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Ronald Niel Stuart (1886–1954) was a British Merchant Navy commodore and Royal Navy captain who was highly commended following extensive and distinguished service at sea over a period of more than 35 years. During World War I he received the Victoria Cross, the Distinguished Service Order, the French Croix de Guerre avec Palmes and the United States' Navy Cross for a series of daring operations he conducted while serving in the Royal Navy during the First Battle of the Atlantic. Stuart's Victoria Cross was awarded following a ballot by the men under his command. This unusual method of selection was used after the Admiralty Board was unable to choose which members of the crew deserved the honour after a desperate engagement between a Q-ship and a German submarine off the Irish coast. His later career included command of the liner RMS Empress of Britain and the management of the London office of a major transatlantic shipping company. Following his retirement in 1951, Stuart moved into his sister's cottage in Kent and died three years later. A sometimes irascible man, he was reportedly embarrassed by any fuss surrounding his celebrity and was known to exclaim "Mush!" at any demonstration of strong emotion. (more...)

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November 11: Independence Day in Poland (1918) and Angola (1975); St. Martin's Day in the Netherlands; Remembrance Day in the Commonwealth; Armistice Day in Europe; Veterans Day in the United States

• 1675 – German polymath Gottfried Leibniz employed integral calculus for the first time to find the area under the function y = x.
• 1918 – Germany and the Allies signed an armistice treaty in a railway carriage in France's Compiègne Forest, ending World War I on the Western Front.
• 1961 – A coup attempt by the Army of the Republic of Vietnam against President Ngo Dinh Diem was crushed after Diem falsely promised reform, allowing loyalists to rescue him.
• 1965 – Ian Smith, Premier of the British Crown Colony of Southern Rhodesia, issued the Unilateral Declaration of Independence, a move that the British government and the United Nations condemned as illegal.
• 2004 – Mahmoud Abbas was elected Chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization after Yasser Arafat (pictured) died from an unknown illness.

• More events: November 10 – November 11 – November 12

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