Friday, October 26, 2007 — “I am not the editor of a newspaper and shall always try to do right and be good so that God will not make me one.” — Mark Twain
2003—Iraqi resistance fighters nearly get Deputy Defence Secretary Paul Wolfowitz with a rocket in Baghdad.
2001—George W. Bush eagerly signs the USA PATRIOT Act.
1979—South Korean President Chung-hee is shot by the head of the South Korean C.I.A.
1972—Henry the K., lying as usual, says “Peace is at hand.”
1962—As planning for massive air strikes continues, President John F. Kennedy gets a telegram from Nikita Khrushchev offering to swap Soviet missiles in Cuba for U.S. missiles in Turkey.
1955—Ngo Dinh Diem proclaims South Vietnam a republic, and himself president.
1917—At the Second Battle of Passchendaele, the Allies gain a few hundred yards of mud, at a cost of 12,000 casualties.
1881—The alleged law and the Clanton brothers shoot it out at the O.K. Corral in Tombstone.
1806—Lord Timothy Dexter, seminal American crackpot who made money selling bed warmers in the West Indies and author of A Penny for the Knowing Ones, dies in Newburyport.
1369—Charles V “The Wise,” King of France, dedicates a monument to his personal chef for creating a recipe for pickled fish.