TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT IN HISTORY:
By The Associated Press Today is Sunday, Nov. 8, the 313th day of 2020. There are 53 days left in the year.
• On Nov. 8, 2016, Republican Donald Trump was elected America’s 45th president, defeating Democrat Hillary Clinton in an astonishing victory for a celebrity businessman and political novice. Republicans kept their majorities in the Senate and House.
ON THIS DATE:
• In 1793, the Louvre began admitting the public, even though the French museum had been officially open since August.
• In 1861, during the Civil War, the USS San Jacinto intercepted a British mail steamer, the Trent, and detained a pair of Confederate diplomats who were enroute to Europe to seek support for the Southern cause. (Although the Trent Affair strained relations between the United States and Britain, the matter was quietly resolved with the release of the diplomats the following January.)
• In 1864, President Abraham Lincoln won re-election as he defeated Democratic challenger George B. McClellan.
• In 1923, Adolf Hitler launched his first attempt at seizing power in Germany with a failed coup in Munich that came to be known as the “Beer-Hall Putsch.”
• In 1950, during the Korean War, the first jet-plane battle took place as U.S. Air Force Lt. Russell J. Brown shot down a North Korean MiG-15.
• In 1960, Massachusetts Sen. John F. Kennedy defeated Vice President Richard M. Nixon for the presidency.
• In 1966, Edward W. Brooke, R-Mass., became the first Black candidate to be elected to the U.S. Senate by popular vote. President Lyndon B. Johnson signed a measure allowing the merger of the American Football League and the National Football League.
• 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 2002, the U.N. Security Council unanimously approved Resolution 1441, aimed at forcing Saddam Hussein to disarm or face “serious consequences.” President George W. Bush said the new resolution presented the Iraqi regime “with a final test.”