TODAY IN HISTORY

Today is Thursday, Nov. 7, the 311th day of 2019. There are 54 days left in the year.

Today’s Highlight in History:

On Nov. 7, 1972, President Richard Nixon was re-elected in a landslide over Democrat George McGovern.

On this date:

In 1862, during the Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln replaced replace Maj. Gen. George B. McClellan as commander of the Army of the Potomac with Maj. Gen. Ambrose Burnside.

In 1912, black boxing champion Jack Johnson was indicted in Chicago for allegedly violating the Mann Act with a white woman, Belle Schreiber. (Johnson was convicted and sentenced to a year in prison; he fled the U.S., later returning to serve his term. The Mann Act was also known as the White Slave Traffic Act, but was used in all types of cases.)

In 1917, Russia’s Bolshevik Revolution took place as forces led by Vladimir Ilyich Lenin overthrew the provisional government of Alexander Kerensky.

In 1944, President Franklin D. Roosevelt won an unprecedented fourth term in office, defeating Republican Thomas E. Dewey.

In 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.”

In 1966, John Lennon first met Yoko Ono at the Indica Gallery in London.

In 1967, Carl Stokes was elected the first black mayor of a major city — Cleveland, Ohio.

In 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.

In 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.)

In 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.

In 2005, President George W. Bush, in Panama, defended U.S. interrogation practices and called the treatment of terrorism suspects lawful, saying, “We do not torture.”