On this day in 1989, Virginian Douglas Wilder became the first African American to win a U.S. gubernatorial election, and, after he left office when his term expired in 1994, he was elected mayor of Richmond in 2004.
| 1978: | | | American illustrator Norman Rockwell, best known for his covers of The Saturday Evening Post, died. |
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| 1960: | | | John F. Kennedy was narrowly elected president of the United States. |
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| 1956: | | Comet Arend-Roland was discovered. |
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| 1932: | | | During the Great Depression, Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt easily defeated incumbent Republican Herbert Hoover to win the presidency of the United States. |
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| 1900: | | Margaret Mitchell, author of Gone with the Wind, was born in Atlanta, Georgia. |
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| 1837: | | One of the first institutions of higher education for women in the United States, Mount Holyoke Female Seminary (now Mount Holyoke College) opened in Massachusetts. |
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| 1656: | | | English astronomer and mathematician Edmond Halley, the first to calculate the orbit of Halley's Comet, was born in Greenwich, Kent, England. |
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| 1520: | | The Danish king Christian II began mass executions of Swedish nobles in what became known as the Stockholm Bloodbath. |
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