| On this date in: |
| 1893 |
Passage of a referendum made Colorado the first state to grant women the right to vote. |
| 1911 |
Marie Curie became the first multiple Nobel Prize winner when she was given the award for chemisty eight years after garnering the physics prize with her late husband, Pierre. (She remains the only woman with multiple Nobels and the only person to receive the award in two science categories.) |
| 1916 |
Republican Jeannette Rankin of Montana became the first woman elected to Congress. |
| 1944 |
President Franklin D. Roosevelt won an unprecedented fourth term in office, defeating Thomas E. Dewey. |
| 1962 |
Richard M. Nixon, who failed in a bid to become governor of California, held what he called his last press conference, telling reporters, “You won’t have Nixon to kick around anymore.” |
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| AP Photo |
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| 1962 |
Former first lady Eleanor Roosevelt died at age 78. |
| 1972 |
President Richard M. Nixon was re-elected in a landslide over Democrat George McGovern. |
| 1973 |
Congress over-rode President Richard M. Nixon’s veto of the War Powers Act. |
| 1991 |
Basketball star Magic Johnson announced that he had tested positive for the AIDS virus and was retiring. |
| 1998 |
House Speaker Newt Gingrich resigned following an election in which the Republican House majority shrunk from 22 to 12. |
| 2000 |
Republican George W. Bush was elected president over incumbent Democratic Vice President Al Gore, though Gore won the popular vote by a narrow margin. The winner was not known for more than a month because of a dispute over the results in Florida. |
| 2000 |
Hillary Rodham Clinton was elected to the U.S. Senate from New York, becoming the first first lady to win public office. |
| 2006 |
Keith Ellison, a Democrat from Minnesota, became the first Muslim elected to Congress. |
| 2009 |
The Democratic-controlled House narrowly passed, 220-215, landmark health care legislation to expand coverage to tens of millions who lacked it and placed tough new restrictions on the insurance industry. |
