November 19

World Toilet Day is a UN recognized event, observed annually on 19 November. This international day of action aims to break the taboo around toilets and draw attention to the global sanitation challenge.

Events November 19

461 – Libius Severus is declared emperor of the Western Roman Empire. The real power is in the hands of the magister militum Ricimer.
1095 – The Council of Clermont, called by Pope Urban II to discuss sending the First Crusade to the Holy Land, begins.
1493 – Christopher Columbus goes ashore on an island he first saw the day before. He names it San Juan Bautista (later renamed Puerto Rico).
1794 – The United States and the Kingdom of Great Britain sign Jay's Treaty, which attempts to resolve some of the lingering problems left over from the American Revolutionary War.
1816 – Warsaw University is established.
1847 – The second Canadian railway line, the Montreal and Lachine Railway, is opened.
1863 – American Civil War: U.S. President Abraham Lincoln delivers the Gettysburg Address at the dedication of the military cemetery ceremony at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania.
1881 – A meteorite lands near the village of Grossliebenthal, southwest of Odessa, Ukraine.
1885 – Serbo-Bulgarian War: Bulgarian victory in the Battle of Slivnitsa solidifies the unification between the Kingdom of Bulgaria and Eastern Rumelia.
1911 – The Doom Bar in Cornwall claimed two ships, Island Maid and Angele, the latter killing the entire crew except the captain.
1912 – First Balkan War: The Serbian Army captures Bitola, ending the five-century-long Ottoman rule of Macedonia.
1916 – Samuel Goldwyn and Edgar Selwyn establish Goldwyn Pictures.
1941 – World War II: Battle between HMAS Sydney and HSK Kormoran. The two ships sink each other off the coast of Western Australia, with the loss of 645 Australians and about 77 German seamen.
1942 – World War II: Battle of Stalingrad – Soviet Union forces under General Georgy Zhukov launch the Operation Uranus counterattacks at Stalingrad, turning the tide of the battle in the USSR's favor.
1942 – Mutesa II is crowned the 35th and last Kabaka (king) of Buganda.
1943 – Holocaust: Nazis liquidate Janowska concentration camp in Lemberg (Lviv), western Ukraine, murdering at least 6,000 Jews after a failed uprising and mass escape attempt.
1944 – World War II: U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt announces the 6th War Loan Drive, aimed at selling US$14 billion in war bonds to help pay for the war effort.
1944 – World War II: Thirty members of the Luxembourgish resistance defend the town of Vianden against a larger Waffen-SS attack in the Battle of Vianden.
1946 – Afghanistan, Iceland and Sweden join the United Nations.
1947 – George VI of the United Kingdom creates Philip Mountbatten the Duke of Edinburgh in preparation for his wedding to George's elder daughter, Princess Elizabeth, the next day.
1950 – US General Dwight D. Eisenhower becomes supreme commander of NATO-Europe
1952 – Greek Field Marshal Alexander Papagos becomes the 152nd Prime Minister of Greece.
1954 – Télé Monte Carlo, Europe's oldest private television channel, is launched by Prince Rainier III.
1955 – National Review publishes its first issue.
1959 – The Ford Motor Company announces the discontinuation of the unpopular Edsel.
1967 – The establishment of TVB, the first wireless commercial television station in Hong Kong.
1969 – Apollo program: Apollo 12 astronauts Pete Conrad and Alan Bean land at Oceanus Procellarum (the "Ocean of Storms") and become the third and fourth humans to walk on the Moon.
1969 – Association football player Pelé scores his 1,000th goal.
1977 – TAP Portugal Flight 425 crashes in the Madeira Islands, killing 130.
1979 – Iran hostage crisis: Iranian leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini orders the release of 13 female and black American hostages being held at the US Embassy in Tehran.
1984 – San Juanico Disaster: A series of explosions at the PEMEX petroleum storage facility at San Juan Ixhuatepec in Mexico City starts a major fire and kills about 500 people.
1985 – Cold War: In Geneva, U.S. President Ronald Reagan and Soviet Union leader Mikhail Gorbachev meet for the first time.
1985 – Pennzoil wins a US$10.53 billion judgment against Texaco, in the largest civil verdict in the history of the United States, stemming from Texaco executing a contract to buy Getty Oil after Pennzoil had entered into an unsigned, yet still binding, buyout contract with Getty.
1985 – Police in Baling, Malaysia, lay siege to houses occupied by an Islamic sect of about 400 people led by Ibrahim Mahmud.
1988 – Serbian communist representative and future Serbian and Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic publicly declares that Serbia is under attack from Albanian separatists in Kosovo as well as internal treachery within Yugoslavia and a foreign conspiracy to destroy Serbia and Yugoslavia.
1990 – Pop group Milli Vanilli are stripped of their Grammy Award because the duo did not sing at all on the Girl You Know It's True album. Session musicians had provided all the vocals.
1994 – In the United Kingdom, the first National Lottery draw is held. A £1 ticket gave a one-in-14-million chance of correctly guessing the winning six out of 49 numbers.
1996 – Lt. Gen. Maurice Baril of Canada arrives in Africa to lead a multi-national policing force in Zaire.
1998 – Lewinsky scandal: The United States House of Representatives Judiciary Committee begins impeachment hearings against U.S. President Bill Clinton.
1998 – Vincent van Gogh's Portrait of the Artist Without Beard sells at auction for US$71.5 million.
1999 – Shenzhou 1: The People's Republic of China launches its first Shenzhou spacecraft.
2002 – The Greek oil tanker Prestige splits in half and sinks off the coast of Galicia, releasing over 20 million US gallons (76,000 m³) of oil in the largest environmental disaster in Spanish and Portuguese history.
2010 – The first of four explosions takes place at the Pike River Mine in New Zealand; 29 people are killed in the nation's worst mining disaster since 1914.

Holidays and observances

Christian Feast Day:
Obadiah (Eastern Catholic Church)
Raphael Kalinowski
Severinus, Exuperius, and Felician
November 19 (Eastern Orthodox liturgics)
Day of Missile Forces and Artillery (Russia, Belorussia)
Discovery of Puerto Rico (Puerto Rico)
Flag Day (Brazil)
International Men's Day (Australia, Canada, Ghana, Hungary, India, Ireland, Jamaica, Malta, Singapore, South Africa, Trinidad and Tobago, United Kingdom, United States)
Liberation Day (Mali)
International Journalist's remembrance Day
International gun owner day (19/11)

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