World/nation trivia: The week of Nov. 3-9

Nov 3:

1908, Republican William Howard Taft was elected president, outpolling Democrat William Jennings Bryan.

1957, the Soviet Union launched the spacecraft Sputnik 2, carrying the first animal into orbit, a dog named Laika.

2012, the lights went back on in lower Manhattan to the relief of residents who had been plunged into darkness for nearly five days by Hurricane Sandy.

2014, 13 years after the 9/11 attack, a new 1,776-foot skyscraper at the World Trade Center site opened for business, marking an emotional milestone for both New Yorkers and the nation.

Nov. 4:

1922, the entrance to King Tutankhamen’s tomb was discovered in Egypt.

1979, the Iran hostage crisis began as militants stormed the United States Embassy in Tehran, seizing its occupants; for some of the hostages, it was the start of 444 days of captivity.

1995, Yitzhak Rabin, prime minister of Israel, was assassinated by a right-wing Israeli minutes after attending a peace rally.

2008, Democratic Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois was elected the first Black president of the United States, defeating the Republican candidate, Sen. John McCain of Arizona.

Nov 5:

1872, suffragist Susan B. Anthony defied the law by casting a vote in the presidential election; she was later arrested and charged with “knowingly voting without having a lawful right to vote.” Found guilty at trial, she was fined $100, which she refused to pay.

1940, President Franklin D. Roosevelt won an unprecedented third term in office as he defeated Republican challenger Wendell L. Willkie.

1994, George Foreman became the oldest heavyweight boxing champion at age 45, knocking out Michael Moorer in the 10th round of their title bout.

2017, a gunman armed with an assault rifle opened fire in a small South Texas church, killing more than two dozen people; the shooter, Devin Patrick Kelley, was later found dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

Nov. 6:

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.

1947, “Meet the Press,” the longest-running television show in America, made its debut on NBC; the host was the show’s co-creator, Martha Rountree.

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

1984, President Ronald Reagan easily won reelection over former Vice President Walter Mondale, the Democratic challenger who won just one state, his native Minnesota.

Nov. 7:

1916, Jeannette Rankin of Montana won election to the U.S. House of Representatives, becoming the first woman elected to either chamber of Congress.

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

1991, basketball star Magic Johnson announced he had tested positive for HIV and was retiring.

2011, a jury in Los Angeles convicted Michael Jackson’s doctor, Conrad Murray, of involuntary manslaughter for supplying a powerful anesthetic implicated in the entertainer’s 2009 death.

Nov. 8:

1864, President Abraham Lincoln won reelection as he defeated Democratic challenger George B. McClellan.

1923, Adolf Hitler launched his first attempt at seizing power in Germany with a failed coup in Munich that came to be known as the “Beer-Hall Putsch.”

2000, a statewide recount began in Florida, which emerged as critical in deciding the winner of the 2000 presidential election. The recount would officially end Dec. 12 upon orders from the U.S. Supreme Court, delivering Florida’s electoral votes and the presidency to George W. Bush.

2013, Typhoon Haiyan, one of the most powerful storms ever recorded, slammed into the central Philippines, leaving more than 7,300 people dead or missing, flattening villages and displacing more than 5 million.

Nov. 9:

1906, Theodore Roosevelt made the first trip abroad of any sitting president in order to observe construction of the Panama Canal.

1938, Nazis looted and burned synagogues as well as thousands of Jewish-owned stores and houses in Germany and Austria in a pogrom or deliberate persecution that became known as “Kristallnacht.”

1965, the great Northeast blackout began with a series of power failures lasting up to 13 1/2 hours, leaving 30 million people in seven states and part of Canada without electricity.

1989, communist East Germany threw open its borders, allowing citizens to travel freely to the West for the first time in decades.

– Associated Press