1839 – A cyclone slams into south-eastern India, with high winds and a 40-foot storm surge destroying the port city of Coringa (which has never been completely rebuilt). The storm wave swept inland, taking with it 20,000 ships and thousands of people. An estimated 300,000 deaths result- ed from the disaster.
1963 – Lee Harvey Oswald is buried in Fort Worth, Texas.
1966 – First television link between Australia and the UK.
1981 – Pope John Paul II appoints Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger (the future Pope Benedict XVI) Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.
1984 – Thirty-six top musicians gather in a Notting Hill stu- dio and record Band Aid’s “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” in order to raise money for famine relief in Ethiopia.
1992 – The Federal Assembly of Czechoslovakia votes to split the country into the Czech Republic and Slovakia, with effect from January 1, 1993.
2008 – Cyclone Nisha strikes northern Sri Lanka, killing 15 people and displacing 90,000 others while dealing the region the highest rainfall in nine decades.
2009 – Jeddah floods: Freak rains swamp the city of Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, during an ongoing Hajj pilgrimage.
Three thousand cars are swept away and 122 people per- ish in the torrents, with 350 others missing.