Today in History — November 6

1528 – Shipwreck survivor Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca becomes the first known European to set foot in what will become Texas.

1789 – Pope Pius VI confirms the appointment of John Carroll as Bishop of Baltimore, the first Catholic bishop in the United States. A proponent of education Carroll, will later found Georgetown University.

1835 – Future Italian criminologist Cesare Lombroso is born at Verona. His cutting-edge scientific theory that criminal behavior is inherited and can be discerned from physiology will become extremely popular.

1844 – Following its successful war of independence from Haiti, the Dominican Republic gets its first constitution, which is patterned on the U.S. model.

1861 – Mississippi Senator and former U.S. Secretary of War Jefferson Davis is elected president of the Confederate States of America. Voters will later wish they had made him a general instead.

1869 – In the first intercollegiate football match, Rutgers College defeats the College of New Jersey (now Princeton) 6-4 at New Brunswick.

1935 – Parker Brothers acquires the rights to a board game called “The Landlord’s Game” from designer Elizabeth Magie Phillips. It will subsequently get revised and renamed “Monopoly.”

1999 – By a 55-45 margin, Australian voters reject the idea of forming a republic and dispensing with the Queen.

FGS