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Explore 15 November

Explore 15 November: Brazil becomes a republic, the League of Nations holds its first Assembly, the Berlin Conference opens and Intel advertises the first microprocessor. Meet William Herschel, Georgia O’Keeffe and Gerhart Hauptmann, born on this date.

This day through time →11 verified events across 4 eras

⌛11Full
Timeline ◈4Historic
Moments ♙6Born
Today ✦5Lives
Remembered ◉2Firsts &
Discoveries ☆1Sporting
Moments ☉1Observances
The Proclamation of the Republic, painted by Benedito Calixto in 1893.
The Proclamation of the Republic, painted by Benedito Calixto in 1893.
Image creditBenedito Calixto · Public domainResized and cropped for display.
1889

Brazil becomes a republic

On 15 November 1889 army officers led by Marshal Manuel Deodoro da Fonseca overthrew the Brazilian monarchy in a largely bloodless coup in Rio de Janeiro. The Church, the army and many landowners had turned against the empire, and republicans such as Benjamin Constant and Rui Barbosa had spent years preparing the ground.

Deodoro proclaimed the Republic of the United States of Brazil and headed a provisional government. Emperor Pedro II, who had reigned for nearly half a century, left for exile in Europe within days. A republican constitution followed in February 1891, and 15 November is still a national holiday in Brazil.

Read the full storyHistory & Timeline →Source: Library of Congress: Brazil-U.S. relations, the First Republic (1889-1930) ↗
Delegates at the first session of the League of Nations Assembly in Geneva, 1920.
Delegates at the first session of the League of Nations Assembly in Geneva, 1920.
Image creditUnknown authorUnknown author · Public domainResized and cropped for display.
1920

The League of Nations holds its first Assembly

The League of Nations, created by the peace settlement after the First World War, had formally come into being on 10 January 1920. On 15 November 1920 delegates of 41 member states gathered in Geneva for the opening of its first Assembly, representing more than 70 per cent of the world’s population.

It was the first standing organisation of states set up to keep the peace and settle disputes by discussion. The United States, whose president had championed the idea, never joined, and the League failed to stop the aggression of the 1930s, but its ideas and many of its agencies passed to the United Nations in 1946.

Read the full storyHistory & Timeline →Source: United Nations Office at Geneva: The League of Nations ↗
The delegates of the Berlin Conference, in a drawing by Adalbert von Rössler, 1884.
The delegates of the Berlin Conference, in a drawing by Adalbert von Rössler, 1884.
Image creditAdalbert von Roessler · Public domainResized and cropped for display.
1884

The Berlin Conference on Africa opens

At the invitation of the German chancellor Otto von Bismarck, representatives of more than a dozen European powers, the Ottoman Empire and the United States met in Berlin on 15 November 1884 to agree common rules for trade and colonisation in Africa. No African was invited.

The General Act signed on 26 February 1885 declared the Congo and Niger rivers open to shipping and set out how a power should announce a new claim to African territory. In the years that followed, European claims multiplied rapidly in what became known as the Scramble for Africa.

Read the full storyHistory & Timeline →Source: Encyclopaedia Britannica: Berlin West Africa Conference ↗
Yasser Arafat, chairman of the PLO, photographed in 1996.
Yasser Arafat, chairman of the PLO, photographed in 1996.
Image creditGideon Markowiz · CC BY 4.0Resized and cropped for display.
1988

The Palestinian Declaration of Independence

Meeting in exile in Algiers, the Palestine National Council, the parliament of the Palestine Liberation Organization, ended its session on 15 November 1988 by proclaiming a State of Palestine, with Jerusalem as its capital. The declaration was read by the PLO chairman Yasser Arafat.

Alongside it, the council’s political statement implicitly accepted United Nations Security Council resolutions 242 and 338, a step towards negotiation with Israel. By the end of 1988 more than 80 countries had recognised the new state, and the UN General Assembly began using the name Palestine in place of PLO.

Read the full storyHistory & Timeline →Source: United Nations: Declaration of State of Palestine, Palestine National Council ↗
♙
PEOPLE

Born Today

William Herschel
Image creditLemuel Francis Abbott · Public domainResized and cropped for display.
Born 1738

William Herschel

German-born astronomer and musician who settled in England and discovered the planet Uranus in 1781.

Gerhart Hauptmann
Image creditUnknown authorUnknown author · Public domainResized and cropped for display.
Born 1862

Gerhart Hauptmann

German playwright and novelist, author of The Weavers, who won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1912.

Georgia O'Keeffe
Image creditAlfred Stieglitz · CC0Resized and cropped for display.
Born 1887

Georgia O’Keeffe

American painter known for her magnified flowers, New York skyscrapers and the landscapes of New Mexico.

