THIS DAY IN HISTORY ― NOVEMBER 15

November 15 is the 319th day of the year (320th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 46 days remaining until the end of the year. This date is slightly more likely to fall on a Tuesday, Thursday or Sunday (58 in 400 years each) than on Friday or Saturday (57), and slightly less likely to occur on a Monday or Wednesday (56).

NATIONAL CLEAN OUT YOUR REFRIGERATOR DAY  

1533 – Spanish conquistador Francisco Pizarro arrives in Cuzco, the capital of the Inca Empire.

1777 – American Revolutionary War: After 16 months of debate the Continental Congress approves the Articles of Confederation.

1806 – Pike expedition: Lieutenant Zebulon Pike sees a distant mountain peak while near the Colorado foothills of the Rocky Mountains. It is later named Pike's Peak.

1864 – American Civil War: Union General William Tecumseh Sherman burns Atlanta, Georgia and starts Sherman's March to the Sea.

1915 – Winston Churchill resigns from his Government, and soon commands the 6th Battalion of the Royal Scots Fusiliers on the Western Front.

1939 – In Washington, D.C., U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt lays the cornerstone of the Jefferson Memorial.

1942 – World War II: The Battle of Guadalcanal ends in a decisive American victory.

1949 – Nathuram Godse and Narayan Apte are executed for assassinating Indian independence leader Mahatma Gandhi.

1959 – The murders of the Clutter Family in Holcomb, Kansas, which inspired Truman Capote's non-fiction book In Cold Blood. —  From Garden City Police (gcpolice.org)

1967 – The only fatality of the North American X-15 program occurs during the 191st flight when Air Force test pilot Michael J. Adams loses control of his aircraft which is destroyed mid-air over the Mojave Desert.

1969 – Cold War: The Soviet submarine K-19 collides with the American attack submarine USS Gato in the Barents Sea.

1979 – A package from the Unabomber, Ted Kaczynski, begins smoking in the cargo hold of a flight from Chicago to Washington, D.C., forcing the plane to make an emergency landing.

1985 – A research assistant is injured when a package from the Unabomber addressed to a University of Michigan professor explodes.

1988 – Israeli–Palestinian conflict: An independent State of Palestine is proclaimed by the Palestinian National Council.

1990 – The Communist People's Republic of Bulgaria is disestablished and a new republican government is instituted.

2007 – Cyclone Sidr hits Bangladesh, killing an estimated 5,000 people and destroying parts of the world's largest mangrove forest, the Sundarbans.

2012 – Xi Jinping becomes General Secretary of the Communist Party of China and a new seven-member Politburo Standing Committee is inaugurated.

TODAY'S BIRTHS

1887 – Georgia O'Keeffe, American painter and educator (d. 1986)

1891 – Erwin Rommel, German field marshal (d. 1944)

1906 – Curtis LeMay, American general and politician (d. 1990)

1907 – Claus von Stauffenberg, German colonel, conspirator to kill Hitler (d. (executed) 1944)

1922 – David Sidney Feingold, American biochemist and academic, Professor of Microbiology at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine

1942 – Daniel Barenboim, Argentinian-Israeli pianist and conductor

From Wikipedia and Google, except as noted.