Monday, November 03rd
The 308th day of 2008.
There are 58 days left in the year.
On Nov. 3, 1936, President Franklin D. Roosevelt was re-elected in a landslide over Republican Alfred M. ''Alf'' Landon.
On Nov. 3, 1903, Walker Evans, the American photographer best known for his portrayal of America during the Great Depression, was born.
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.
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.
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.)
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.
2007 - Gen. Pervez Musharraf declared a state of emergency in Pakistan.