Today’s Highlight in History:
On Nov. 7, 1917, Russia’s Bolshevik Revolution took place as forces led by Vladimir Ilyich Lenin overthrew the provisional government of Alexander Kerensky.
On this date:
In 1874, the Republican Party was symbolized as an elephant in a cartoon drawn by Thomas Nast in “Harper’s Weekly.”
In 1893, the state of Colorado granted its women the right to vote.
In 1916, Republican Jeannette Rankin of Montana became the first woman elected to Congress.
In 1940, the middle section of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge in Washington state collapsed during a windstorm.
In 1944, President Roosevelt won an unprecedented fourth term in office, defeating Thomas E. Dewey.
In 1962, former first lady Eleanor Roosevelt died in New York City.
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 1972, President Nixon was re-elected in a landslide over Democrat George McGovern.
In 1973, Congress overrode President Nixon’s veto of the War Powers Act, which limits a chief executive’s power to wage war without congressional approval.
In 1998, John Glenn returned to Earth aboard the space shuttle Discovery, visibly weak but elated after a nine-day mission.
Ten years ago: The U.S. liquor industry voted to drop its decades-old voluntary ban on broadcast advertising. Thousands of Communists marched through Moscow to mark the 79th anniversary of the Bolshevik revolution. A Nigerian Boeing 727 jetliner crashed en route to Lagos, killing 142 people. NASA’s Mars Global Surveyor blasted off from Cape Canaveral, Fla., on a mission to map the surface of the Red Planet. (It went into orbit around Mars the next year.)
Five years ago: The Bush administration targeted Osama bin Laden’s multimillion-dollar financial networks, closing businesses in four states, detaining U.S. suspects and urging allies to help choke off money supplies in 40 nations. At the White House, President Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair, allies in the war on terrorism, confidently offered back-to-back pledges of victory, no matter how long it took. More than 15 months after a Concorde crashed outside Paris, two of the world’s only supersonic jetliners returned to the skies.
One year ago: President Bush, in Panama, defended U.S. interrogation practices and called the treatment of terrorism suspects lawful, saying, “We do not torture.” A suicide bomber blew up his vehicle at a checkpoint south of Baghdad, killing four American soldiers.
Today’s Birthdays: Evangelist Billy Graham is 88. Opera singer Dame Joan Sutherland is 80. Actor Barry Newman is 68. Singer Johnny Rivers is 64. Singer-songwriter Joni Mitchell is 63. Singer Nick Gilder is 55. Actor Christopher Knight (“The Brady Bunch”) is 49. Actor Christopher Daniel Barnes is 34. Actors Jeremy and Jason London are 34. Actress Yunjin Kim (“Lost”) is 33.
Thought for Today: “It’s not the voting that’s democracy — it’s the counting.” — Tom Stoppard, Czechoslovak-born British author and dramatist.