Today In History

1860: Former Illinois congressman Abraham Lincoln defeated three other candidates for the U.S. presidency.

1861: Jefferson Davis was elected to a six-year term as president of the Confederacy.

1913: Mohandas K. Gandhi was arrested as he led a march of Indian miners in South Africa.

1928: In a first, presidential election results were flashed on an electronic sign outside the New York Times building; Herbert Hoover beat Alfred E. Smith.

In 1956: President Eisenhower was re-elected, beating Democrat Adlai E. Stevenson.

1976: Benjamin L. Hooks was chosen executive director of the NAACP, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, succeeding Roy Wilkins.

1977: Some 39 people were killed when an earthen dam burst, sending a wall of water through Toccoa Falls Bible College in Georgia.