Today in history

In 1860 former U.S. Rep. Abraham Lincoln, R-Ill., defeated three candidates for the presidency.

In 1869 Rutgers beat Princeton 6-4 in the first official intercollegiate football game.

In 1892 Harold Ross, founding editor of the New Yorker magazine, was born in Aspen, Colo.

In 1893 composer Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky died in St. Petersburg, Russia; he was 53.

In 1913 Indian nationalist Mohandas Gandhi was arrested as he led a march of Indian miners in South Africa.

In 1928, for the first time, presidential election results were flashed on an electronic sign on the New York Times Building, reporting the results of Herbert Hoover’s victory over Alfred Smith. In 1976 Benjamin Hooks was chosen to be executive director of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, succeeding Roy Wilkins.

In 1991 screen actress Gene Tierney died in Houston; she was 70.

In 1995 Art Modell, owner of the Cleveland Browns, announced plans to move the NFL team to Baltimore.

In 1996 a cyclone struck southeastern India, claiming an estimated 1,000 lives.

In 1999 Australians rejected a referendum to drop the British monarch as their head of state.

In 2001 the Federal Reserve slashed its federal funds rate, the key benchmark for overnight loans, by a half-point to 2 percent, its lowest level in 40 years. In 2003 President George W. Bush signed an $87.5 billion package approved by Congress for Iraq and Afghanistan. Also in 2003 federal judges in New York and California blocked a new ban on certain late-term abortions, a day after Bush signed it into law.

In 2005 an overnight tornado killed 25 people in southwestern Indiana.

In 2012 President Barack Obama defeated Republican challenger Mitt Romney 332-206 in Electoral College votes to win reelection.

In 2013 the widow of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat said Swiss forensic tests showed radioactive polonium killed her husband in 2004. (Russian and French reports later cast doubt on the polonium theory.)