HIGHLIGHTS IN HISTORY
Today’s highlight:
On Nov. 7, 1944, President Franklin D. Roosevelt won an unprecedented fourth term in office, defeating Republican Thomas E. Dewey.
On this date:
1874: The Republican Party was symbolized as an elephant in a cartoon drawn by Thomas Nast in Harper’s Weekly.
1916: Republican Jeannette Rankin of Montana became the first woman elected to Congress, winning a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives.
1940: Washington state’s original Tacoma Narrows Bridge, nicknamed “Galloping Gertie,” collapsed into Puget Sound during a windstorm just four months after opening to traffic.
1962: Richard M. Nixon, having lost California’s gubernatorial race, held what he called his “last press conference,” telling reporters, “You won’t have Nixon to kick around anymore.”
1967: Carl Stokes was elected the first black mayor of a major city — Cleveland, Ohio.
1972: President Richard Nixon was re-elected in a landslide over Democrat George McGovern.
1973: Congress overrode President Richard Nixon’s veto of the War Powers Act, which limits a chief executive’s power to wage war without congressional approval.
1980: Actor Steve McQueen died in Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua, Mexico, at age 50.
1991: Basketball star Magic Johnson announced that he had tested positive for HIV, and was retiring. Despite his HIV status, Johnson has been able to sustain himself with medication.
2001: The Bush administration targeted Osama bin Laden’s multi-million-dollar financial networks, closing businesses in four states, detaining U.S. suspects and urging allies to help choke off money supplies in 40 nations.
Ten years ago: In his first news conference since being elected president, Barack Obama called on Congress to extend unemployment benefits and pass a stimulus bill. The government reported the unemployment rate had soared to 6.5 percent in October 2008, up from 6.1 percent just a month earlier. General Motors Corp. reported a $2.5 billion loss in the third quarter while Ford Motor Co. said it had lost $129 million. A school in Haiti collapsed, killing some 90 people.
Five years ago: Seeking to calm a growing furor, President Barack Obama told NBC News he was “sorry” Americans were losing health insurance plans that he repeatedly had said they could keep under his health care law, but he stopped short of apologizing for making those promises in the first place. The Food and Drug Administration announced it was requiring the food industry to phase out artery-clogging trans fats. Shares of Twitter went on sale to the public for the first time; by the closing bell, the social network was valued at $31 billion. A Russian spacecraft carrying the Olympic torch and three astronauts docked with the International Space Station ahead of the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi.
One year ago: Democrats Ralph Northam in Virginia and Phil Murphy in New Jersey were the winners in their states’ gubernatorial elections. Voters in Maine approved a measure allowing them to join 31 other states in expanding Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act. President Donald Trump arrived in South Korea, saying efforts to curb the North’s nuclear weapons program would be “front and center” of his two-day visit. Former star baseball pitcher Roy Halladay died when the small private plane he was flying crashed into the Gulf of Mexico; the 40-year-old was an eight-time All-Star for the Blue Jays and Phillies. Twitter said it was ending its 140-character limit on tweets, and allowing nearly everyone 280 characters to get their message across.