📜 This Day in History

November 20

• 1739War of Jenkins' Ear: A British naval force arrived at the settlement of Portobello in the Spanish Main, capturing it the next day.
• 1820The American whaleship Essex sank 2,000 nautical miles (3,700 km) west of the western coast of South America after it was attacked by a sperm whale, an event which inspired the novel Moby-Dick by Herman Melville.
• 1947Princess Elizabeth, daughter of King George VI, married Lieutenant Philip Mountbatten, who was given the title Duke of Edinburgh.
• 1979Armed insurgents attacked and took over the Masjid al-Haram in Mecca, declaring that one of their leaders was the Mahdi, the prophesied redeemer of Islam.
• 1991First Nagorno-Karabakh War: An Azerbaijani military helicopter carrying a peacekeeping mission team was shot down in Nagorno-Karabakh, disrupting ongoing peace talks.
• 2003Suicide bombers blew up the British consulate and the headquarters of HSBC Bank in Istanbul, killing 31 people, including consul general Roger Short and actor Kerem Yılmazer.

Born on this day

• 1858Selma Lagerlöf, Swedish author and educator, Nobel Prize laureate (died 1940)
• 1889Edwin Hubble, American astronomer and cosmologist (died 1953)
• 1923Nadine Gordimer, South African novelist, short story writer, and activist, Nobel Prize laureate (died 2014)
• 1942Joe Biden, American politician, 46th President of the United States