The Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008 for the US financial system is signed by President Bush.

Roy Horn of Siegfried & Roy is attacked by one of the show's tigers, canceling the show until 2009, when they rejoined the tiger that mauled Roy just six years earlier.

O J Simpson acquitted of the murders of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman.

Battle of Mogadishu: In an attempt to capture officials of warlord Mohamed Farrah Aidid's organisation in Mogadishu, Somalia, 18 US Soldiers and about 1,000 Somalis are killed in heavy fighting.

Re-unification of Germany. The German Democratic Republic ceases to exist and its territory becomes part of the Federal Republic of Germany. East German citizens became part of the ''European Community'', which later became the European Union. Now celebrated as German Unity Day.

TASCC, a superconducting cyclotron at the Chalk River Laboratories, is officially opened.

The Space Shuttle Atlantis makes its maiden flight. (Mission STS-51-J)

The Hunger Strike by Provisional Irish Republican Army and Irish National Liberation Army prisoners at the Maze Prison in Northern Ireland ends after seven months and ten deaths.

First Buffalo Wings are made at the Anchor Bar in Buffalo, New York.

Project Mercury: Sigma 7 is launched from Cape Canaveral, with Astronaut Wally Schirra aboard, for a six-orbit, nine-hour flight.

Allen Ginsberg's ''Howl and Other Poems'' is ruled not obscene.

The Mickey Mouse Club debuts on ABC.

The United Kingdom successfully tests a nuclear weapon.

The "Shot Heard 'Round the World", one of the greatest moments in Major League Baseball history, occurs when the New York Giants' Bobby Thomson hits a game winning home run in the bottom of the ninth inning off of the Brooklyn Dodgers pitcher Ralph Branca, to win the National League pennant after being down 14 games.

Korean War: The First Battle of Maryang San, primarily pitting Australian and British forces against communist China, begins.

Spaceflight: The first successful launch of a V-2 /A4-rocket from Test Stand VII at Peenemünde, Germany. It is the first man-made object to reach space.

Second Italo-Abyssinian War: Italy invades Ethiopia under General de Bono.

Iraq gains independence from the United Kingdom.

The Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes is renamed to Kingdom of Yugoslavia, "Land of the South Slavs".

King Boris III of Bulgaria accedes to the throne.

The Pravda newspaper is founded by Leon Trotsky, Adolph Joffe, Matvey Skobelev and other Russian exiles in Vienna.

Captain Jack and companions are hanged for their part in the Modoc War.

The last Thursday in November is declared as Thanksgiving Day by President Abraham Lincoln as are Thursdays, November 30, 1865 and November 29, 1866.

American author Edgar Allan Poe is found delirious in a gutter in Baltimore, Maryland under mysterious circumstances; it is the last time he is seen in public before his death.

The Staedtler Company is founded in Nuremberg, Germany.

General Napoleon Bonaparte first rises to national prominence being named to defend the French National Convention against armed counter-revolutionary rioters threatening the three year old revolutionary government.

British Captain James Cook anchors in Alaska.

The Treaty of Nissa is signed by the Ottoman Empire and Russia at the finish of the Russian-Turkish War, 1736–1739.

The Duke of Montrose issues a warrant for the arrest of Rob Roy MacGregor.

The Qing Dynasty naval commander Shi Lang reaches Taiwan (under the Kingdom of Tungning) to receive the formal surrender of Zheng Keshuang and Liu Guoxuan after the Battle of Penghu.

The Siege of Leiden is lifted by the Watergeuzen.

Dafydd ap Gruffydd, prince of Gwynedd in Wales, becomes the first person executed by being hanged, drawn and quartered.