| 8 November 1204 | Bulgaria [political events] | Kalojan is crowned as king of Bulgaria (styling himself tsar) by a papal legate, following his agreement with Pope Innocent III to reject Orthodox Christianity and accept the Roman church. |
| 8 November 1519 | Spain, Mexico, Aztec Empire [colonization] | The Spanish conquistador Hernán Cortés enters the vast Aztec capital of Tenochtitlán in the Valley of Mexico, at the head of his 500 Spanish forces and 1,000 Tlaxcalan allies, and is received by its ruler Montezuma II, who suspects him to be a reincarnation of the god Quetzalcoatl. |
| 8 November 1575 | France [French Wars of Religion (1562–80)] | Francis, Duke of Alençon, Politique (moderate Catholic) heir to the French throne, negotiates a truce with his brother King Henry III through their mother Catherine de' Medici at Marigny. He is granted the duchy of Anjou and garrisons in Berry, Poitou, and Saintogne; his Huguenot (French Protestant) allies are to retain the concessions of the 1573 Peace of Boulogne and are allowed to keep their army, under Henri I de Bourbon, at Mézières. |
| 8 November 1620 | Bohemia, Habsburg Monarchy, Holy Roman Empire [Thirty Years War (1618–48)] | King Frederick V of Bohemia flees Prague after troops of the Catholic League, led by Count Johan Tserclaus von Tilly, defeat the Bohemian army, led by Christian of Anhalt, at the Battle of the White Mountain, near Prague. After the battle, Ferdinand is restored to the Bohemian throne, leading rebels are executed, and Protestant clergymen are expelled. |
| 8 November 1656 | England [births and deaths] | Edmond Halley, English astronomer and mathematician, born in Haggerston, Shoreditch, London, England (–1742). |
| 8 November 1674 | England [births and deaths] | John Milton, English poet, scholar, historian, and republican whose best-known work is Paradise Lost (1667), dies in Chalfont St Giles, Buckinghamshire, England (66). |
| 8 November 1685 | France, Brandenburg, Holy Roman Empire, Germany [diplomacy] | A breakdown of the Franco-Brandenburg alliance occurs when, in response to King Louis XIV of France's revocation of the Edict of Nantes, Frederick William, the Great Elector of Brandenburg, issues the Edict of Potsdam, offering refuge to Huguenots in his dominions. Subsequently the Great Elector pursues an anti-French foreign policy. |
| 8 November 1858 | Montenegro, Ottoman Empire [decolonization] | The formal independence of Montenegro is accepted by the sultan of the Ottoman Empire, together with the borders of the former Ottoman possession as fixed by France, Britain, Prussia, Russia, and the Ottoman Empire, following friction between Montenegro and the Ottomans. |
| 8 November 1864 | USA [elections] | Abraham Lincoln is re-elected as US president, and Andrew Johnson as vice-president. |
| 8 November 1892 | USA [elections] | The Democrat Grover Cleveland wins the US presidential election with 277 electoral votes, on a platform opposing the McKinley Tariff and the Force Bill, while the Republican Benjamin Harrison wins 145 votes and the Populist James B Weaver 22. |
| 8 November 1895 | Germany [physics] | German scientist Wilhelm Konrad Röntgen experiments with a Crookes' tube and notices that a sheet of paper coated with barium pltinocyanide becomes fluorescent. Realizing that this is due to some unknown emission from the tube, he names it the X-ray. |
| 8 November 1904 | USA [elections] | In the US presidential election, President Theodore Roosevelt (Republican) defeats Alton B Parker (Democrat) with 336 electoral votes to Parker's 140. In the popular vote Roosevelt polls 7,623,486 votes and Parker 5,077,911. In the Congressional elections, the Republicans maintain majorities in the House (250–136) and Senate (57–33). |
| 8 November 1918 | Germany, France [diplomacy] | A German armistice commission meets the Allied delegation, headed by the French marshal Ferdinand Foch, in a railway carriage in Compiègne, France. An armistice is agreed, to be effective from 11 November. |
| 8 November 1922 | [births and deaths] | Christiaan Barnard, South African surgeon, who performed the first successful heart transplant, born in Beaufort West, South Africa (–2001). |
| 8–9 November 1923 | Germany [political events] | In the ‘Munich Putsch’, the German Nazi leader Adolf Hitler and his National Socialist German Workers' (Nazi) Party attempt a coup to overthrow the Bavarian government in Munich, Germany. |
| 8 November 1932 | USA [elections] | Franklin D Roosevelt wins the US presidential election in a Democratic landslide, with 472 electoral votes to the Republican Herbert Hoover's 59 votes. In the House of Representatives, Democrats pick up 90 seats for a 310–117 majority; in the Senate, Democrats gain 13 seats for a majority of 60–35. |
| 8 November 1967 | UK [radio] | The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) launches local radio stations. The first is Radio Leicester. |
| 8 November 2000 | USA [painting] | Pablo Picasso's painting Femme aux bras croisés/Woman with crossed arms fetches US$39 million at Christie's saleroom in New York. At twice its pre-sale estimate, it is the highest price ever paid at auction for the Spanish artist's work. |
