In the evening of the 9th November 1989, the East German government opened the Berlin Wall after central committee spokesman Guenter Schabowski mistakenly announced that GDR citizens could cross into West Berlin with immediate effect.

Christian II had invaded Sweden in an attempt to preserve the Kalmar Union that joined the Scandinavian countries of Denmark, Sweden and Norway under a single monarch.

On the 7th November 1917, Red Guards entered the Winter Palace in St Petersburg in a defining event of the Bolshevik Revolution.

Abraham Lincoln was elected barely five months before the outbreak of the American Civil War, and was assassinated less than a month before its end.

On the 5th November 1605, the Gunpowder Plot was foiled when Guy or Guido Fawkes was discovered guarding 36 barrels of gunpowder that had been placed in an undercroft below the House of Lords in…

Focusing on reform of the electoral system to improve the conditions of the working class, the release of the People’s Charter in 1838 had prompted the creation of the national working-class Chartist protest movement.

On the 3rd November 1957, Laika the dog became the first animal to enter orbit around the Earth when she was launched into space on board the Soviet spacecraft Sputnik 2.

Prior to the adoption of universally accepted time zones, the vast majority of settlements around the world observed local mean solar time.

On the 1st November 1911, the first aerial bombing using an aeroplane took place when Italian Lieutenant Giulio Gavotti dropped four grenades on Turkish troops in Libya.

Mussolini, who was determined to restore the glory of the Roman Empire following the ‘mutilated victory’ of the First World War, had formed the precursor to the Fascist Party in 1919.

On the 30th October 1938, Orson Welles directed and narrated a radio adaptation of The War of the Worlds as part of the Mercury Theatre on the Air.

Raleigh had been found guilty of treason for his involvement in the Main Plot that sought to depose Elizabeth’s successor James I and replace him with his cousin Arabella Stuart.

At 9:00 am on the 28th October 1962, the Cuban Missile Crisis ended when Soviet Premier Khrushchev agreed to remove Russian nuclear missiles from the island of Cuba.

By the summer of 1987 it had become public knowledge that the Soviets had bugged the new building with technology that the United States was struggling to disable.