| On this date in: |
| 1839 | The first Opium War between China and Britain broke out. |
| 1868 | Republican Ulysses S. Grant won the presidential election over Democrat Horatio Seymour. |
| 1896 | Republican William McKinley defeated Democrat William Jennings Bryan for the presidency. |
| 1903 | Panama proclaimed its independence from Colombia. |
| 1908 | Republican William Howard Taft was elected president, outpolling William Jennings Bryan. |
| 1957 | The Soviet Union launched into orbit Sputnik 2, the second manmade satellite; a dog on board named Laika was sacrificed in the experiment. |
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| AP Photo |
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| 1964 | President Lyndon B. Johnson soundly defeated Republican challenger Barry Goldwater to win a White House term in his own right. |
| 1970 | Salvador Allende was inaugurated as president of Chile. |
| 1986 | A Lebanese magazine broke the story of U.S. arms sales to Iran, a revelation that escalated into the Iran-Contra affair.
 | President Ronald Reagan denies trading arms for hostages |
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| 1992 | Democrat Bill Clinton was elected the 42nd president of the United States, defeating President George H.W. Bush. |
| 1992 | Illinois Democrat Carol Moseley-Braun became the first African-American woman elected to the U.S. Senate. |
| 1994 | Susan Smith of Union, S.C., was arrested for drowning her two young sons, nine days after claiming the children had been abducted by a black man. (Smith is serving life in prison.) |
| 1998 | Former pro wrestler Jesse Ventura was elected governor of Minnesota. |
| 1999 | Aaron McKinney was convicted of murder in the beating of gay Wyoming college student Matthew Shepard. (McKinney and Russell Henderson are each serving life in prison for the 1998 slaying.)
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| 2004 | Hamid Karzai was declared the winner of Afghanistan's first-ever presidential election. |
| 2005 | Vice President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, pleaded not guilty to a five-count felony indictment in the CIA leak case. (Libby was convicted and sentenced to 30 months in prison; President George W. Bush commuted his sentence.) |
| 2006 | Rep. Bob Ney, R-Ohio, who had pleaded guilty in the Jack Abramoff influence-peddling investigation, resigned from Congress. |
