Today in History ~ November 6

447 – A powerful earthquake destroys large portions of the Walls of Constantinople, including 57 towers.

1217 – The Charter of the Forest is sealed at St Paul’s Cathedral, London by King Henry III, acting under the regency of William Marshall, 1st Earl of Pembroke which re-establishes for free men rights of access to the royal forest that had been eroded by William the Conqueror and his heirs.

1860 – Abraham Lincoln is elected as the 16th President of United States.

1861 – American Civil War: Jefferson Davis is electedpresident of the Confederate States of America.

1865 – American Civil War: CSS Shenandoah is the last Confederate combat unit to surrender after circumnavigating the globe on a cruise on which it sank or captured 37 unarmed merchant vessels.

1928 – Herbert Hoover is elected the 31st President of the United States.

1943 – World War II: The Soviet Red Army recaptures Kiev. Before withdrawing, the Germans destroy most of the city’s ancient buildings.

1944 – Plutonium is first produced at the Hanford Atomic Facility and subsequently used in the Fat Man atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki, Japan.

1947 – Meet the Press, the longest running television program in history, makes its debut.

1956 – Dwight D. Eisenhower is reelected President of the United States.

1971 – The United States Atomic Energy Commission tests the largest U.S. underground hydrogen bomb, code-named Cannikin, on Amchitka Island in the Aleutians

1984 – Ronald Reagan is reelected President of the United States.

1998 – The Electric Tilt Train enters service in Queensland, Australia and becomes one of the fastest trains in the country and the fastest narrow gauge train in service.

John Philip Sousa

2012 – Barack Obama is reelected President of the United States

2013 – Several small bombs explode outside a provincial office of the Communist Party of China.

AD 15 – Agrippina the Younger, Roman empress (or possibly AD 16) (d. 59)

1494 – Suleiman the Magnificent, Ottoman sultan (d. 1566)

1814 – Adolphe Sax, Belgian-French instrument designer, invented the saxophone (d. 1894)

1851 – Charles Dow, American journalist and economist (d. 1902)

1854 – John Philip Sousa, American commander, composer, and conductor (d. 1932)

1892 – Harold Ross, American journalist and publisher, co-founded The New Yorker (d. 1951)

	Edsel Ford

1893 – Edsel Ford, American lieutenant and businessman (d. 1943)

1931 – Mike Nichols, German-born American actor, director, producer, and screenwriter (d. 2014)

1940 – Ruth Messinger, American politician and activist

1948 – Sidney Blumenthal, American journalist and activist

1562 – Achille Bocchi, Italian humanist writer (b. 1488)

1816 – Gouverneur Morris, scholar, politician, and diplomat, United States Ambassador to France (b. 1752)

1893 – Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, Russian composer and critic (b. 1840)

1928 – Arnold Rothstein, American mob boss (b. 1882)