Claus von Stauffenberg
Image creditUnknown authorUnknown author · Public domainResized and cropped for display.
Born 1907

Claus von Stauffenberg

German army officer who planted the bomb in the failed attempt to kill Hitler on 20 July 1944 and was executed the same night.

Daniel Barenboim
Image creditRaimond Spekking · CC BY-SA 4.0Resized and cropped for display.
Born 1942

Daniel Barenboim

Argentine-born pianist and conductor who co-founded the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra of Israeli and Arab musicians.

◉
IDEAS THAT CHANGED THINGS

Firsts, Science & Discoveries

An Intel C4004 microprocessor.
An Intel C4004 microprocessor.
Image creditThomas Nguyen · CC BY-SA 4.0Resized and cropped for display.
1971

The first microprocessor is advertised

On 15 November 1971 Intel announced ‘a new era of integrated electronics’ in an advertisement in the trade paper Electronic News. It offered the MCS-4 family of chips, whose centrepiece, the 4004, put a complete central processing unit on a single chip for the first time.

The 4004 had been designed for a Japanese calculator maker, Busicom, by Intel’s Ted Hoff, Stan Mazor and Federico Faggin. Its 2,300 transistors made it the ancestor of the processors in almost every computer and phone today.

Read the full storyHistory & Timeline →Source: Intel: Announcing a new era of integrated electronics ↗
The Buran orbiter on the back of the An-225 Mriya at the Paris Air Show, June 1989.
The Buran orbiter on the back of the An-225 Mriya at the Paris Air Show, June 1989.
Image creditMASTER SGT. DAVE CASEY · Public domainResized and cropped for display.
1988

The Soviet shuttle Buran makes its only flight

In the early hours of 15 November 1988 the Soviet Union’s reusable spaceplane Buran lifted off from the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on an Energia rocket. There was nobody on board: the whole flight was controlled automatically.

Buran circled the Earth twice, re-entered the atmosphere and landed safely back at Baikonur. The flight was a technical success, but the programme was starved of money as the Soviet Union collapsed, and Buran never flew again.

Read the full storyHistory & Timeline →Source: European Space Agency: 1988 launch of Soviet Buran shuttle ↗
☆
SPORTING HISTORY

Sporting Moments

Lewis Hamilton greets the crowd at the Italian Grand Prix, 2018.
Lewis Hamilton greets the crowd at the Italian Grand Prix, 2018.
Image credithttps://www.flickr.com/photos/78475089@N02/ · CC BY-SA 2.0Resized and cropped for display.
2020

Hamilton equals Schumacher’s seven world titles

Lewis Hamilton won a wet Turkish Grand Prix at Istanbul Park on 15 November 2020 and with it the Formula One drivers’ championship for the seventh time, equalling the record set by Michael Schumacher. He started sixth and won comfortably after staying out on one set of worn intermediate tyres.

Earlier in the same season the British driver had also overtaken Schumacher’s record of 91 Grand Prix victories.

Read the full storyHistory & Timeline →Source: FIA: Hamilton wins in Turkey to clinch record-equalling seventh world title ↗
✦
LIVES REMEMBERED

Remembered Today

Johannes Kepler
Image creditAugust Köhler [1] · Public domainResized and cropped for display.
Died 1630

Johannes Kepler

German astronomer whose three laws showed that the planets move in ellipses around the Sun.

Christoph Willibald Gluck
Image creditJoseph-Siffred Duplessis · Public domainResized and cropped for display.
Died 1787

Christoph Willibald Gluck

German-born composer who reformed opera, with works such as Orfeo ed Euridice.

Empress Dowager Cixi
Image creditJohn Yu Shuinling · Public domainResized and cropped for display.
Died 1908

Empress Dowager Cixi

Chinese empress dowager who dominated the Qing court for almost half a century.

☉
AROUND THE WORLD

Observances & Anniversaries

A boy in traditional dress at a shrine for Shichi-Go-San.
A boy in traditional dress at a shrine for Shichi-Go-San.
Image creditJapanexperterna.se · CC BY-SA 3.0Resized and cropped for display.
Annual

Shichi-Go-San in Japan

On or around 15 November Japanese families take girls aged three and seven and boys aged five, often in kimono, to a Shinto shrine to give thanks for their health and pray for their future. The name means ‘seven-five-three’, and children are given long red-and-white sticks of ‘thousand-year sweets’.

Source: Encyclopaedia Britannica: Shichi-go-san ↗
HISTORY & TIMELINE

Finished the highlights?

Follow 15 November chronologically, from the Middle Ages to the modern day, with 11 verified events and the sources behind them.

This day through time →
Sources & further reading