November 11

The Fourth Lateran Council, convened by Pope Innocent III, opened at the Lateran Palace in Rome with more than four hundred bishops present.

Søren Kierkegaard, the Danish philosopher and theologian whose work shaped later existential thought, died in Copenhagen.

Abul Kalam Azad, Islamic theologian, Qur'anic commentator and advocate of education, was born in 1888; India marks his birthday as National Education Day.

The Mulagandhakuti Vihara at Sarnath, built through Anagarika Dharmapala's Buddhist revival efforts, was dedicated on this day in 1931.

Ajahn Mun Bhuridatta, a Thai monk who helped establish the austere Thai Forest meditation tradition, died on this day in 1949.

The astronomer Tycho Brahe recorded a brilliant new star in Cassiopeia, evidence that the distant heavens could change; it is now known to have been a supernova.

The United States granted Albert Einstein and Leo Szilard a patent for a refrigerator with no moving parts, cooled by an absorption cycle.