Today in History in 1429 Joan of Arc unsuccessfully besieges (tries to take control of) La Charite; and in 1932 in Washington, D.C., the FBI Scientific Crime Detection Laboratory (better known as the FBI Crime Lab) officially opens.

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 24 is the 328th day of the year (329th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 37 days remaining until the end of the year.

EVENTS

1227 - Polish prince Leszek the White is murdered.

1248 - A mass of rock collapses from Mont Granier in Southeastern France in the night to November 25, causing over 1,000 casualties.

1429 - Joan of Arc unsuccessfully besieges (tries to take control of) La Charite.

1542 - Battle of Solway Moss: An English army defeats a much larger Scottish force near the River Esk, Dumfries and Galloway.

1594 - In Goa, India, Portuguese missionaries start building the Basilica do Bom Jesus.

1631 - The Dutch occupy the city of Olinda, the capital of Pernambuco in present-day Brazil, and set it on fire, as they feel they can make more money in nearby Recife.

1642 – Abel Tasman becomes the first European to discover the island Van Diemen's Land (later renamed Tasmania).

1850 - Danish troops defeat a Schleswig-Holstein force in the town of Lottorf, Schleswig-Holstein.

1859 – Charles Darwin publishes The Origin of Species.

1863 - American Civil War: Battle of Lookout Mountain.

1874 - American Joseph Glidden receives a patent for his invention, barbed wire.

1906 - A local newspaper in Ohio accuses two teams of trying to deliberately lose games, causing the first major scandal in American football.

1917 – Nine police officers and one civilian are killed when a bomb explodes at the Milwaukee, Wisconsin police headquarters building.

1922 - Nine IRA members are executed by an Irish Free State firing squad.

1932 – In Washington, D.C., the FBI Scientific Crime Detection Laboratory (better known as the FBI Crime Lab) officially opens.

1940 - World War II: The first Slovakian Republic joins the Axis Powers, the countries that supported Nazi Germany in the war.

1943 - World War II: The battleship USS Liscombe Bay is torpedoed near Tarawa, in the Gilbert Islands, present-day Kiribati. Despite this, the Allies manage to take control of the islands on the same day.

1944 – World War II: The first bombing raid against the Japanese capital is carried out by 88 American aircraft.

1947 – Robert Schuman becomes Prime Minister of France.

1950 - The "Storm of the Century" snowstorm forms before affecting the Northeastern United States the next day.

1951 – 2000

1962 - British television programme That Was the Week That Was is first broadcast.

1963 – Lee Harvey Oswald is assassinated by Jack Ruby in the basement of Dallas police department headquarters.

1963 – Vietnam War: Newly sworn in US President Lyndon B. Johnson says that the United States intends to continue supporting South Vietnam both militarily and economically.

1965 – Joseph Désiré Mobutu seizes power in the Congo and becomes President; he goes on to rule the country (which he renames Zaire in 1971) for over 30 years, until being overthrown by rebels in 1997.

1966 - Bulgarian TABSO Flight 101 crashes near Bratislava, then-part of Czechoslovakia, killing all 82 people on board.

1969 - The Apollo 12 Moon mission successfully ends when it splashes down in the Pacific Ocean.

1971 – During a severe thunderstorm over Washington, a man calling himself D. B. Cooper hijacks a plane and gets US$200,000 in ransom money. He jumps from the plane and is never seen again (this is the only unsolved skyjacking in history). His identity and fate both remain unknown to this day.

1973 - A speed limit lasting only four months is introduced on German Autobahns during the 1973 oil crisis.

1974 – A 40% complete Australopithecus afarensis skeleton, nicknamed "Lucy" after The Beatles song "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds," is found in the Awash Valley of Ethiopia's Afar Depression.

1976 – Parts of Iran and the Soviet Union are struck by a magnitude 7.3 earthquake, killing around 5,000 people.

1980 – A National Park is created at the southern end of Lake Malawi.

1988 – Mystery Science Theater 3000 premieres.

1991 - Freddie Mercury, lead singer of Queen dies a day after announcing that he had AIDS. Kiss musician Eric Carr dies on the same day.

1992 – A China Southern Airlines plane crashes on an internal flight, killing all 141 people on board.

1995 – Estonia applies for EU membership.

2002 - The first human case of rabies in the UK for over 100 years occurs.

2005 – Pubs in England and Wales, through new alcohol licensing laws, are given new 24-hour opening hours.

2007 – Kevin Rudd is elected Prime Minister of Australia, succeeding John Howard, who loses his own parliamentary seat in the election.

2012 - A garment factory fire in Dhaka, Bangladesh, kills over 112 people.

2013 - Iran agrees to limit its nuclear development program in exchange for less sanctions, which meant that they had limits on what they could export and import, after talks in Geneva, Switzerland.

2014 - United States Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel resigns.

2016 - A bomb attack near Hilla, Iraq, kills at least 77 people.

2017 - Emmerson Mnangagwa is sworn in as President of Zimbabwe, following the resignation of Robert Mugabe.

2017 - Sooronbay Jeenbekov becomes President of Kyrgyzstan.

2017 - A terrorist attack on a mosque in the North of Egypt's Sinai Peninsula results in at least 305 people being killed.

2019 - Pro-democracy activists make gains in local elections in Hong Kong.

2019 - A plane crash in Goma in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo kills at least 19 people.