Today in History....November 2

On this day in …

* 1783, Gen. George Washington issued his Farewell Address to the Army near Princeton, N.J.

* 1889, North Dakota and South Dakota became the 39th and 40th states

* 1947, Howard Hughes piloted his huge wooden flying boat, the Hughes H-4 Hercules (popularly known as the "Spruce Goose"), on its only flight, which lasted about a minute over Long Beach Harbor in California

* 1948, President Truman surprised the experts by being re-elected in a narrow upset over Republican challenger Thomas E. Dewey

* 1959, game show contestant Charles Van Doren admitted to a House subcommittee that he'd been given questions and answers in advance when he appeared on the NBC TV program "Twenty-One."

* 1976, former Georgia Gov. Jimmy Carter became the first candidate from the Deep South since the Civil War to be elected president as he defeated incumbent Gerald R. Ford

* 2000, an American astronaut and two Russian cosmonauts became the first residents of the international space station, christening it Alpha at the start of their four-month mission

* 2004, President Bush was elected to a second term as Republicans strengthened their grip on Congress. ALSO: Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh was slain in Amsterdam by practitioners of that "religion of peace" after receiving death threats over a movie he had made criticizing the treatment of women under Islam. Sgt. Charles Robert Jenkins pleaded guilty to deserting the U.S. Army in 1965 to avoid duty in Korea and Vietnam; he was court martialed, stripped of his rank and discharged from the Army