November 12

Today in History
• 1439 - Plymouth, England, becomes the first town incorporated by the English Parliament
• 1555 - The English Parliament re-establishes Catholicism
• 1682 - Swedish king Charles XI establishes absolute monarchy
• 1723 - Ambrose Godfrey patents a gunpowder fueled fire extinguisher system in England
• 1793 - The 1st Mayor of Paris Jean Sylvain Bailly, is guillotined during the Reign of Terror
• 1823 - Great North Holland Canal (Amsterdam) opens
• 1833 - The great Leonid Meteor shower recorded
• 1900 - Exposition Universelle (World's Fair) in Paris closes after 50 million visitors


Holidays - Traditional and Obscure
• Chicken Soup for the Soul Day
• Day of Mourning
• Deepavali
• Kali Puja
• Lakshmi Puja
• Naraka Chaturdashi
• Remembrance Sunday
• Sigd Day

Birthdays
• 1606 - Jeanne Mance, French-Canadian settler who founded the first hospital in North America
• 1746 - Tiradentes, Brazilian revolutionary and independence fighter, considered a national hero
• 1755 - Gerhard von Scharnhorst, Prussia general and Minister of War (1808-10)
• 1790 - Letitia Christian Tyler, American 1st wife of President Tyler
• 1817 - Bahá'u'lláh, Prophet Founder of the Bahá'í Faith
• 1841 - John William Strutt, 3rd Baron Rayleigh, English physicist and discoverer of argon
• 1866 - Sun Yat-sen, Chinese revolutionary and father of modern China
• 1889 - DeWitt Wallace, American publisher who founded Readers Digest
• 1938 - Benjamin Mkapa, Tanzanian politician, President of Tanzania (1995-2005)