Today in History

From wikipedia.org:

Events
676 - Donus becomes Pope
1772 - American Revolutionary War: Samuel Adams and Joseph Warren form the first Committee of Correspondence
1783 - In Rocky Hill, New Jersey, US General George Washington gives his "Farewell Address to the Army"
1817 - The Bank of Montreal, Canada's oldest chartered bank, openes in Montreal, Quebec
1868 - Time zone: New Zealand officially adopses a standard time to be observed nationally, and is perhaps the first country to do so
1889 - North and South Dakota are admitted as the 39th and 40th U.S. states
1920 - In the United States, KDKA of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania starts broadcasting as the first commercial radio station. The first broadcast was the results of the U.S. presidential election, 1920
1936 - The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation is established
1947 - In California, Designer Howard Hughes performs the maiden flight of the Spruce Goose; the largest fixed-wing aircraft ever built (flight lasted only eight minutes)
1948 - U.S. presidential election, 1948: Harry S. Truman defeats Thomas E. Dewey for the US presidency
1959 - Ice Hockey: After being struck in the face with a puck, goalkeeper Jacques Plante returns to play wearing a protective mask for the first time in professional play
1960 - Penguin Books is found not guilty of obscenity in the Lady Chatterley’s Lover case
1962 - The Cuban Missile Crisis ends as President John F. Kennedy announces that Soviet nuclear missiles are to be withdrawn from Cuba
1976 - U.S. presidential election, 1976: Jimmy Carter defeats incumbent Gerald Ford to become first candidate from deep south to win since the Civil War
1995 - The Hubble space telescope takes a picture of a gas plume 7000 lightyears away from Earth that appears to contain an image of Jesus of Nazareth to many people
2000 - The first crew arrives at the International Space Station

Births
1667 - James Sobieski, Crown Prince of Poland (d. 1737)
1734 - Daniel Boone, frontiersman (d. 1820)
1795 - James Knox Polk, 11th President of the United States (d. 1849)
1815 - George Boole, mathematician and philosopher (d.1864)
1865 - Warren G. Harding, 29th President of the United States (d. 1923)
1913 - Burt Lancaster, actor (d. 1994)
1914 - Ray Walston, actor (d. 2001)

Deaths
1944 - Thomas Midgley, chemist and inventor
1950 - George Bernard Shaw, playwright
1966 - Peter Debye, chemist
2004 - Theo van Gogh, Dutch filmmaker (b. 1957)

Holidays & observances
Catholicism - All Souls Day
Ancient Latvia - Dveselu Diena held
Mexico and the United States - Day of the Dead (Spanish: El Dia de los Muertos), a Mexican and Mexican-American celebration of dead ancestors