Subscribe | UPI Odd Newsletter Subscribe Today is Nov. 8. The Allied invasion of German-occupied North Africa began on this date in 1942, when more than 400-thousand soldiers landed on the shores of the African continent. Advertisement It was on this date in 1864, as the Civil War raged on, that Abraham Lincoln was elected to his second term as president. He would not finish the term, being assassinated in April 1865. George Herbert Walker Bush was elected the 41st president of the United States on this date in 1988, after serving eight years as Ronald Reagan's vice president. Bush had sought the GOP nomination in 1980, blasting Reagan's "voodoo economics." He changed his tune after Reagan capped the nomination and asked him to be his running mate. Speaking of elections... A stunning upset took place on this date in 1994 when Republican candidates swept the general election, regaining control of both chambers of Congress. It marked the first time in 40 years the Republicans controlled both the House and the Senate. It was on this date in 1985 -- after no small hint from a song by Bob Dylan --- that a judge overturned Rubin "Hurricane" Carter's conviction for a 1966 triple murder in a Patterson, N.J., bar. The former boxer had spent 19 years in prison for a crime he did not commit. Advertisement Mount Holyoke Seminary in Massachusetts was established on this date in 1837, becoming the first American college founded exclusively for women. While many institutes of higher education for women became co-ed in the 1960s and '70s, Mount Holyoke College, as it's now known, remains women only. We now return you to the present, already in progress.
