Aires, Argentina
• 1939 - Tina Turner was born. American singer and actress.
• 1941 - US President Franklin Delano Roosevelt signs a bill establishing the fourth Thursday in November as Thanksgiving Day in the United States.
• 1941 - World War II: Attack on Pearl Harbor - A fleet of six aircraft carriers commanded by Japanese Vice Admiral Chuichi Nagumo leaves Hitokapu Bay for Pearl Harbor under strict radio silence.
• 1941 - Lebanon gains independence from France.
• 1942 - Premiere of the motion picture Casablanca, directed by Michael Curtiz, and starring Humphrey Bogart, Ingrid Bergman, and Paul Henreid, at the Hollywood Theater in New York City. Casablanca became one of Hollywood's most revered films.
• 1948 - Fausto was born. Portuguese singer.
• 1949 - India became a sovereign democratic republic. India adopted a constitution as a federal republic. Pandit Nehru became Prime Minister
• 1951 - Cicciolina [Ilona Staler] was born. Italian actress and politician
• 1956 - Tommy Dorsey dies (b. 1905). American bandleader.
• 1964 - Vreni Schneider was born. Swiss alpine skier who won three Olympic gold medals and was the dominant female skier of her era and one of the greatest skiers in the history of the slalom and giant slalom events.
• 1965 - Launching of the first French satellite, Astérix 1.
• 1968 - Arnold Zweig dies. German writer.
• 1976 - The Band play their final concert, dubbed The Last Waltz. One of the guest performers is Eric Clapton, whose band Cream also played their farewell concert on November 26, 8 years earlier.
• 1979 - Deborah Secco was born. Brazilian actress.
• 1988 - PLO leader refused entry into the US. Yasser Arafat, founder of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), is denied a request for a visa so that he could travel to New York City and address a United Nations session.
• 1990 Vergílio Ferreira, Portuguese writer wins, in Paris, the Fémina Prize for foreigner literature with "Manhã Submersa".
• 1997 - In Indonesia a recent visitor reported that some 40,000 Indonesian troops were stationed in East Timor among a population of 800,000
• 1999 - In India, at least 211 people died when two trains collided in the northern state of Punjab
• 2000 - By a huge margin Haiti's presidential election returns former president Jean-Bertrand Aristide to power.
• 2000 - Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris, a Republican, certifies Republican George W. Bush the winner over Democrat Al Gore in the state's presidential balloting by a 537-vote margin.
• 2003 - Last flight of Concorde.
• Mongolia: Independence Day