TUESDAY, Nov. 18, 2025

1477-"The Dictes & Sayengis of the Philosophers," the first dated printed book in England, is printed by William Caxton at his press in Westminster

1626-St. Peter's Basilica is consecrated in Rome, replacing an earlier basilica on the same site and becoming the world's largest Christian church

1912-Cholera breaks out in Constantinople, in the Ottoman Empire

1916-British General Douglas Haig finally calls off the First Battle of the Somme in World War I after more than 1 million soldiers are killed or wounded

1926-George Bernard Shaw accepts the Nobel Prize for Literature but refuses the prize money, saying "I can forgive Alfred Nobel for inventing dynamite, but only a fiend in human form could have invented the Nobel Prize"

1978-In Jonestown, Guyana, 918 members of the Peoples Temple are murdered or commit suicide under the leadership of cult leader Jim Jones

1993-Black and white leaders in South Africa approve a new democratic constitution

2011-Former Filipino President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo is arrested and held at Veterans Memorial Medical Center in Quezon City under charges of electoral sabotage