ON NOVEMBER 3 ...

In 1793 Stephen Austin, founder of the principal settlements of English speakers in Texas when that territory was still part of Mexico, was born in Austinville, Virginia.

In 1839 the first Opium War between China and Britain broke out.

In 1868 Republican Ulysses S. Grant won the presidential election over Democrat Horatio Seymour.

In 1896 Republican William McKinley defeated Democrat William Jennings Bryan for the presidency.

In 1903 Panama proclaimed its independence from Colombia.

In 1908 Republican William Howard Taft was elected president, outpolling William Jennings Bryan.

In 1957 the Soviet Union launched Sputnik II, the second manmade satellite, into orbit; on board was a dog named Laika that was sacrificed in the experiment.

In 1964 President Lyndon Johnson soundly defeated Republican challenger Barry Goldwater to win a White House term in his own right.

In 1970 Salvador Allende was inaugurated as president of Chile.

In 1979 five radicals were killed when gunfire erupted during an anti-Ku Klux Klan demonstration in Greensboro, North Carolina, after a caravan of Klansmen and neo-Nazis had driven into the area. (In two trials, members of the Klan and the American Nazi Party were acquitted of charges stemming from the shootings.)

In 1986 the Lebanese magazine Ash-Shiraa broke the story of U.S. arms sales to Iran, a revelation that escalated into the Iran-Contra scandal.

In 1991 Israeli and Palestinian representatives held their first-ever faceto-face talks in Madrid; in another milestone, Syria opened its first one-on-one meeting with Israel in 43 years.

In 1992 Arkansas’ Democratic governor, Bill Clinton, was elected the 42nd president over incumbent George H.W. Bush; also, Chicago Democratic politician Carol Moseley Braun became the first African American woman elected to the U.S. Senate.

In 1994 Susan Smith of Union, South Carolina, was arrested for drowning her two young sons, nine days after claiming the children had been abducted by a black carjacker.

In 1997 Attorney General Janet Reno said there was no evidence that President Bill Clinton broke the law with White House coffees and overnight stays for big contributors. Also in 1997 the Supreme Court let stand California’s groundbreaking Proposition 209, which banned race and gender preference in hiring and school admissions.

In 1998 Minnesotans elected former pro wrestler Jesse “The Body” Ventura to be their governor.

In 1999 Aaron McKinney was convicted of murder in the fatal beating of gay Wyoming college student Matthew Shepard. (McKinney and Russell Henderson, who pleaded guilty to kidnapping and murder, are serving life prison sentences.)

In 2002 a CIA Predator drone fired a missile at a car in Yemen, killing alQaida’s top operative in that country, Ali Qaed Sinan al-Harthi.

In 2003 Congress voted its final approval for $87.5 billion for U.S. military operations and aid in Iraq and Afghanistan.

In 2004 Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry conceded defeat to President George W. Bush in make-or-break Ohio rather than launch a legal fight reminiscent of the contentious Florida recount of four years earlier.

In 2005 Vice President Dick Cheney’s former chief of staff, Lewis “Scooter” Libby, pleaded not guilty to a five-count felony indictment in the CIA leak case. Also in 2005 Merck & Co. won its first court battle over its Vioxx painkiller when a New Jersey state jury found the drugmaker had properly warned consumers about the risks of the medication.

In 2012 the lights came back on in lower Manhattan to the relief of residents who’d been plunged into darkness for nearly five days by Superstorm Sandy, but there was deepening resentment in the city’s outer boroughs and suburbs over a continued lack of power and maddening gas shortages.

In 2014, 13 years after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, the first tenants moved their belongings into the newly built 1 One World Trade Center. Also in 2014 Joe Maddon was introduced as the new manager of the Chicago Cubs.