Today is Wednesday, Nov. 6, the 310th day of 2019. There are 55 days left in the year.
Today’s Highlight in History:
On Nov. 6, 1984, President Ronald Reagan won re-election by a landslide over former Vice President Walter Mondale, the Democratic challenger.
On this date:
In 1814, Adolphe Sax, the inventor of the saxophone, was born in Dinant, Belgium.
In 1860, former Illinois congressman Abraham Lincoln of the Republican Party was elected President of the United States as he defeated John Breckinridge, John Bell and Stephen Douglas.
In 1861, Confederate President Jefferson Davis was elected to a six-year term of office.
In 1956, President Dwight D. Eisenhower won re-election, defeating Democrat Adlai E. Stevenson.
In 1977, 39 people were killed when the Kelly Barnes Dam in Georgia burst, sending a wall of water through Toccoa Falls College.
In 1986, former Navy radioman John A. Walker Jr., the admitted head of a family spy ring, was sentenced in Baltimore to life imprisonment. (Walker died in prison in 2014 at age 77.)
In 1990, about one-fifth of the Universal Studios backlot in southern California was destroyed in an arson fire.
In 1995, funeral services were held in Jerusalem for assassinated Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin.
In 1997, former President George H.W. Bush opened his presidential library at Texas A&M University; among the guests of honor was President Clinton, the man who’d sent him into retirement.
In 2001, billionaire Republican Michael Bloomberg won New York City’s mayoral race, defeating Democrat Mark Green.
In 2012, President Barack Obama was elected to a second term of office, defeating Republican challenger Mitt Romney.
In 2016, FBI Director James Comey abruptly announced that Democrat Hillary Clinton should not face criminal charges related to newly discovered emails from her tenure at the State Department.
Ten years ago: President Barack Obama signed a $24 billion economic stimulus bill, hours after the government reported that the unemployment rate had hit 10.2 percent in Oct. 2009 for the second time since World War II.
Five years ago: The march toward same-sex marriage across the U.S. hit a roadblock when a federal appeals court upheld laws against the practice in four states: Ohio, Michigan, Kentucky and Tennessee. (A divided U.S. Supreme Court overturned the laws in June 2015.) Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reassured Jordan’s King Abdullah that he would not yield to increasing demands by some members of his center-right coalition to allow Jews to pray at a Muslim-run holy site in Jerusalem.
One year ago: Democrats seized the House majority in the midterm elections, but Republicans gained ground in the Senate and preserved key governorships, beating back a “blue wave” that never fully materialized. In Texas, Republican Sen. Ted Cruz staved off a tough challenge from Democrat Beto O’Rourke. Republican Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker was defeated by state education chief Tony Evers.
Copyright © 2024 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, written or redistributed.
