Today is Friday, Nov. 5, the 310th day of 2004. There are 56 days left in the year.

Today’s Highlight in History:

On Nov. 5, 1605, the “Gunpowder Plot” failed as Guy Fawkes was seized before he could blow up the English Parliament.

On this date:

In 1911, Calbraith P. Rodgers arrived in Pasadena, Calif., completing the first transcontinental airplane trip in 49 days.

In 1912, Woodrow Wilson was elected president, defeating Progressive Republican Theodore Roosevelt and incumbent Republican William Howard Taft.

In 1940, President Roosevelt won an unprecedented third term in office as he defeated Republican challenger Wendell L. Willkie.

In 1944, British official Lord Moyne was assassinated in Cairo, Egypt, by the Zionist Stern gang.

In 1946, Republicans captured control of both the Senate and the House in midterm elections.

In 1968, Richard M. Nixon won the presidency, defeating Vice President Hubert H. Humphrey and third-party candidate George C. Wallace.

In 1974, Ella T. Grasso was elected governor of Connecticut, the first woman to win a gubernatorial office without succeeding her husband.

In 1989, death claimed pianist Vladimir Horowitz in New York at age 85 and singer-songwriter Barry Sadler in Murfreesboro, Tenn., at age 49.

In 1990, Rabbi Meir Kahane, the Brooklyn-born Israeli extremist, was shot to death at a New York hotel. (Egyptian native El Sayyed Nosair was convicted in federal court of the slaying.)

In 1996, voters returned President Clinton to the White House for a second term but kept Congress in Republican control.

Ten years ago: Former President Reagan disclosed he had Alzheimer’s disease. George Foreman became boxing’s oldest heavyweight champion at age 45 after knocking out Michael Moorer in the 10th round of their WBA fight in Las Vegas.

Five years ago: U.S. District Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson declared Microsoft Corporation a monopoly, saying the software giant’s aggressive actions were “stifling innovation” and hurting consumers. Pope John Paul II began his first visit to India in 13 years.

One year ago: President Bush signed a bill outlawing the procedure known by its critics as “partial-birth abortion”; less than an hour later, a federal judge in Nebraska issued a temporary restraining order against the ban. Green River serial killer Gary Leon Ridgway confessed to strangling four dozen women over two decades, most of them near Seattle. Democratic presidential hopeful Howard Dean apologized for urging Democrats to court Southern whites who displayed Confederate flags on their pickup trucks. Bobby Hatfield of the musical duo the Righteous Brothers died in Kalamazoo, Mich., at age 63.

Today’s Birthdays: Musician Myron Floren (“The Lawrence Welk Show”) is 85. Singer-songwriter Ike Turner is 73. Actor Chris Robinson is 66. Actress Elke Sommer is 64. Singer Art Garfunkel is 63. Actor-playwright Sam Shepard is 61. Singer Peter Noone is 57. Actor Robert Patrick is 46. Singer Bryan Adams is 45. Actress Tilda Swinton is 44. Actress Tatum O’Neal is 41. Actress Andrea McArdle is 41. Rock singer Angelo Moore (Fishbone) is 39. Rock musician Mark Hunter (James) is 36. Actor Sam Rockwell is 36. Country singers Heather and Jennifer Kinley (The Kinleys) are 34. Actor Corin Nemec is 33. Rock musician Jonny Greenwood (Radiohead) is 33. Country singer-musician Ryan Adams is 30. Actor Jeremy Lelliott is 22.

Thought for Today: “Examine what is said, not him who speaks.” – Arab proverb.