Today in History ~ November 6

447 – A powerful earthquake destroys large portions of the Walls of Constantinople, including 57 towers.

1217 – The Charter of the Forest is sealed at St Paul’s Cathedral, London by King Henry III, acting under the regency of William Marshall, 1st Earl of Pembroke which re-establishes for free men rights of access to the royal forest that had been eroded by William the Conqueror and his heirs.

1861 – American Civil War: Jefferson Davis is electedpresident of the Confederate States of America.

1865 – American Civil War: CSS Shenandoah is the last Confederate combat unit to surrender after circumnavigating the globe on a cruise on which it sank or captured 37 unarmed merchant vessels.

1928 – Herbert Hoover is elected the 31st President of the United States.

1943 – World War II: The Soviet Red Army recaptures Kiev. Before withdrawing, the Germans destroy most of the city’s ancient buildings.

1944 – Plutonium is first produced at the Hanford Atomic Facility and subsequently used in the Fat Man atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki, Japan.

1947 – Meet the Press, the longest running television program in history, makes its debut.

1956 – Dwight D. Eisenhower is reelected President of the United States.

1971 – The United States Atomic Energy Commission tests the largest U.S. underground hydrogen bomb, code-named Cannikin, on Amchitka Island in the Aleutians

1984 – Ronald Reagan is reelected President of the United States.

1998 – The Electric Tilt Train enters service in Queensland, Australia and becomes one of the fastest trains in the country and the fastest narrow gauge train in service.

2013 – Several small bombs explode outside a provincial office of the Communist Party of China.

AD 15 – Agrippina the Younger, Roman empress (or possibly AD 16) (d. 59)

1494 – Suleiman the Magnificent, Ottoman sultan (d. 1566)

1814 – Adolphe Sax, Belgian-French instrument designer, invented the saxophone (d. 1894)

1851 – Charles Dow, American journalist and economist (d. 1902)

1854 – John Philip Sousa, American commander, composer, and conductor (d. 1932)

1892 – Harold Ross, American journalist and publisher, co-founded The New Yorker (d. 1951)

1931 – Mike Nichols, German-born American actor, director, producer, and screenwriter (d. 2014)

1940 – Ruth Messinger, American politician and activist

1948 – Sidney Blumenthal, American journalist and activist

1562 – Achille Bocchi, Italian humanist writer (b. 1488)

1816 – Gouverneur Morris, scholar, politician, and diplomat, United States Ambassador to France (b. 1752)

1893 – Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, Russian composer and critic (b. 1840)

1928 – Arnold Rothstein, American mob boss (b. 1882)