Today inhistory

Today is Friday, Nov. 6, the 311th day of 2020. There are 55 days left in the year.

Today’s Highlight in History:

On Nov. 6, 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.

On this date:

In 1854, America’s “March King,” John Philip Sousa, was born in Washington, D.C.

In 1861, James Naismith, the inventor of the sport of basketball, was born in Almonte, Ontario, Canada.

In 1893, composer Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky died in St. Petersburg, Russia, at age 53.

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 1984, President Ronald

Reagan won re-election by a landslide over former Vice President Walter Mondale, the Democratic challenger.

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 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 2012, President Barack Obama was elected to a second term of office, defeating Republican challenger Mitt Romney.

In 2014, 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.)