November second

Today's Highlight in History:
On November second, 1948, President Truman surprised the experts by being re-elected in a narrow upset over Republican challenger Thomas E. Dewey.

On this date:
In 1783, General George Washington issued his "Farewell Address to the Army" near Princeton, New Jersey.

In 1795, the eleventh president of the United States, James Knox Polk, was born in Mecklenburg County, North Carolina.

In 1865, the 29th president of the United States, Warren Gamaliel Harding, was born near Corsica, Ohio.

In 1889, North Dakota and South Dakota became the 39th and 40th states.

In 1920, radio station KDKA in Pittsburgh broadcast returns from the Harding-Cox presidential election.

In 1930, Haile Selassie was crowned emperor of Ethiopia.

In 1959, game show contestant Charles Van Doren admitted to a House subcommittee that he'd been given questions and answers in advance when he appeared on the NBC TV program "Twenty-One."

In 1963, South Vietnamese President Ngo Dihn Diem (noh ding ZEE'-em) was assassinated in a military coup.

In 1979, black militant Joanne Chesimard escaped from a New Jersey prison, where she'd been serving a life sentence for the 1973 slaying of a New Jersey state trooper. (Chesimard, who has since taken the name Assata Shakur, now lives in Cuba.)

In 1994, a jury in Pensacola, Florida, convicted Paul Hill of murder for the shotgun slayings of an abortion provider and his bodyguard; Hill was sentenced to death.

Ten years ago: The White House announced that President Bush planned to spend Thanksgiving with American GI's in Saudi Arabia.

Five years ago: A man claiming to have a bomb hijacked a school bus with 13 learning-disabled children aboard, leading authorities around Miami-area highways for an hour and a-half before being fatally shot by police. The United States expelled Daiwa Bank Limited for allegedly covering up $1.1 billion in trading losses.

One year ago: Xerox repairman Byran Uyesugi opened fire on his co-workers in Honolulu, killing seven of them. (Uyesugi was later convicted and sentenced to life in prison.) Republicans pushed the year's last and biggest spending bill through Congress toward a sure veto by President Clinton.

"Vanity is as ill at ease under indifference, as tenderness is under the love which it cannot return."

-- George Eliot, English author (1819-1880).