This Day in History
1989: Douglas Wilder elected governor
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.
More events on this day
1978: American illustrator Norman Rockwell, best known for his covers of The Saturday Evening Post, died.
1960: John F. Kennedy was narrowly elected president of the United States.
1956: Comet Arend-Roland was discovered.
1932: During the Great Depression, Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt easily defeated incumbent Republican Herbert Hoover to win the presidency of the United States.
1900: Margaret Mitchell, author of Gone with the Wind, was born in Atlanta, Georgia.
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.
1656: English astronomer and mathematician Edmond Halley, the first to calculate the orbit of Halley's Comet, was born in Greenwich, Kent, England.
1520: The Danish king Christian II began mass executions of Swedish nobles in what became known as the Stockholm Bloodbath. |
