November 2 ...

In 1734 Daniel Boone was born near present-day Reading, PA. In 1783 Gen. George Washington issued his Farewell Address to the Army near Princeton, NJ. In 1795 11th president of the US James Knox Polk was born in Mecklenburg County, NC. In 1865 29th president of the US Warren Gamaliel Harding was born near Corsica, OH. In 1889 North Dakota and South Dakota became the 39th and 40th states. In 1917 the Balfour Declaration proclaimed support for Jewish settlement in Palestine. In 1920 KDKA in Pittsburgh, PA, started broadcasting as the first commercial radio station. The first broadcast reported the results of the US presidential election of 1920. In 1930 Haile Selassie was crowned emperor of Ethiopia. In 1947 Howard Hughes piloted his huge wooden flying boat, the Hughes H-4 Hercules (popularly known as the Spruce Goose), on its only flight, which lasted about a minute over Long Beach Harbor in California. In 1948 President Truman surprised the experts by being re-elected in a narrow upset over Republican challenger Thomas E. Dewey. In 1976 former Georgia Gov. Jimmy Carter became the first candidate from the Deep South since the Civil War to be elected president as he defeated incumbent Gerald R. Ford. In 2000 an American astronaut and two Russian cosmonauts became the first residents of the international space station, christening it Alpha at the start of their four-month mission. In 2004 President Bush was elected to a second term with a majority of the vote, and Republicans also strengthened their grip on Congress; also on this day, Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh was slain in Amsterdam after receiving death threats from Islamic terrorists over a movie he had made criticizing the treatment of women under Islam.