November 16, Pakistan elects first woman prime minister

Today is Sunday, Nov. 16, the 320th day of 2025. There are 45 days left in the year.

Today in history:

On Nov. 16,1988, Benazir Bhutto was voted prime minister of Pakistan, the first woman elected to lead a Muslim-majority country.

Also on this date:

In 1907, Oklahoma became the 46th state of the union.

In 1914, the newly created Federal Reserve Banks opened in 12 cities.

In 1973, President Richard Nixon signed the Trans-Alaska Pipeline Authorization Act into law, authorizing the construction of an 800-mile (1,290-kilometer) oil pipeline from the Alaska North Slope to the port city of Valdez.

In 1982, an agreement was announced in the 57th day of a strike by National Football League players.

In 1989, six Jesuit priests, a housekeeper and her daughter were killed by Salvadoran army troops at the University of Central America José Simeón Cañas in San Salvador, the capital.

In 2001, investigators found a letter addressed to Democratic Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont containing anthrax; it was the second letter bearing the deadly germ known to have been sent to Capitol Hill.

In 2001, the first film in the Harry Potter series, “Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone” (U.S. title: “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone”) debuted in theaters around the world.

In 2006, after midterm elections that saw Democrats take control of the U.S. House of Representatives, Rep. Nancy Pelosi of California was nominated by the Democratic caucus to become House speaker. (Pelosi would officially become speaker by House vote the following January, the first woman to serve in the role.)

In 2018, a U.S. official said intelligence officials had concluded that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman ordered the October killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, Turkey.

In 2022, NASA resumes lunar exploration 50 years after the end of the fabled Apollo program, rocketing the uncrewed Orion space capsule aloft from the Kennedy Space Center on a 25-day mission to orbit the moon.