Today in history

Today is Wednesday, Nov. 6, the 310th day of 2019. There are 55 days left in the year.

Today’s Highlight in History:

On Nov. 6, 1984, President Ronald Reagan won re-election by a landslide over former Vice President Walter Mondale, the Democratic challenger.

On this date:

In 1814, Adolphe Sax, the inventor of the saxophone, was born in Dinant, Belgium.

In 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 1956, President Dwight D. Eisenhower won re-election, defeating Democrat Adlai E. Stevenson.

In 1977, 39 people were killed when the Kelly Barnes Dam in Georgia burst, sending a wall of water through Toccoa Falls College.

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 by arson.

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.

In 2012, President Barack Obama was elected to a second term of office, defeating Republican challenger Mitt Romney.

In 2016, FBI Director James Comey abruptly announced that Democrat Hillary Clinton should not face criminal charges related to newly discovered emails from her tenure at the State Department.