November 23 is the 327th day of the year (328th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. It has been an important day in terms of making history. Here are some historical events that happened on this day:
534 BC — Thespis of Icaria becomes the first record-ed actor to portray a character onstage.
1227 — Polish Prince Leszek I, the White is assassinated at an assembly of Piast dukes at Gasawa.
1248 — Conquest of Seville by the Christian troops under King Ferdinand III of Castile.
1499 — Pretender to the throne Perkin Warbeck is hanged for reportedly attempting to escape from the Tower of London. He had invaded England in 1497, claiming to be the lost son of King Edward IV of England.
1510 — First campaign of Ottoman Empire against Kingdom of Imereti (modern western Georgia). Ottoman armies sack its capital Kutaisi and burn Gelati Monastery.
1644 — John Milton publishes Areopagitica, a pamphlet decrying censorship.
1808 — French and Poles defeat the Spanish at battle of Tudela
1863 — American Civil War: Battle of Chattanooga begins. Union forces led by General Ulysses S Grant reinforce troops at Chattanooga, Tennessee and counter-attack Confederate troops.
1910 — Johan Alfred Ander becomes the last person to be executed in Sweden.
1914 — Mexican revolution: The last of the US forces withdraw from Veracruz, occupied seven months earlier in response to the Tampico Affair.
1940 — World War II: Romania becomes a signatory of the Tripartite Pact, officially joining the Axis Powers.
1943 — World War II: Tarawa and Makin atolls fall to American forces.
1946 — French Navy fire in Hai Phong, Viet Nam, kills 6,000 civilians.
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.”
1963 — The BBC broadcasts the first ever episode of ‘Doctor Who’ (starring William Hartnell) which is the world's longest running science fiction drama.
1971 — Representatives of the People's Republic of China attend the United Nations, including the United Nations Security Council, for the first time.
1976 — Apneist Jacques Mayol is the first man to reach a depth of 100 metre undersea without breathing equipment.
1979 — In Dublin, Ireland, Provisional Irish Republican Army member Thomas McMahon is sentenced to life in prison for the assassination of Lord Mountbatten.
1980 — A series of earthquakes in southern Italy kills approximately 4,800 people.
1981 — Iran-Contra Affair: 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 en route from Athens to Cairo. When the plane lands in Malta, Egyptian commandos storm the aircraft, but 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 first leg of a 70 day, 1287 kilometre ski trek.
1993 — Rachel Whiteread wins both the 20,000 pound Turner Prize award for best British modern artist and the 40,000 pound K Foundation art award for the worst artist of the year.
1996 — Ethiopian Airlines Flight 961 is hijacked, then crashes into the Indian Ocean off the coast of Comoros after running out of fuel, killing 125.
2001 — The Convention on Cybercrime is signed in Budapest, Hungary.
2003 — Georgian president Eduard Shevardnadze resigns following weeks of mass protests over flawed elections.
2005 — Ellen Johnson Sirleaf is elected president of Liberia and becomes the first woman to lead an African country.
2006 — A series of bombing kills at least 215 people and injured 257 others in Sadr City, making it the second deadliest sectarian attack since the beginning of the Iraq War in 2003.
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. There are no fatalities.
2009 — The Maguindanao massacre occurs in Ampatuan, Maguindanao, Mindanao, Philippines.
2010 — The Bombardment of Yeonpyeong occurs on Yeonpyeong Island, South Korea. The North Korean artillery attack kills two civilians and two South Korean marines.