November 3
Today's:

1507 - Leonardo DaVinci was commissioned by the husband of Lisa Gherardini to paint her. The work is known as the Mona Lisa.

1631 - The Reverend John Eliot arrived in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. He was the first Protestant minister to dedicate himself to the conversion of Native Americans to Christianity.

1793 - Stephen F. Austin was born. He was the principal founder of Texas.

1796 - John Adams was elected the 2nd U.S. President.

1839 - The first Opium War between China and Britain erupted.

1892 - The first automatic telephone went into service at LaPorte, IN. The device was invented by Almon Strowger.

1900 - The first automobile show in the United States opened at New York's Madison Square Garden.

1903 - Panama proclaimed its independence from Columbia.

1911 - Chevrolet Motor Car Company was founded by Louis Chevrolet and William C. Durant.

1934 - The first race track in California opened under a new pari-mutuel betting law.

1941 - U.S. Ambassador to Japan John Grew warned that the Japanese may be planning a sudden attack on the U.S.

1952 - Frozen bread was offered for sale for the first time in a supermarket in Chester, NY.

1953 - The Rules Committee of organized baseball restored the sacrifice fly. The rule had not been used since 1939.

1957 - Sputnik II was launched by the Soviet Union. It was the second manmade satellite to be put into orbit and was the first to put an animal into space, a dog named Laika.

1973 - The U.S. launched the Mariner 10 spacecraft. On March 29, 1974 it became the first spacecraft to reach the planet Mercury.

1975 - "Good Morning America" premiered on ABC-TV.

1979 - Five members of the Communist Workers' Party are shot to death in broad daylight at an anti-Ku Klux Klan rally in Greensboro, NC. Eight others were wounded.

1986 - The Ash-Shiraa, pro-Syrian Lebanese magazine, first broke the story of U.S. arms sales to Iran to secure the release of seven American hostages. The story turned into the Iran-Contra affair.

1987 - China told the U.S. that it would halt the sale of arms to Iran.

1991 - Israeli and Palestinian representatives held their first-ever face-to-face talks in Madrid, Spain.

1992 - Carol Moseley-Braun became the first African-American woman U.S. senator.

1994 - Susan Smith of Union, SC, was arrested for drowning her two sons. Nine days earlier Smith had claimed that the children had been abducted by a black carjacker.

1995 - U.S. President Clinton dedicated a memorial at Arlington National Cemetery to the 270 victims of the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103.

1998 - Bob Kane, the creator of Batman, died at the age of 83.

1998 - A state-run newspaper in Iraq urged the country to prepare for to battle "the U.S. monster."

1998 - Minnesota elected Jesse "The Body" Ventura, a former pro wrestler, as its governor.

2003 - In Kabul, Afghanistan, a post-Taliban draft constitution was unveiled. Today's: