TODAY IN HISTORY

ONNOV.8

In 1793 the Louvre began admitting the public, even though the French museum had been officially open since August.

In 1837 Mount Holyoke Seminary, a college exclusively for women, opened in South Hadley, Mass.

In1847 BramStoker, the author of “Dracula,” was born in Dublin.

In 1884 Hermann Rorschach, the psychiatrist who developed the inkblot test that bears his name, was born in Zurich.

In 1889 Montana became the 41st state.

In 1892 former President Grover Cleveland defeated incumbent Benjamin Harrison, becoming the first (and, to date, only) chief executive to win nonconsecutive terms to the White House.

In 1900 Margaret Mitchell, author of “Gone With the Wind,” was born in Atlanta.

In 1904 President Theodore Roosevelt, who had succeeded the assassinated William McKinley, was elected to a term in his own right as he defeated Democrat Alton Parker.

In 1910 the first insect electro cutor was patented by William Frost of Spokane, Wash.

In 1920 actress Esther Rolle, star of the CBS-TV sitcom “Good Times,” was born in Pompano Beach, Fla.

In 1922 Dr. Christiaan Barnard, the heart surgeon who performed the first human heart transplant operation, was born in Beaufort West, South Africa.

In 1923 Adolf Hitler launched his first attempt at seizing power with a failed coup in Munich, Germany, the “Beer-Hall Putsch.”

In 1932 New York Gov. Franklin Roosevelt defeated incumbent Herbert Hoover for the presidency.

In 1933 President Franklin Roosevelt created the Civil Works Administration, designed to create jobs for more than 4 million unemployed.

In 1942 Operation Torch began during World War II as U.S. and British forces landed in French North Africa.

In 1960 Massachusetts Sen. John F. Kennedy defeated Vice President Richard Nixon for the presidency.

In 1965 the soap opera “Days of Our Lives” premiered on NBC.

In 1966 Ronald Reagan was elected governor of California. Also in 1966 Edward Brooke, of Massachusetts, became the first black to be elected to the U.S. Senate by popular vote. Also in 1966 the Baltimore Orioles’ Frank Robinson was named American League Most Valuable Player, making him the first man so honored in both leagues. (He was National League MVP in 1961 with the Cincinnati Reds.)

In 1974 eight former Ohio National Guardsmen were acquitted of violating the rights of students at Kent State University during a May 1970 demonstration in which four students were shot to death.

In 1978 artist Norman Rockwell, best known for his work on the covers of the Saturday Evening Post, died in Stockbridge, Mass.; he was 84.

In 1980 scientists at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., announced that the U.S. space probe Voyager I had discovered a 15th moon orbiting the planet Saturn.

In 1981 Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Will Durant died in Los Angeles; he was 96.

In 1983 Democrat W. Wilson Goode was elected the first black mayor of Philadelphia; Democrat Martha Layne Collins was elected the first female governor of Kentucky.

In 1986 Vyacheslav Molotov, one-time aide to Josef Stalin, died in Moscow; he was 96. (During World War II, Molotov ordered the mass production of bottles filled with flammable liquid to be used against German tanks, giving rise to the term “Molotov cocktail.”)

In 1987, 11 people were killed when an Irish Republican Army bomb exploded as crowds gathered in Enniskillen, Northern Ireland, for a ceremony honoring Britain’s war dead.

In 1988 Vice President George H.W. Bush won the presidential election, defeating Massachusetts Gov. Michael Dukakis.

In1993 Russian President Boris Yeltsin approved a draft constitution that would strengthen executive power; it was ratified in a referendum the following month.

In 1994 midterm elections resulted in Republicans winning a majority in the Senate while at the same time gaining control of the House for the first time in 40 years. Also in 1994 California voters approved Proposition 187, designed to deny education and social services andn on emergency health care to illegal immigrants.

In 1997 Chinese engineers diverted the Yangtze River to make way for the Three Gorges Dam, the most ambitious construction project in modern China’ s history.

In 1999 Israeli and Palestinian negotiators launched landmark talks, giving themselves an ambitious 100-day deadline to craft the broad outlines of a peace agreement.

In 2000 a statewide recount began in Florida, which emerged as critical in deciding the winner of the 2000 presidential election. (Early that day, Vice President Al Gore telephoned Texas Gov. George W. Bush to concede, but called back about an hour later to retract his concession.) Also in 2000 Waco special counsel John Danforth released his final report absolving the government of wrongdoing in the 1993 siege at the Branch Davidian compound in Texas.

In 2002 the U.N. Security Council unanimously approved a resolution giving U.N. weapons inspectors the muscle they needed to hunt for illicit weapons in Iraq.

In 2003 a suicide car bombing of a housing complex in Riyadh, SaudiArabia, killed 17 people. Also in 2003 Howard Dean became the first Democratic presidential candidate ever to reject taxpayer money and avoid the accompanying spending limits.

In 2004 thousands of U.S. troops attacked the toughest strongholds of Sunni insurgents in Fallujah, Iraq, launching a long-awaited offensive aimed at putting an end to guerrilla control of the city. Also in 2004 the U.S. dollar was eliminated from circulation in Cuba.

In 2012 the Pentagon reprimanded seven Navy SEALs, including one involved in the raid that killed Osama bin Laden, for divulging classified information to the video game designers of “Medal of Honor Warfighter.” Also in 2012, Jared Lee Loughner was sentenced to life in prison without parole for the January 2011 shootings in Tucson, Arizona, that killed six people and wounded 13 others, including Rep. Gabrielle Giffords.

In 2013 Typhoon Haiyan, the equivalent of a Category 5 hurricane, killed more than 4,000 people and displaced 4 million after slamming into the central Philippines. Also in 2013 Young Lee, a co-founder of the frozen yogurt chain Pinkberry, was found guilty of beating a homeless man with a tire iron in 2011 in Los Angeles. (Lee, 49, was later sentenced to seven years in prison.)

In 2014 North Korea released Matthew Todd Miller and Kenneth Bae, two Americans who had been in custody in the reclusive nation.

In 2016 Republican Donald Trump triumphed over not just Hillary Clinton but large parts of his own party’s hierarchy to win the presidency in one of the biggest upsets in U.S. political history.