YEARS AGO

Today is Wednesday, Nov. 5, the 309th day of 2014. There are 56 days left in the year.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

On this date in:

1605: The “Gunpowder Plot” fails as Guy Fawkes is seized before he could blow up the English Parliament.

1781: The Continental Congress elects John Hanson of Maryland its chairman, giving him the title of “President of the United States in Congress Assembled.”

1872: Suffragist Susan B. Anthony defies the law by attempting to cast a vote for President Ulysses S. Grant. (Anthony was convicted by a judge and fined $100, but she never paid the fine.)

1912: Democrat Woodrow Wilson is elected president, defeating Progressive Party candidate Theodore Roosevelt, incumbent Republican William Howard Taft and Socialist Eugene V. Debs.

1914: Britain and France declare war against the Ottoman Empire; Britain also annexes Cyprus.

1938: Samuel Barber’s “Adagio for Strings” and “Essay for Orchestra” debut on the NBC Blue radio network as they are performed by the NBC Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Arturo Toscanini.

1940: President Franklin D. Roosevelt wins an unprecedented third term in office as he defeats Republican challenger Wendell L. Willkie.

1964: NASA launches Mariner 3, which was supposed to fly by Mars, but the spacecraft failed to reach its destination.

1968: Republican Richard M. Nixon wins the presidency, defeating Democratic Vice President Hubert H. Humphrey and American Independent candidate George C. Wallace.

1974: Democrat Ella T. Grasso is elected governor of Connecticut, becoming the first woman to win a gubernatorial office without succeeding her husband.

1989: Death claims pianist Vladimir Horowitz in New York at age 86 and singer-songwriter Barry Sadler in Murfreesboro, Tenn., at age 49.

1990: Rabbi Meir Kahane, the Brooklyn-born Israeli extremist, is shot to death at a New York hotel. (Egyptian native El Sayyed Nosair was convicted of the slaying in federal court.)

1994: Former President Ronald Reagan discloses he has Alzheimer’s disease.

2004: The Kremlin announces that Russia has given final approval to the Kyoto Protocol on global warming.

2009: A shooting rampage at the Fort Hood Army post in Texas leaves 13 people dead; Maj. Nidal Hasan, an Army psychiatrist, is later convicted of murder and sentenced to death.

2013: Republican Gov. Chris Christie wins a resounding re-election victory in Democratic-leaning New Jersey, while Democrat Terry McAuliffe prevails in Virginia’s gubernatorial contest.

Toronto Mayor Rob Ford acknowledges for the first time that he had smoked crack “probably a year ago” when he was in a “drunken stupor,” but he refused to resign despite immense pressure to step aside as leader of Canada’s largest city.

VINDICATOR FILES

1989: The Rev. Jerry Falwell, in Youngstown to watch his Liberty University Flames play the YSU Penguins, says he is content with his retreat from the world of politics into that of the ministry and academia.

YSU’s Penguins gain 509 yards, 413 of them on the ground, in a 41-14 victory over Liberty University of Lynchburg, Va.

1974: Howard Castle, 56, is struck and killed by a hit-skip driver as he was reaching into his newspaper box at 900 Tibbetts-Wick Road.

A purse with a bullet lodged in it is found at the Pointview Recreation area of Lake Milton. The purse belonged to a missing woman, Patricia Cellio, 20, of Youngstown,

The Ohio Department of Natural Resources lifts an order that Youngstown breach Lake Milton dam and gives the city until May 31 to undertake initial work to assure the safety of the structure.

1964: Sen Edward M. Kennedy, still hospitalized with a broken back suffered in a plane crash, wins re-election by a million votes.

Hawaii elects its first congresswoman, Patsy Mink, a 37-year-old lawyer.

1939: The first 215 of the 618 housing units in the Westlake low-cost housing project may become ready for occupancy in December, Paul L. Strait, managing director of the Youngstown Metropolitan Housing Authority, says.

The Vindicator’s straw poll shows that Judge William B. Spagnola is on track to win Youngstown’s eight-man mayoral race, followed by Arthur H. Williams and John W. Powers.

Pliny H. Powers, superintendent of schools, tells some 500 parents, children and friends of the schools at the laying of the cornerstone for the new Hillman Junior High School that “building of this school is democracy in action.”