By The Associated Press

Today in History

Today is Wednesday, Oct. 30, the 303rd day of 2019. There are 62 days left in the year.

Today’s Highlight in History:

On Oct. 30, 1912, Vice President James S. Sherman, running for a second term of office with President William Howard Taft, died six days before Election Day. (Sherman was replaced with Nicholas Murray Butler, but Taft, the Republican candidate, ended up losing in an Electoral College landslide to Democrat Woodrow Wilson.)

On this date:

In 1735 (New Style calendar), the second president of the United States, John Adams, was born in Braintree, Massachusetts.

In 1961, the Soviet Union tested a hydrogen bomb, the “Tsar Bomba,” with a force estimated at about 50 megatons. The Soviet Party Congress unanimously approved a resolution ordering the removal of Josef Stalin’s body from Lenin’s tomb.

In 1972, 45 people were killed when an Illinois Central Gulf commuter train was struck from behind by another train on Chicago’s South Side.

In 1974, Muhammad Ali knocked out George Foreman in the eighth round of a 15-round bout in Kinshasa, Zaire (zah-EER’), known as the “Rumble in the Jungle,” to regain his world heavyweight title.

In 1975, the New York Daily News ran the headline “Ford to City: Drop Dead” a day after President Gerald R. Ford said he would veto any proposed federal bailout of New York City.

In 1979, President Carter announced his choice of federal appeals judge Shirley Hufstedler to head the newly created Department of Education.

In 1985, schoolteacher-astronaut Christa McAuliffe witnessed the launch of the space shuttle Challenger, the same craft that would carry her and six other crew members to their deaths in Jan. 1986.

In 1995, by a razor-thin vote of 50.6 percent to 49.4 percent, Federalists prevailed over separatists in a Quebec secession referendum.