November 26

1476 – Vlad III Țepeș, known as ‘The Impaler’, defeats Basarab Laiota with the help of Stephen the Great and Stephen V Báthory and becomes the ruler of Wallachia for the third time.

1778 – Captain James Cook becomes the first European to visit Maui in the Hawaiian islands.

1789 – A national Thanksgiving Day is observed in the United States as proclaimed by President Washington at the request of Congress.

1863 – President Lincoln proclaims November 26 as a national Thanksgiving Day, to be celebrated annually on the final Thursday of November. Since 1941, it has been on the 4th Thursday.

1917 – The Manchester Guardian publishes the 1916 secret Sykes-Picot Agreement between the United Kingdom and France with Italian and Russian agreement on their plans on how to partition the Ottoman empire as it collapsed during World War I.

1922 – Howard Carter and Lord Carnarvon enter the tomb of Pharaoh Tutankhamun

1926 – John Moses Browning dies, age 71, of heart failure while at his work bench in his son’s design shop at Fabrique Nationale in Herstal, Belgium.

1941 – On the same day that Japan’s 1st Air Fleet, under the command of Admiral Chūichi Nagumo departs Hitokappu Bay, enroute to Hawaii, U.S. Secretary of State Cordell Hull delivers a note to the Japanese envoy Saburō Kurusu in Washington D.C., demanding that Japan withdraw from China and French Indochina, in return for which the U.S. would lift economic sanctions.

1942 – Casablanca, starring Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman, premieres in New York City.

1943 – While flight leader, launched off the USS Enterprise on the first night fighter mission to engage Japanese bombers attacking the carrier task force, U.S. Navy Lieutenant Commander Edward O’Hare, earlier recipient of the Medal of Honor, is shot down in action and lost at sea.

1950 – During the Korean War, troops from the People’s Republic of China launch a massive counterattack in North Korea against South Korean and United Nations forces along the Ch’ongch’on River and around the Chosin Reservoir

1968 – U.S. Air Force helicopter pilot 1st Lieutenant James P. Fleming rescues an Army Special Forces CCC MACV-SOG unit pinned down by Viet Cong fire near near Đức Cơ and is awarded the Medal of Honor in May 1970 for his actions in combat.

1990 – During a night flying weapons test, at Fort Campbell Kentucky, U.S Army Lieutenant Colonel Richard Vincent and Chief Warrant 3 Richard Walsh, assigned to Headquarters and Headquarters Company USASOC, are killed when their OH-6 helicopter crashes .

2000 – George W. Bush is certified the winner of Florida’s electoral votes of the 2000 Presidential election by Florida Secretary of State, Katherine Harris.

2003 – The Concorde airliner makes its final flight over Bristol, England.

2011  The Mars Science Laboratory launches to Mars with the Curiosity Rover aboard.

2021 – The World Health Organization identifies the SARS-CoV-2 Omicron variant.