On this date in: | |
1839 | The first Opium War between China and Britain broke out. |
1868 | Republican Ulysses S. Grant won the presidential election over Democrat Horatio Seymour. |
1896 | Republican William McKinley defeated Democrat William Jennings Bryan for the presidency. |
1903 | Panama proclaimed its independence from Colombia. |
1908 | Republican William Howard Taft was elected president, outpolling William Jennings Bryan. |
1957 | The Soviet Union launched into orbit Sputnik 2, the second manmade satellite; a dog on board named Laika was sacrificed in the experiment. |
1964 | President Lyndon B. Johnson soundly defeated Republican challenger Barry Goldwater to win a White House term in his own right. |
1970 | Salvador Allende was inaugurated as president of Chile. |
1986 | A Lebanese magazine broke the story of U.S. arms sales to Iran, a revelation that escalated into the Iran-Contra affair. |
1992 | Democrat Bill Clinton was elected the 42nd president of the United States, defeating President George H.W. Bush. |
1992 | Illinois Democrat Carol Moseley-Braun became the first African-American woman elected to the U.S. Senate. |
1994 | Susan Smith of Union, S.C., was arrested for drowning her two young sons, nine days after claiming the children had been abducted by a black man. (Smith is serving life in prison.) |
1998 | Former pro wrestler Jesse Ventura was elected governor of Minnesota. |
1999 | Aaron McKinney was convicted of murder in the beating of gay Wyoming college student Matthew Shepard. (McKinney and Russell Henderson are each serving life in prison for the 1998 slaying.) |
2004 | Hamid Karzai was declared the winner of Afghanistan's first-ever presidential election. |
2005 | Vice President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, pleaded not guilty to a five-count felony indictment in the CIA leak case. (Libby was convicted and sentenced to 30 months in prison; President George W. Bush commuted his sentence.) |
2006 | Rep. Bob Ney, R-Ohio, who had pleaded guilty in the Jack Abramoff influence-peddling investigation, resigned from Congress. |
2007 | Gen. Pervez Musharraf declared a state of emergency in Pakistan. |
Article of the day
D.C. residents cast first presidential votes
On this day in 1964, residents of the District of Columbia cast their ballots in a presidential election for the first time. The passage of the 23rd Amendment in 1961 gave citizens of the nation's capital the right to vote for a commander in chief and vice president. They went on to help Democrat Lyndon Johnson defeat Republican Barry Goldwater in 1964, the next presidential election.
Between 1776 and 1800, New York and then Philadelphia served as the temporary center of government for the newly formed United States. The capital's location was a source of much controversy and debate, especially for Southern politicians, who didn't want it located too far north. In 1790, Congress passed a law allowing President George Washington to choose the permanent site. As a compromise, he selected a tract of undeveloped swampland on the Potomac River, between Maryland and Virginia, and began to refer to it as Federal City. The commissioners overseeing the development of the new city picked its permanent name--Washington--to honor the president. Congress met for the first time in Washington, D.C., on November 17, 1800.
The District was put under the jurisdiction of Congress, which terminated D.C. residents' voting rights in 1801. In 1961, the 23rd Amendment restored these rights, allowing D.C. voters to choose electors for the Electoral College based on population, with a maximum of as many electors as the least populated state. With a current population of over 550,000 residents, 61-square-mile D.C. has three electoral votes, just like Wyoming, America's smallest state, population-wise. The majority of D.C.'s residents are African Americans and they have voted overwhelmingly for Democratic candidates in past presidential elections.
In 1970, Congress gave Washington, D.C., one non-voting delegate to the House of Representatives and with the passage of 1973's Home Rule Act, Washingtonians got their first elected mayor and city council. In 1978, a proposed amendment would have given D.C. the right to select electors, representatives and senators, just like a state, but it failed to pass, as have subsequent calls for D.C. statehood.Source: http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history.do?action=VideoArticle&id=52080
Today Birthdays
Bob Feller turns 90 years old today. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
AP Photo/Tony Dejak Baseball Hall of Famer Bob Feller turns 90 years old today.
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