Today in history

By Associated Press

Nov. 8

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

In 1889, Montana was admitted to the Union as the 41st state.

In 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.”

In 1942, the Allies launched Operation Torch in World War II as U.S. and British forces landed in French North Africa.

In 1950, during the Korean War, the first jet-plane battle took place as U.S. Air Force Lt. Russell J. Brown shot down a North Korean MiG-15.

In 1960, John F. Kennedy won the U.S. presidential election over Vice President Richard M. Nixon.

In 1974, a federal judge in Cleveland dismissed charges against eight Ohio National Guardsmen accused of violating the civil rights of students who were killed or wounded in the 1970 Kent State shootings.

In 2012, Jared Lee Loughner was sentenced to life in prison without parole for the January 2011 shootings in Tucson, Arizona, that killed six people and wounded 13 others, including Rep. Gabrielle Giffords.

In 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.

In 2016, Republican Donald Trump was elected America’s 45th president, defeating Democrat Hillary Clinton in an astonishing victory for a celebrity businessman and political novice.

In 2018, tens of thousands of people fled a fast-moving wildfire in Northern California that would become the state’s deadliest ever, killing 86 people and nearly destroying the community of Paradise.

Nov. 9

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

In 1935, United Mine Workers President John L. Lewis and other labor leaders formed the Committee for Industrial Organization.

In 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.”

In 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.

In 1976, the U.N. General Assembly approved resolutions condemning apartheid in South Africa, including one characterizing the white-ruled government as “illegitimate.”

In 2007, President Gen. Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan placed opposition leader Benazir Bhutto under house arrest for a day and rounded up thousands of her supporters to block a mass rally against his emergency rule.

In 2011, after 46 seasons as Penn State’s head football coach and a record 409 victories, Joe Paterno was fired along with the university president, Graham Spanier, over their handling of child sex abuse allegations against former assistant coach Jerry Sandusky.

—From AP reports