Today in history, November 6: UN General Assembly calls for economic sanctions against South Africa, Barack Obama wins election to a second term as US president

UN General Assembly calls for economic sanctions against South Africa because of its racial policies and Barack Obama wins election to a second term as US president, beating Republican candidate Mitt Romney.

Highlights in history on this date:

1429: Henry VI is crowned king of England, seven years after acceding to the throne at the age of eight months.
1632: Sweden’s King Gustavus II is killed in the Battle of Lutzen.
1860: Abraham Lincoln is elected president of the United States.
1861: Jefferson Davis is elected to a six-year term as president of the US Confederacy.
1913: Mahatma Gandhi is arrested while leading a march of Indian miners in South Africa.
1917: In World War I, the third battle of Ypres ends after five months when Australians and Canadians take Passchendaele. The advance was just 8km at a cost of at least 240,000 men.
1928: Jacob Schick obtains a patent for his “shaving implement”, the first electric razor.
1932: In German elections, the Nazis lose 34 seats and two million votes but still remain the largest party in the Reichstag with 196 seats.
1942: Tidal wave kills 10,000 people in Bengal, India.
1943: In World War II, Russians recapture Kiev after two years of Nazi occupation.
1962: UN General Assembly calls for economic sanctions against South Africa because of its racial policies.
1977: A dam collapse drowns at least 38 people as a wall of water submerges a trailer camp outside Toccoa in the US state of Georgia.
1991: NATO leaders meeting in Rome formally call a halt to enmity with Soviet Union and its allies and offer them a voice in alliance affairs.
1994: Rescuers across southern Europe struggle to reach cut-off villages and families trapped under the rubble of collapsed houses amid the devastation caused by heavy flooding.
2000: Hillary Clinton defeats her Republican opponent for a US Senate seat in New York to become the only US first lady ever to win public office.

2001: New York voters pick Republican media mogul Michael Bloomberg as the new mayor to lead the recovery from the September 11 attacks, succeeding Rudolph Giuliani.
2012: Barack Obama wins election to a second term as US president, beating Republican candidate Mitt Romney.
2013: Former Guantanamo Bay detainee David Hicks says he’s appealing against his US conviction for supporting terrorism.
2014: AC/DC drummer Phil Rudd is arrested in New Zealand and charged with attempting to hire a hitman to kill two people.

2017: The parents of a two-year-old Darwin girl who died from meningococcal disease launch a campaign demanding the government fund vaccinations for the B-strain of the disease.
2018: An Indonesian passenger plane is grounded for an hour at Bengkulu in Sumatra after some on-board refused to fly until stinky durian fruit was removed.

THOUGHT FOR TODAY:
“A diplomatic peace is not yet the real peace. It is an essential step in the peace process leading towards a real peace.” — Yitzhak Rabin, Israeli Prime Minister (1922-1995).