This Day in History: Nov. 2

(AP Photo/Keith Srakocic, File)

On this day, Nov. 2 ...

2018: The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration says drug overdose deaths in 2017 hit the highest level ever recorded in the United States, with most of the increase due to a record number of opioid-related deaths. 

Also on this day:

• 1783: General George Washington issues his farewell address to the Army near Princeton, N.J.
• 1889: North Dakota and South Dakota became the 39th and 40th states with the signing of proclamations by President Benjamin Harrison.

Howard Hughes, industrialist, film producer and pilot, poses in the cockpit of his new racing plane after a test flight in Los Angeles August 17, 1935. The plane, nearly two years in construction at a cost believed to be more than $100,000, was to be piloted by Hughes in the Bendix race from Los Angeles to Cleveland. (AP Photo)

• 1947: Howard Hughes pilots his huge wooden flying boat, the Hughes H-4 Hercules (derisively dubbed the “Spruce Goose” by detractors), on its only flight, which lasted about a minute over Long Beach Harbor in California.
• 1948: President Harry S. Truman surprises the experts by winning a narrow upset over Republican challenger Thomas E. Dewey.
• 1962: President John F. Kennedy delivers a brief statement to the nation in which he says that aerial photographs have confirmed that Soviet missile bases in Cuba were being dismantled and that “progress is now being made toward the restoration of peace in the Caribbean.”

Democratic presidential candidate Jimmy Carter and his wife, Rosalynn, depart the Plains, Ga., polling place, Nov. 2, 1976. The candidate was the fifth person to vote in his precinct. (AP Photo)

• 1976: Former Georgia Gov. Jimmy Carter becomes the first candidate from the Deep South since the Civil War to be elected president as he defeats incumbent President Gerald R. Ford.
• 1986: Kidnappers in Lebanon release American hospital administrator David Jacobsen after holding him for 17 months.
• 1994: A jury in Pensacola, Fla., convicts Paul Hill of murder for the shotgun slayings of an abortion provider and his bodyguard; Hill would be executed in September 2003.
• 2000: American astronaut Bill Shepherd and two Russian cosmonauts, Yuri Gidzenko and Sergei Krikalev, become the first residents of the International Space Station.
• 2004: President George W. Bush is elected to a second term as Republicans strengthen their grip on Congress. 
• 2014: Islamic State group extremists shoot dead at least 50 Iraqi men, women and children from the same Sunni tribe. 
• 2014: A Taliban suicide bomber kills 60 in an attack on a paramilitary checkpoint in Pakistan close to the Wagah border crossing with India.
• 2014: Daredevil Nik Wallenda wows Chicago and the world with two hair-raising skyscraper crossings on high wires without a safety net or a harness.
• 2018: The Trump administration restores U.S. sanctions on Iran that had been lifted under the 2015 nuclear deal but carves out exemptions for eight countries that would still be able to import Iranian oil.
• 2018: The oldest victim of the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting, 97-year-old Rose Mallinger, is laid to rest in the last of the funerals for the 11 victims.