04 NOVEMBER

1576 Eighty Years' War: In Flanders, Spanish defeat Walloon and capture Antwerp

1650 William III, King of England, Scotland and Ireland was born ..... in Holland. On the day after his 38th birthday he landed at Torbay with an army of English and Dutch troops, and when Parliament declared the throne empty, he was proclaimed king. These gilded statues of William III are in Portsmouth Dockyard and in Hull . Hull was the first large city in Britain to swear their allegiance to the new King when he deposed James II in 1685.

1677 The future Mary II of England married William, Prince of Orange. They later jointly reigned as William and Mary.

1783 Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's Symphony No. 36 is performed for the first time in Linz, Austria

1832 The birth, in Monmouthshire, of James James, harpist and musician from Pontypridd in South Wales. He composed the tune of the Welsh national anthem Hen Wlad fy Nhadau (also known as Land of my Fathers). This memorial to James James and his father Evan James, who wrote the lyrics, is in Ynysangharad Park, Pontypridd.

1839 The Newport Rising took place. It was the last large scale armed rebellion against authority in mainland Britain. Between 1,000 and 5,000 marched on the town of Newport in Monmouthshire, intent on liberating those who were reported to have been taken prisoner in the town's Westgate Hotel. 22 of their number were killed by the troops and upwards of 50 were wounded.

1841 First wagon train arrives in California

1847 Sir James Young Simpson, a British physician, discovers the anaesthetic properties of chloroform

1852 For the first time in its history, journalists were allowed into the House of Commons to report debates.

1859 The death of Joseph Rowntree, British chocolate manufacturer and philanthropist.

1862 Dr Richard Gatling patents Gatling machine gun in Indianapolis

1879 African American inventor Thomas Elkins patents refrigerating apparatus

1884 The birth of Henry George (Harry) Ferguson, Irish engineer and inventor who is noted for his role in the development of the modern agricultural tractor, for becoming the first Irishman to build and fly his own aeroplane, and for developing the first four-wheel drive Formula One car, the Ferguson P99.

1890 The Prince of Wales travelled by the underground electric railway from King William Street to the Oval to mark the opening of what is now the City Branch of the Northern Line. It was the first electrified underground railway system.

1900 Britain's first driving lessons were given, in London.

1921 The Sturmabteilung or SA, whose members were known as "brownshirts", physically assault Adolf Hitler's opposition after his speech in Munich

1922 English explorers Lord Carnarvon and Howard Carter discovered the Tomb of King Tutankhamen, in the Valley of the Kings near Luxor, Egypt. It had been undisturbed since 1337 BC.

1924 Nellie Tayloe Ross of Wyoming is elected the first female governor in the United States

1929 Violinist Yehudi Menuhin made his London debut, aged 12.

1939 President Roosevelt orders the United States Customs Service to implement the Neutrality Act of 1939, allowing cash-and-carry purchases of weapons by belligerents

1942 The Battle of El Alamein ended with victory for the allies, after 12 days of conflict with Rommel's 'Africa Corps'.

1952 Queen Elizabeth II opened her first Parliament.

1952 The United States government establishes the National Security Agency, or NSA

1963 John Lennon utters his infamous line at a Royal Variety Performance "Will the people in the cheaper seats clap your hands? And for the rest of you, if you’ll just rattle your jewelry…" in London

1973 The Netherlands experiences the first Car-Free Sunday caused by the 1973 oil crisis. Highways are deserted and are used only by cyclists and roller skaters

1974 Judith Ward was convicted of an army coach bombing on the M62 motorway in which 12 people died. She received a life term for each of those who died. Her conviction was quashed in 1992 when her lawyers argued that the trial jury should have been told of her history of mental illness.

1979 Iran hostage crisis: A mob of Iranians, mostly students, overruns the US embassy in Tehran and takes 90 hostages (53 of whom are American).

1987 Millionaire Peter de Savary bought Land’s End in Cornwall.

1994 400 years of shipbuilding came to an end at the Swan Hunter Shipyard, Tyneside, with the launch of the Royal Naval Frigate 'Richmond'. The yard stood empty for a few years, before it was bought by Jaap Kroese, a Dutch millionaire.

1995 Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin is assassinated by an extremist Israeli

2008 Barack Obama becomes the first African-American to be elected President of the United States

2011 Seven people were killed and 51 injured in a 34-vehicle pile-up on the M5 in Somerset. The accident happened close to junction 25 northbound and led to a 'massive fireball' at the scene.

2012 Reg Dean (from Wirksworth in Derbyshire) who was Britain's oldest man, celebrated his 110th birthday. He attributed his longevity to a 'mysterious medicine' given to him as a youth in India and to being 'a lazy-bones'. He died on 5th January 2013, aged 110 years and 63 days.

2014 Statistics from the 2011 census showed that Polish migrants had the highest employment rate of any nationality living in Britain, including the British. Results aslo showed that European migrants to the UK added £4.96bn more in taxes in the years to 2011 than they took out in public services

Famous Birthday's

Walter Cronkite
(1916 - 2009)

Art Carney
(1918 - 2003)

Matthew McConaughey
48th Birthday

Loretta Swit
79th Birthday

Rodney Marsh
69th Birthday

Matthew McConaughey
47th Birthday

Famous Deaths

Cy Young
(1867 - 1955)

Yitzhak Rabin
(1922 - 1995)

Sparky Anderson
(1934 - 2010)

Michael Crichton
(1942 - 2008)

Acker Bilk
(1929 - 2014)

Famous Weddings

1842 U.S. first lady Mary Todd Lincoln (23) weds US president Abraham Lincoln (33) in Springfield, Illinois

1911 Charles I of Austria marries Princess Zita of Bourbon-Parma

1939 Actress and comedian Phyllis Diller (22) weds inspector Sherwood Diller in Covington, Kentucky

1978 "The Nanny" actress Fran Drescher (20) weds writer and director Peter Marc Jacobson (20)

2006 Radio and television journalist Alison Stewart (40) weds MSNBC vice-president of prime-time programming Bill Wolff (40) at the stylish New York restaurant Cipriani 23rd Street

Famous Divorces

1940 American author and journalist "The Old Man and the Sea" Ernest Hemingway divorces 2nd wife Pauline Pfeiffer

1993 Nia Peeples files for divorce from Howard Hewett

2009 R&B singer Usher (30) divorces hair stylist and wardrobe stylist Tameka Foster (38) due to irretrievably broken marriage after 2 years