8 November in history
8 events that happened on 8 November, from 960 to 1932.
✦ Anniversary of the day
960 CE 1,066 years ago
Leo Phokas ambushes and destroys a Hamdanid army at Andrassos
In a mountain pass in the Taurus Mountains, Byzantine forces under Leo Phokas the Younger ambushed and annihilated the army of Sayf al-Dawla, Hamdanid emir of Aleppo, whose raids had long troubled the empire.
1278 CE 748 years ago
Trần Thánh Tông cedes the throne to his son Nhân Tông
Trần Thánh Tông, second emperor of the Trần dynasty, ceded the throne to his son Trần Nhân Tông but shared power as retired emperor until his death in 1290. Together they were credited with the victories over the Mongol invasions.
1291 CE 735 years ago
Venice confines its glassmaking industry to Murano
A Venetian law confined most of the city's glassmaking industry to the islands of Murano, in the lagoon north of Venice. Moving the furnaces removed a fire hazard from the city and kept glassmaking expertise from potential competitors.
1519 CE 507 years ago
Cortés enters Tenochtitlan and meets Moctezuma
Hernán Cortés and his Spanish and Tlaxcalan allies were received in the Aztec capital by Moctezuma II. Within days the Spaniards took the emperor hostage, and the city fell to siege in 1521.
1895 CE 131 years ago
Wilhelm Röntgen discovers X-rays
Experimenting with a cathode-ray tube in Würzburg, Wilhelm Röntgen noticed a glowing screen across the room and identified a new penetrating radiation. X-rays transformed medicine and won him the first Nobel Prize in Physics.
1923 CE 103 years ago
Hitler launches the Beer Hall Putsch in Munich
Adolf Hitler burst into a Munich beer hall and proclaimed a national revolution. The coup collapsed under police fire the next day; Hitler served nine months of a five-year sentence, writing Mein Kampf.
1932 CE 94 years ago
Franklin D. Roosevelt is elected president
In the depths of the Great Depression, Franklin Roosevelt defeated Herbert Hoover in a landslide. His New Deal reshaped American government, and he was elected a record four times.
Born on 8 November 3
Died on 8 November 3
Dates as the sources give them: in the Julian calendar before 1582, and in some countries for longer (Britain until 1752, Russia until 1918). Only people whose day of birth or death the records agree on are listed.