Today 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.
In 1861, Confederate President Jefferson Davis was elected to a six-year term of office.
In 1893, composer Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky died in St. Petersburg, Russia, at age 53.
In 1906, Republican Charles Evans Hughes was elected governor of New York, defeating newspaper publisher William Randolph Hearst.
In 1956, President Dwight D. Eisenhower won re-election, defeating Democrat Adlai E. Stevenson.
In 1962, Democrat Edward M. Kennedy was elected Senator from Massachusetts.
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 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.
Ten years ago: President-elect Barack Obama spoke by phone with nine world leaders and met privately at the FBI office in Chicago with U.S. intelligence officials, preparing to become commander in chief.
Five years ago: Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, testifying before the Senate Finance Committee on the nation's health care law, was blistered by Republicans who bluntly challenged her honesty, pushed for her resignation and demanded unsuccessfully that she concede President Barack Obama had deliberately misled the public about his signature domestic program. At the Country Music Association Awards, Miranda Lambert won her fourth straight female vocalist of the year award while her husband, Blake Shelton, won album of the year and male vocalist — a category he also won for the fourth year in a row.
One year ago: President Donald Trump told reporters in Tokyo that North Korea was "a threat to the civilized world." The Television Academy became the latest movie or TV organization to expel Harvey Weinstein. Former Democratic congressman Anthony Weiner reported to prison in Massachusetts to begin a 21-month sentence for sexting with a 15-year-old girl. The Air Force acknowledged that it had failed to report to the FBI that Devin Patrick Kelley, the gunman who killed more than two dozen people at a Texas church, had been convicted of domestic violence at an Air Force court-martial in 2012.