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• On this date:
• In 1839, the first Opium War between China and Britain broke out.
• In 1900, the first major U.S. automobile show opened at New York's Madison Square Garden under the auspices of the Automobile Club of America.
• In 1903, Panama proclaimed its independence from Colombia.
• In 1911, the Chevrolet Motor Car Co. was founded in Detroit by Louis Chevrolet and William C. Durant. (The company was acquired by General Motors in 1918.)
• In 1936, President Franklin D. Roosevelt won a landslide election victory over Republican challenger Alfred M. "Alf" Landon.
• In 1957, the Soviet Union launched Sputnik 2, the second manmade satellite, into orbit; on board was a dog named Laika (LY'-kah) who was sacrificed in the experiment.
• In 1960, the Meredith Willson musical "The Unsinkable Molly Brown" opened on Broadway with Tammy Grimes in the title role.
• In 1961, Burmese diplomat U Thant (oo thahnt) was appointed acting U.N. Secretary-General following the death of Dag Hammarskjold (dahg HAWM'-ahr-shoold). President John F. Kennedy established the U.S. Agency for International Development.
• In 1964, President Lyndon B. Johnson soundly defeated Republican Barry Goldwater to win a White House term in his own right.
• In 1970, Salvador Allende (ah-YEN'-day) was inaugurated as president of Chile.
• In 1979, five Communist Workers Party members were killed in a clash with heavily armed Ku Klux Klansmen and neo-Nazis during an anti-Klan protest in Greensboro, N.C.
• In 1986, the Iran-Contra affair began to come to light as Ash-Shiraa, a pro-Syrian Lebanese magazine, first broke the story of U.S. arms sales to Iran.
•
• Ten years ago: Congress voted its final approval for $87.5 billion for U.S. military operations and aid in Iraq and Afghanistan. Russia's richest man, Mikhail Khodorkovsky (mih-hah-EEL' khoh-dohr-KAHV'-skee), already jailed on fraud and tax evasion charges, resigned as head of the Russian oil giant Yukos.
• Five years ago: On the eve of Election Day 2008, Democrat Barack Obama and Republican John McCain wrapped up their two-year campaign for the White House. Ali Hamza al-Bahlul, a video maker for Osama bin Laden, was sentenced at Guantanamo to life in prison for encouraging terrorist attacks. Authorities announced they had positively identified some of Steve Fossett's remains found a half-mile from where the adventurer's plane had crashed in California's Sierra Nevada. Former White House photographer Cecil Stoughton, who took the iconic image of Lyndon

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