Today in History: Magic Johnson announces HIV diagnosis

Today is Friday, Nov. 7, the 311th day of 2025. There are 54 days left in the year.

Today in history:

On Nov. 7, 1991, basketball star Magic Johnson announced that he had tested positive for HIV and was retiring.

Also on this date:

In 1916, Jeannette Rankin of Montana won election to the U.S. House of Representatives, becoming the first woman elected to either chamber of Congress.

In 1917, Russia’s Bolshevik Revolution took place as forces led by Vladimir Ilyich Lenin overthrew the provisional government of Alexander Kerensky.

In 1940, Washington state’s original Tacoma Narrows Bridge, nicknamed “Galloping Gertie,” collapsed into Puget Sound during a windstorm just four months after opening to traffic.

In 1944, President Franklin D. Roosevelt won an unprecedented fourth term in office, defeating Republican Thomas E. Dewey.

In 1972, President Richard Nixon was reelected in a landslide over Democrat George McGovern.

In 1989, L. Douglas Wilder won the governor’s race in Virginia, becoming the first elected Black governor in U.S. history; David N. Dinkins was elected New York City’s first Black mayor.

In 1996, NASA launched the Mars Global Surveyor from Cape Canaveral, Florida, the agency’s first mission to the red planet in about two decades. The orbiter became the longest-operating spacecraft sent to Mars before NASA lost contact with it in November 2006.