Wednesday, October 31, 2007 –The high point of Portsmouth’s social season comes this evening, about 7:00 p.m., when an odd assortment of characters will step off from the parking lot beside the South Mill Pond, and parade through downtown.

1968—President Johnson orders a halt to bombing of North Vietnam.

1967—Calif. governor Ronald Reagan denies a “homosexual ring” is operating out of his office in Sacramento.

1963—“I can safely say,” says Gen. Paul Harkin, U.S. commander in South Vietnam, “that the end of the war is in sight.”

1964—China explodes its first A-bomb.

1951—Joseph Stalin’s corpse is removed from Lenin’s tomb.

1941—On convoy duty on the North Atlantic, the U.S.S. Reuben James is sunk by a U-Boat.

1939—FDR moves the date of Thanksgiving by a week to boost Christmas retail sales.

1926—Mussolini survives an assassination attempt by 15 year old anarchist Anteo Zamboni.

1926—After being punched in the stomach, Ehrich “Harry Houdini” Weiss dies.

1918—In a week, Spanish Flu kills 21,000 Americans.

1893—Daniel Fowle’s printing press is last seen in public at the closing of the World’s Columbian Exposition, Chicago.

1765—The New Hampshire Gazette is printed “in mourning” for lost liberty, in protest of the Stamp Act, to take effect the following day.