Thursday, October 25, 2007 — “The writer operates at a peculiar crossroads where time and place and eternity somehow meet. His problem is to find that location.” — Flannery O’Connor
2001—Only one Senator—Russ Feingold—votes against the USA PATRIOT Act.
1973—As Nixon sleeps, Henry Kissinger, Alexander Haig, and five other unelected officials raise America’s military readiness level to DEF CON 3.
1962—Nuclear-armed F-106s scramble after a guard shoots a bear climbing a fence at a Duluth Air Force base, thinking it’s an intruder.
1962—Ambassador Adlai Stevenson produces photos of Soviet missiles in Cuba at the UN as U.S. military forces go to DEFCON 2.
1960—Martin Luther King is jailed in Decatur, Ga., on old traffic charges. He gets four months hard labor.
1922—The Irish Free State adopts its constitution.
1920—King Alexander of Greece dies, shortly after being bitten by his pet monkey.
1881—Birth of Pablo Diego Jose Francisco Picasso.
1854—Lord James Cardigan leads a brigade of sword-brandishing light cavalrymen across open ground in a doomed attack against Russian artillery. Astonishingly, half survive.
1760—Britain’s King George II dies on the loo.