Today in History in 1924 - Edwin Hubble's discovery of the Andromeda Galaxy is first published in a newspaper. Previously, the Milky Way was thought to be the only galaxy in existence.

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 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.

EVENTS

800 – Charlemagne arrives at Rome to examine the alleged crimes of Pope Leo III.

1174 - Saladin enters Damascus.

1248 - Spanish Reconquista: Christian troops under Ferdinand III of Castile conquer Seville.

1510 - First campaign of the Ottoman Empire against the Kingdom of Imereti, present-day western Georgia.

1531 - The Second War of Kappel results in Switzerland's Protestant Alliance dissolving.

1644 - John Milton publishes Areopagitica, a pamphlet against censorship.

1791 - The Snares Islands to the south of New Zealand are discovered.

1810 - Sarah Booth has her first performance at the Royal Opera House.

1863 – American Civil War: Union forces led by General Ulysses S. Grant reinforce troops at Chattanooga, Tennessee and counter-attack Confederate troops.

1889 - The first jukebox goes into operation at the Palais Royale Saloon in San Francisco, California.

1890 - King William III of the Netherlands dies. His death ends the shared monarchy between the Netherlands and Luxembourg. In the Netherlands, his daughter Wilhelmina becomes Queen, with Emma of Waldeck and Pyrmont as regent. In Luxembourg, Grand Duke Adolphe becomes the next monarch.

1904 - The 1904 Olympics in St. Louis officially end.

1910 - Johan Alfred Ander becomes the last person to be executed in Sweden before the death penalty becomes illegal there.

1914 – The US Army retreats from Mexico.

1924 - Edwin Hubble's discovery of the Andromeda Galaxy is first published in a newspaper. Previously, the Milky Way was thought to be the only galaxy in existence.

1936 - Life magazine is re-published as a photograph magazine and becomes an immediate success.

1939 - World War II: German battleships Scharnhorst and Gneisenau sink the British aid ship Rawalpindi to the southeast of Iceland, killing 265 people.

1940 - World War II: Romania officially joins the Axis Powers.

1942 - World War II: British steamer Tilawa is sunk in the Indian Ocean by Japanese U-boat I-29, killing 280 people.

1955 – The Cocos Islands are transferred from the control of the United Kingdom to Australia.

1959 – General Charles de Gaulle, President of France, declares in a speech in Strasbourg his vision for a "Europe, from the Atlantic to the Urals."

1961 – Sturt's Desert Pea, Swainsona formosa, becomes the floral emblem of South Australia.

1963 – The first episode of the long-running science fiction television series Doctor Who, "An Unearthly Child", airs on the BBC.

1971 – The representatives of the People's Republic of China first attended the United Nations, including the United Nations Security Council, as China's representatives.

1974 - Sixty Ethiopian politicians, aristocrats, military officers and other persons are executed by the provisional military government.

1976 - Jacques Mayol is the first man to reach a depth of 100 meters undersea without breathing equipment.

1978 - A cyclone kills 1,000 people in Eastern Sri Lanka.

1980 – A series of earthquakes in southern Italy kills approximately 4,800 people.

1981 – 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.

1985 - Gunmen hijack EgyptAir Flight 648 while it is travelling from Athens to Cairo. When the plane lands in Malta, it is stormed by Egyptian commandos, though 60 people die in the raid.

1990 – The first all-woman expedition to the South Pole (3 Americans, 1 Japanese and 12 Russians), sets off from Antarctica on the 1st leg of a 70-day, 1287-kilometre ski trek.

1996 – The Republic of Angola officially joins the World Trade Organization.

1996 – A plane crash in the Indian Ocean near the Comoros kills 125 people.

2001 - The Convention on Cybercrime is signed in Budapest.

2003 – Eduard Shevardnadze resigns as President of Georgia.

2004 - Tbilisi's Holy Trinity Cathedral is consecrated.

2005 – Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf is elected President of Liberia, becoming Africa's first female President.

2006 - A series of bombings in Sadr City, Iraq, kills at least 215 people.

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.

2009 – The Maguindanao massacre occurs on the island of Mindanao, Philippines.

2010 – North Korea attacks Yeonpyeong Island, prompting a military response from neighbouring South Korea, in one of the fiercest exchanges since the Korean War.

2019 - People in the autonomous island region of Bougainville start voting on whether they want to be an independent country or whether they want to gain more autonomy as part of Papua New Guinea.