TODAY IN HISTORY

Today is Wednesday, Nov. 7, the 311th day of 2018.

TODAY'S HIGHLIGHT

On Nov. 7, 1944, President Franklin D. Roosevelt won an unprecedented fourth term in office, defeating Republican Thomas E. Dewey.

ON THIS DATE

In 1862, during the Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln replaced replace Maj. Gen. George B. McClellan as commander of the Army of the Potomac with Maj. Gen. Ambrose Burnside.

In 1874, the Republican Party was symbolized as an elephant in a cartoon drawn by Thomas Nast in Harper’s Weekly.

In 1916, Republican Jeannette Rankin of Montana became the first woman elected to Congress, winning a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives.

In 1917, Russia’s Bolshevik Revolution took place as forces led by Vladimir Ilyich Lenin overthrew the provisional government of Alexander Kerensky.

In 1940, Washington state’s original Tacoma Narrows Bridge, nicknamed “Galloping Gertie,” collapsed into Puget Sound during a windstorm just four months after opening to traffic.

In 1962, Richard M. Nixon, having lost California’s gubernatorial race, held what he called his “last press conference,” telling reporters, “You won’t have Nixon to kick around anymore.”

In 1967, Carl Stokes was elected the first black mayor of a major city — Cleveland, Ohio.

In 1972, President Richard Nixon was re-elected in a landslide over Democrat George McGovern.

In 1973, Congress overrode President Richard Nixon’s veto of the War Powers Act, which limits a chief executive’s power to wage war without congressional approval.

In 1991, basketball star Magic Johnson announced that he had tested positive for HIV, and was retiring. (Despite his HIV status, Johnson has been able to sustain himself with medication.)

In 2001, the Bush administration targeted Osama bin Laden’s multimillion-dollar financial networks, closing businesses in four states, detaining U.S. suspects and urging allies to help choke off money supplies in 40 nations.

FIVE YEARS AGO: Seeking to calm a growing furor, President Barack Obama told NBC News he was “sorry” Americans were losing health insurance plans that he repeatedly had said they could keep under his health care law, but he stopped short of apologizing for making those promises in the first place. The Food and Drug Administration announced it was requiring the food industry to phase out artery-clogging trans fats. Shares of Twitter went on sale to the public for the first time; by the closing bell, the social network was valued at $31 billion. A Russian spacecraft carrying the Olympic torch and three astronauts docked with the International Space Station ahead of the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi.

THOUGHT FOR TODAY

“Remember always that you not only have the right to be an individual, you have an obligation to be one.” — Eleanor Roosevelt (born 1884, died on this date in 1962).