This Day in History – November 6
Today is Wednesday, November 6, the 310th day of 2013. There are 55 days left in the year.
TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT
2007: Astronomers say a new planet has been discovered orbiting a sun-like star 41 light years away, making it the first known planetary quintet outside our solar system.
OTHER EVENTS
1860: Abraham Lincoln is elected president of the United States.
1869: The first intercollegiate American football game in the United States takes place between Rutgers and Princeton University in New Brunswick, New Jersey.
1913: Mohandas K Gandhi is arrested as he leads a protest march of Indian miners in South Africa.
1942: Tidal wave kills 10,000 people in Bengal, India.
1955: South Africa quits the UN General Assembly and its committees for the rest of the 10th session after the Assembly adopts a resolution expressing “concern” over South Africa’s apartheid policy.
1962: UN General Assembly calls for economic sanctions against South Africa because of its racial policies.
1971: The World Synod of Roman Catholic Bishops ends a stormy meeting at Vatican, divided on the question of whether married men may become priests.
1977: A dam collapse drowns 38 people as a wall of water submerges trailer camps outside Toccoa in Georgia, United States.
1984: US Republican President Ronald Reagan wins re-election to a second term by a landslide over Democrat Walter F Mondale.
1991: The last of more than 700 Kuwaiti oil wells set on fire by Iraqi forces during the Persian Gulf war are doused, as firefighting teams complete in eight months a job oil officials estimated would take more than two years.
1996: About 1,000 people are killed when a cyclone hits Andhra Pradesh state in southern India. It is the deadliest cyclone in India since 1977, when more than 10,000 people were killed, also in Andhra Pradesh.
1998: Paul Kagame, Rwanda’s vice-president and minister of defence, admits Rwandan troops were aiding a rebellion in neighboring Congo aimed at ousting that country’s leader, President Laurent Kabila.
1999: Australians, refusing to shake their colonial past, reject a referendum to make their nation the world’s 147th republic and drop Britain’s queen as their head of state.
2000: Surgeons in London begin to separate conjoined twin girls in a long and complex operation that ends up killing one baby to give her sister a chance for a longer life.
2001: Germany’s Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder pledges up to 3,900 German troops for the US war on terrorism, pushing the nation toward its most far-reaching military participation since World War II.
2002: The UN children’s agency (UNICEF) says one woman dies every 20 minutes in Afghanistan because of complications during pregnancy or childbirth — a maternal mortality rate that ranks among the highest in the world.
2006: A German utility confirms it caused a weekend outage that left millions of people in several countries without power, but denies that the blackout revealed a lack of investment in Europe’s power grids.
2008: Jigme Khesar Namgyal Wangchuck becomes Bhutan’s first king since its transformation to democracy.
2011: Greece’s embattled prime minister and main opposition leader agree to form an interim government to ensure the country’s new European debt deal, capping a week of political turmoil that saw Greece face a catastrophic default that threatened its euro membership and roiled international markets.
2012: Vladimir Putin fires his defence minister over a corruption scandal but questions remain about what really was behind the downfall over a man who has overseen the most radial defense reform in Russia in decades.
TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS
John Philip Sousa, US composer (1854-1937); James Jones, US novelist (1921-1977); Mike Nichols, US theatrical director-producer (1931-); Sally Field, US actress (1946-); Maria Shriver, US journalist and former first lady in California (1955-); Rebecca Romijn-Stamos, US supermodel/actress (1972-).
— AP