THIS DAY IN HISTORY ― NOVEMBER 23

November 23 is the 327th day of the year (328th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 38 days remaining until the end of the year. This date is slightly more likely to fall on a Monday, Wednesday or Friday (58 in 400 years each) than on Saturday or Sunday (57), and slightly less likely to occur on a Tuesday or Thursday (56).

NATIONAL EAT A CRANBERRY DAY  

1248 – Conquest of Seville by Christian troops under King Ferdinand III of Castile, defeating it's Moorish invaders

1863 – American Civil War: Battle of Chattanooga begins — Union forces led by General Ulysses S. Grant reinforce troops at Chattanooga, Tennessee, and counter-attack Confederate troops. Bragg's defeat eliminated the last significant Confederate control of Tennessee and opened the door to an invasion of the Deep South, leading to Sherman's Atlanta Campaign of 1864.

1914 – The Mexican Revolution: The last of U.S. forces withdraw from Veracruz, occupied seven months earlier in response to the Tampico Affair. U.S. President Woodrow Wilson later considered another military invasion of Veracruz and Tampico in 1917–1918, so as to take control of the Tehuantepec Isthmus and Tampico oil fields. The relatively new Mexican President Venustiano Carranza threatened to destroy the oil fields in case the Marines landed there.

1924 – Edwin Hubble's discovery, that the Andromeda "nebula" is actually another island galaxy far outside of our own Milky Way, is first published in The New York Times.

1940 – World War II: Romania becomes a signatory of the Tripartite Pact, officially joining the Axis powers.

1943 – World War II: Tarawa and Makin atolls fall to American forces.

1971 – Representatives of the People's Republic of China attend the United Nations, including the United Nations Security Council, for the first time. 

1981 – Iran–Contra affair: Ronald Reagan signs the top secret National Security Decision Directive 17 (NSDD-17), giving the Central Intelligence Agency the authority to recruit and support Contra rebels in Nicaragua.

1996 – Ethiopian Airlines Flight 961 is hijacked, then crashes into the Indian Ocean off the coast of Comoros after running out of fuel, killing 125.

2004 – The Holy Trinity Cathedral of Tbilisi, the largest religious building in Georgia, is consecrated.

2006 – A series of bombings kills at least 215 people and injures 257 others in Sadr City, making it the second deadliest sectarian attack since the beginning of the Iraq War in 2003.

2007 – MS Explorer, a cruise liner carrying 154 people, sinks in the Antarctic Ocean south of Argentina after hitting an iceberg near the South Shetland Islands. There are no fatalities. — From NBCNews.com

2011 – Arab Spring: After 11 months of protests in Yemen, Yemeni president Ali Abdullah Saleh signs a deal to transfer power to the vice president, in exchange for legal immunity. 

2015 – Blue Origin's New Shepard space vehicle became the first rocket to successfully fly to space and then return to Earth for a controlled, vertical landing.

TODAY'S BIRTHS

1804 – Franklin Pierce, American general, lawyer, and politician, 14th President of the United States (d. 1869)

1896 – Klement Gottwald, Czechoslovak politician, President of the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic (d. 1953)

From Wikipedia and Google, except as noted.