On November 6, 1869, Rutgers beat Princeton, 6-4, in the first
college football game. The game, played with a soccer ball
before roughly 100 fans in New Brunswick, New Jersey,
resembled rugby instead of today’s football.

Abraham Lincoln was elected the 16th president of the United
States over a deeply divided Democratic Party, becoming the
first Republican to win the presidency.

Lincoln received only 40 percent of the popular vote but handily
defeated the three other candidates: Southern Democrat John
C. Breckinridge, Constitutional Union candidate John Bell, and
Northern Democrat Stephen Douglas, a U.S. senator for Illinois.

Winning one of the closest elections in U.S. history,
Republican challenger Richard Nixon defeated Vice
President Hubert Humphrey. Because of the strong
showing of third-party candidate George Wallace,
neither Nixon nor Humphrey received more than 50
percent of the popular vote; Nixon beat Humphrey

Nixon campaigned on a platform designed to reach
the “silent majority” of middle class and working
class Americans. He promised to “bring us together
again.”

The United States presidential election of 1968 was
the 46th quadrennial United States presidential
election.

On November 4, 1990, Dances with Wolves, a film about an
American Civil War–era soldier and a group of Sioux Native
Americans that stars Kevin Costner and also marks his
directorial debut, premieres in Los Angeles.

Dances with Wolves took home seven Oscars, including Best
Picture and Best Director, and solidified Costner’s place on
Hollywood’s A-list.

The Soviet Union launched the first animal to orbit the earth
into space—a dog nicknamed Laika—aboard the Sputnik 2
spacecraft.

Laika (above) part Siberian husky, lived as a stray on the
Moscow streets before being enlisted into the Soviet space
program.

Electrodes attached to her body provided scientists on the
ground with important information about the biological
effects of space travel. She died from overheating and
panic.

Model of Sputnik 2 at the Memorial Museum of Cosmonautics
in Moscow.