Today in History: Friday, November 02, 2012
On Nov. 2, 1948, President Harry S. Truman narrowly won re-election over Republican challenger Thomas E. Dewey.
1783 Gen. George Washington issued his farewell address to the Army near Princeton, N.J.
1795 James K. Polk, the 11th president of the United States, was born in Mecklenburg County, N.C.
1865 Warren G. Harding, the 29th president of the United States, was born near Corsica, Ohio.
1889 North Dakota and South Dakota became the 39th and 40th states.
1917 British Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour expressed support for a national home for the Jews of Palestine in what became known as the Balfour Declaration.
1947 Howard Hughes piloted his huge wooden airplane, the Spruce Goose, on its only flight, which lasted about a minute over Long Beach Harbor in California.
1959 Charles Van Doren admitted to a House subcommittee that he had the questions and answers in advance of his appearances on the TV game show "Twenty-One."
1963 South Vietnamese President Ngo Dihn Diem was assassinated in a military coup.
1976 Former Georgia Gov. Jimmy Carter defeated Republican incumbent Gerald R. Ford, becoming the first U.S. president from the Deep South since the Civil War.
1983 President Ronald Reagan signed a bill establishing a federal holiday on the third Monday of January in honor of civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr.
2004 President George W. Bush was elected to a second term.
2009 Afghanistan's election commission proclaimed President Hamid Karzai the victor of the country's tumultuous ballot, canceling a planned runoff.
2010 Californians rejected a ballot measure that would have made their state the first to legalize marijuana for recreational use.