Today in History in 1928, Release of the animated short Steamboat Willie, the first fully synchronized sound cartoon, directed by Walt Disney and Ub Iwerks, featuring the second appearances of cartoon stars Mickey Mouse and Minnie Mouse. This is also considered by the Disney corporation to be Mickey's birthday.

The On This Day In History archives at “Simple English Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia” contains over 200,000 events, birthdays and deaths from 6,000 years of history. Here is a roundup of a few of them:

November 18 is the 322nd day of the year (323rd in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 43 days remaining until the end of the year.

EVENTS

326 - The old St. Peter's Basilica is consecrated in Rome.

401 - Visigoths, led by King Alaric I, cross the Alps and invade present-day northern Italy.

1095 – The Council of Clermont, called by Pope Urban II to discuss sending the First Crusade to the Holy Land, begins.

1180 - Philip II of France becomes King.

1210 - Pope Innocent III excommunicates Otto IV, Holy Roman Emperor.

1302 – Pope Boniface VIII issues the Papal bull Unam sanctam ("The One Holy").

1307 – According to legend, William Tell shoots an apple off of his son's head.

1421 – A seawall at the Zuiderzee dike breaks, flooding 72 villages and killing about 10,000 people in the Netherlands.

1493 – Christopher Columbus first sights what is now Puerto Rico.

1494 - King Charles VII of France occupies Florence, present-day Italy.

1626 - St. Peter's Basilica is consecrated in Rome.

1738 - Augustus III is decided as the King of Poland, as the Peace of Vienna ends the War of the Polish Succession.

1803 – The Battle of Vertières, the last major battle of the Haitian Revolution, is fought, leading to the establishment of the Republic of Haiti, the first black republic in the Western Hemisphere.

1812 - Napoleonic Wars: Battle of Krasnoi.

1863 - King Christian IX of Denmark signs the November Constitution that declares Schleswig to be part of Denmark.

1883 – American and Canadian railroads institute five standard continental time zones, ending the confusion of thousands of local times.

1903 – The Hay-Bunau-Varilla Treaty is signed by the United States and Panama, giving the Americans exclusive rights over the Panama Canal Zone.

1904 – General Esteban Huertas steps down after the government of Panama fears he wants to stage a coup.

1905 – Prince Carl of Denmark becomes King Haakon VII of Norway.

1905 - British steamship Hilda strikes a reef off Brittany and sinks during a snowstorm, killing 125 people.

1909 - Two US warships are sent to Nicaragua after 500 revolutionaries (including 2 Americans) are executed by order of Jose Santos Zelaya.

1916 - World War I: The first Battle of the Somme ends indecisively.

1918 – Latvia declares its independence from Russia.

1926 – George Bernard Shaw refuses to accept the money for his Nobel Prize, saying, "I can forgive Alfred Nobel for inventing dynamite, but only a fiend in human form could have invented the Nobel Prize."

1926 - Dominions of the British Empire are recognised as independent states.

1928 – Release of the animated short Steamboat Willie, the first fully synchronized sound cartoon, directed by Walt Disney and Ub Iwerks, featuring the second appearances of cartoon stars Mickey Mouse and Minnie Mouse. This is also considered by the Disney corporation to be Mickey's birthday.

1929 - A magnitude 7.2 earthquake, centred south of Newfoundland, strikes. 12 undersea cables are broken and some south coast communities are destroyed.

1936 - Germany and Italy recognise the government of Francisco Franco in Spain.

1939 - Dutch ocean steamer Simon Bolivar runs over a German minefield near Harwich, exploding twice before sinking, killing 102 people.

1940 – German leader Adolf Hitler and Italian Foreign Minister Galeazzo Ciano meet to discuss Benito Mussolini's disastrous invasion of Greece.

1943 – World War II: 440 Royal Air Force planes bomb Berlin causing only light damage and killing 131. The RAF lost nine aircraft and 53 air crew.

1944 - The Popular Socialist Youth is founded in Cuba.

1947 - The Ballantyne's Department Store fire in Christchurch, New Zealand, kills 41 people.

1961 - John F. Kennedy sends 18,000 military advisors to South Vietnam.

1963 - The push-button telephone goes into service.

1968 - The James Watt Street factory fire in Glasgow, Scotland, kills 22 people.

1970 - Joe Frazier defends his heavyweight boxing world title against Bob Foster in Detroit.

1976 - The parliament of Spain passes a bill allowing the creation of democracy in the country.

1978 – In Guyana, Jim Jones leads his Peoples Temple cult in a mass murder-suicide. 918 people died, 909 of them at Jonestown itself, including over 270 children. A few hours earlier, United States Congressman Leo Ryan, visiting to investigate the cult, was shot dead.

1987 – In London, 31 people die in a fire at the city's busiest underground station at King's Cross St Pancras.

1987 - The United States Congress issues the final report on the Iran Contra Affair.

1988 – U.S. President Ronald Reagan signs a bill into law allowing the death penalty for murder in regards to drug traffickers.

1991 – Church of England envoy Terry Waite and American academic Thomas Sutherland are released in Lebanon, where they had been held hostage; Waite since 1987 and Sutherland since 1985.

1991 - After an 87-day siege, the town of Vukovar, Croatia, surrenders to the Yugoslav People's Army and allied Serbian paramilitary forces.

1993 – In South Africa, 21 political parties approve a new constitution.

1996 - Bernard Dowiyogo is elected President of Nauru over Lagumot Harris, and immediately ends diplomatic relations with France over its nuclear testing on Mururoa Atoll, French Polynesia.

2000 – Catherine Zeta-Jones and Michael Douglas marry.

2002 – United Nations weapons inspectors led by Hans Blix arrive in Iraq.

2003 - The Local Government Act of 2003 becomes effective in the United Kingdom, ending the controversial Anti-Homosexuality amendment.

2004 – Russia officially ratifies the Kyoto Protocol.

2006 - Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes marry in Italy. Their marriage ends in divorce in 2012.

2009 - 2010 FIFA World Cup Qualification: Controversy is caused when French player Thierry Henry appears to have handled the ball in the run-up to a goal that sends France to the World Cup against the Republic of Ireland.

2019 - Gotabaya Rajapaksa becomes President of Sri Lanka; he later names his brother (and former President) Mahinda Rajapaksa as Prime Minister.

2019 - The United States government says that is does not consider the building of Jewish settlements in the West Bank to be illegal.