Today in 1920 Warren G. Harding, on his 55th birthday, is elected to become the 29th President of the United States. It is also the first US Presidential Election in which women can vote.

The On This Day In History archives at “Simple English Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia” contains over 200,000 events, birthdays and deaths from 6,000 years of history. Here is a roundup of a few of them:

November 2 is the 306th day of the year (307th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 59 days remaining until the end of the year.

EVENTS

676 – Donus becomes Pope.

1502 - Christopher Columbus reaches present-day Panama.

1721 - Peter I of Russia declares himself Tsar of the Russian Empire.

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, opens in Montreal, Quebec.

1852 - Franklin Pierce is elected President of the United States.

1856 - French passenger steamer Lyonnais collides with a barge off Nantucket, Massachusetts, sinking the next day, killing 130 of the 146 people on board.

1861 – American Civil War: Western Department Union General John C. Fremont is relieved of command and replaced by David Hunter.

1868 – Time zone: New Zealand officially adopts a standard time to be observed nationally, and is perhaps the first country to do so.

1880 - James A. Garfield is elected President of the United States.

1882 - Oulu, Finland is devastated by the Great Fire of 1882.

1889 – North and South Dakota are admitted as the 39th and 40th U.S. states.

1898 - Cheerleading starts in the United States; Johnny Campbell leads a crowd in cheering the University of Minnesota American football team.

1899 – The Boers started their 118-day siege of British-held Ladysmith during the Second Boer War.

1914 - World War I: The Russian Empire declares war on the Ottoman Empire.

1917 – Zionism: The Balfour Declaration proclaims support for Jewish settlement in Palestine.

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.

1920 - Warren G. Harding, on his 55th birthday, is elected to become the 29th President of the United States. It is also the first US Presidential Election in which women can vote.

1930 – Haile Selassie is crowned emperor of Ethiopia.

1930 – Geologist Alfred Wegener departs for an expedition in Greenland, from which he does not return. His remains are found in 1931.

1936 - BBC television transmissions begin.

1936 – The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation is established.

1936 – Italian dictator Benito Mussolini proclaims the Rome–Berlin Axis, establishing the alliance of the Axis Powers.

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. Many had predicted Dewey would win, and the false Chicago Tribune headline Dewey defeats Truman has become famous.

1953 - Pakistan is officially named the "Islamic Republic of Pakistan".

1959 – Quiz show scandals: "Twenty-One" game show contestant Charles Van Doren admits to a Congressional committee that he had been given questions and answers in advance.

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 US President John F. Kennedy announces that Soviet nuclear missiles are to be withdrawn from Cuba.

1963 – South Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem is assassinated following a military coup.

1964 – King Saud of Saudi Arabia was deposed by a family coup, and replaced by his half-brother King Faisal.

1966 – The Cuban Adjustment Act enters force, allowing 123,000 Cubans the opportunity to apply for permanent residence in the United States.

1967 – Vietnam War: US President Lyndon B. Johnson holds a secret meeting with a group of the nation's most prestigious leaders ("the Wise Men") and asks them to suggest ways to unite the American people behind the war effort. They conclude that the American people should be given more optimistic reports on the progress of the war.

1974 – 78 die as the Time Go-Go Club in Seoul, South Korea burns down. Six of the victims jumped to their deaths from the seventh floor after club official barred the doors after the fire started.

1976 – U.S. presidential election, 1976: Jimmy Carter defeats incumbent Gerald Ford to become the first candidate from the Deep South to win since the Civil War.

1982 - Channel 4 goes on transmission in the United Kingdom.

1983 – Martin Luther King Day: At the White House Rose Garden, US President Ronald Reagan signs a bill creating a federal holiday on the third Monday of every January to honor American civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr.

1984 – Capital punishment: Velma Barfield becomes the first woman executed in the United States since 1962.

1988 – The Morris worm, the first internet distributed computer worms to gain significant mainstream media attention, was launched from MIT.

1991 – Bartholomew I becomes the Patriarch of Constantinople, the "first among equals" in the Eastern Orthodox Communion.

1991 – Jermaine Jackson's single Word to the Badd!, which attacks his brother Michael, is leaked to radio station KPWR in Los Angeles.

1995 – The Hubble space telescope takes a picture of a gas plume 7000 light years away from Earth that appears to contain an image of Jesus of Nazareth to many people.

1997 - Typhoon Linda devastates areas around the Gulf of Thailand.

2000 – The first crew arrives at the International Space Station.

2001 – Monsters, Inc. debuts with the best ticket sales ever for an animated movie and the 6th best of all time.

2004 – 2004 U.S. presidential election: George W. Bush defeats Senator John Kerry to win a second term as President of the United States.

2008 - Lewis Hamilton wins the Formula One championship. At the time, he is the youngest driver to achieve this, until Sebastian Vettel becomes its youngest winner in 2010.

2014 - An suicide attack in Pakistan, near the Indian border, kills over 60 people.

2017 - The discovery of a previously unknown orangutan species is announced, called the "Tapanuli".

2019 - South Africa wins the Rugby union World Cup for a third time, defeating England 32-12 in Tokyo, Japan.

2019 - The city of Dresden in eastern Germany declares a Nazi State of Emergency over the activities of the Far-right there.