Today in History: Wednesday, November 07, 2012

On Nov. 7, 1917, Russia's Bolshevik Revolution took place as forces led by Vladimir Ilyich Lenin overthrew the provisional government of Alexander Kerensky.

1893 Passage of a referendum made Colorado the first state to grant women the right to vote.

1911 Marie Curie became the first multiple Nobel Prize winner when she was given the award for chemisty eight years after garnering the physics prize with her late husband, Pierre. (She remains the only woman with multiple Nobels and the only person to receive the award in two science categories.)

1916 Republican Jeannette Rankin of Montana became the first woman elected to Congress.

1944 President Franklin D. Roosevelt won an unprecedented fourth term in office, defeating Thomas E. Dewey.

1962 Former first lady Eleanor Roosevelt died at age 78.

1972 President Richard M. Nixon was re-elected in a landslide over Democrat George McGovern.

1973 Congress over-rode President Richard M. Nixon's veto of the War Powers Act.

1991 Basketball star Magic Johnson announced that he had tested positive for the AIDS virus and was retiring.

1998 House Speaker Newt Gingrich resigned following an election in which the Republican House majority shrunk from 22 to 12.

2000 Republican George W. Bush was elected president over incumbent Democratic Vice President Al Gore, though Gore won the popular vote by a narrow margin. The winner was not known for more than a month because of a dispute over the results in Florida.

2000 Hillary Rodham Clinton was elected to the U.S. Senate from New York, becoming the first first lady to win public office.

2006 Keith Ellison, a Democrat from Minnesota, became the first Muslim elected to Congress.

2009 The Democratic-controlled House narrowly passed, 220-215, landmark health care legislation to expand coverage to tens of millions who lacked it and placed tough new restrictions on the insurance industry.