A busy month in politics...
* Midterm elections were held for the U.S. House of Representatives and for one-third of the U.S. Senate seats, as well as for offices in various American states. In the House, the Republicans gained 47 seats from the Democrats[38] and three seats in the Senate[39] but the Democratic Party retained a 248–187 majority in the House and a 64 to 33 in the Senate.
* Among individual winners, former Massachusetts Attorney General Edward Brooke, a Republican, became the first African American elected to the United States Senate since Blanche K. Bruce during the Reconstruction Era a century earlier.
* Film and television actor Ronald Reagan was elected Governor of California, oil company chairman George H. W. Bush won his first election ever, as a U.S. Representative for Texas,[41] and Baltimore County Executive Spiro Agnew as Governor of Maryland.[42] Charles H. Percy, whose daughter had been brutally murdered in September, was elected U.S. Senator for Illinois.[43]
* Lucius Amerson was made the first African-American county sheriff in Alabama in more than a century.[44] In a referendum in Nebraska, voters narrowly approved a constitutional amendment that abolished state property taxes, and voted against a measure for the necessary approval of a state income tax.[45] Louisiana voters approved a project for the construction of the Louisiana Superdome[46] (which would open in 1975).
Space
* After several postponements, Gemini 12, the last of the Project Gemini crewed space missions, was launched from complex 19 at Florida's Cape Kennedy at 3:47 p.m. local time, crewed by two astronauts, U.S. Navy Captain James A. Lovell, Jr., the command pilot, and U.S. Air Force Major Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin, Jr., the pilot. The Gemini Atlas-Agena target vehicle for the mission had been launched from complex 14 at 2:08 p.m.
Legal
* U.S. doctor Sam Sheppard was acquitted in his second trial for the murder of his pregnant wife in 1954. The jury of seven men and five women spent nearly 12 hours deliberating before returning their verdict of not guilty at 10:18 p.m.[96] Sheppard, who had been in the Ohio State Penitentiary from 1955 until he was allowed to post a bond in 1964 while his conviction was being reviewed, was eligible to have his osteopathic medicine license restored.
