Today in history
On Nov. 2, 1976, former Georgia Gov. Jimmy Carter became the first candidate from the Deep South since the Civil War to be elected president as he defeated incumbent Gerald R. Ford.
In 1783, General George Washington issued his Farewell Address to the Army near Princeton, New Jersey.
In 1917, British Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour issued a declaration expressing support for a “national home” for the Jews in Palestine.
In 1947, Howard Hughes piloted his huge wooden flying boat, the Hughes H-4 Hercules (derisively dubbed the “Spruce Goose” by detractors), on its only flight, which lasted about a minute over Long Beach Harbor in California.
In 1948, President Harry S. Truman surprised the experts by winning a narrow upset over Republican challenger Thomas E. Dewey.
In 1959, game show contestant Charles Van Doren admitted to a House subcommittee that he’d been given questions and answers in advance when he appeared on the N-B-C T-V program “Twenty-One.”
In 1986, kidnappers in Lebanon released American hospital administrator David Jacobsen after holding him for 17 months.
In 1992, movie producer Hal Roach died in Los Angeles at age 100.
In 1994, a jury in Pensacola, Florida, convicted Paul Hill of murder for the shotgun slayings of an abortion provider and his bodyguard; Hill was executed in September 2003.
In 2000, American astronaut Bill Shepherd and two Russian cosmonauts, Yuri Gidzenko and Sergei Krikalev, became the first residents of the international space station.
Ten years ago: Barack Obama and John McCain uncorked massive get-out-the-vote operations in more than a dozen battleground states the Sunday before Election Day. Obama’s grandmother, Madelyn Payne Dunham, died in Honolulu at age 86. Paula Radcliffe defended her title at the New York City Marathon to become the second woman to win the race three times; Marilson Gomes dos Santos of Brazil won the men’s race for the second time in three years.
One year ago: President Donald Trump tapped Jerome Powell to replace Janet Yellen as Federal Reserve chair at the end of her term in February. Authorities in Los Angeles and New York said they had opened new investigations prompted by sexual misconduct allegations against Harvey Weinstein.