November 23

534 BC – Thespis of Icaria becomes the first recorded actor to portray a character on stage. 1248 – Conquest of Seville by 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. 1531 – The Second War of Kappel results in the dissolution of the Protestant alliance in Switzerland. 1644 – John Milton publishes Areopagitica, a pamphlet decrying censorship. 1733 – The start of the 1733 slave insurrection on St. John in what was then the Danish West Indies. 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. 1867 – The Manchester Martyrs are hanged in Manchester, England, for killing a police officer while freeing two Irish Republican Brotherhood members from custody. 1876 – Corrupt Tammany Hall leader William Magear Tweed (better known as Boss Tweed) is delivered to authorities in New York City after being captured in Spain. 1890 – King William III of the Netherlands dies without a male heir and a special law is passed to allow his daughter Princess Wilhelmina to succeed him. 1910 – Johan Alfred Ander becomes the last person to be executed in Sweden. 1914 – Mexican Revolution: The last of U.S. forces withdraw from Veracruz, occupied seven months earlier in response to the Tampico Affair. 1921 – Warren G. Harding, 29th President of the United States, signs Willis–Campbell Act, into law, prohibiting doctors from prescribing beer or liquor for medicinal purposes. 1924 – Edwin Hubble's discovery, that the Andromeda "nebula" is actually another island galaxy far outside our own Milky Way, is first published in The New York Times. 1934 – An Anglo-Ethiopian boundary commission in the Ogaden discovers an Italian garrison at Walwal, well within Ethiopian territory.