2017—“This is more work than my previous life,” says President Donald Trump. “I thought it would be easier.”
2016—Calling Sen. Ted Cruz “Lucifer in the flesh,” former Speaker John Boehner tells Stanford students he “never worked with a more miserable son-of-a-bitch in my life.”
2011—On the worst day of the largest tornado outbreak in history, 324 people are killed from Texas to Ontario.
1994—In South Africa, ex-prisoner Nelson Mandela is elected President.
1986—Protesting high rates for dish owners, John R. “Captain Midnight” MacDougall hijacks HBO’s satellite.
1951—An Air Force B-36—biggest bomber ever—is cut in half by an F-51 fighter during a training flight over Oklahoma; 13 die, four live. One, TSgt. Dick Thrasher, survived a B-36 “Broken Arrow” crash a year earlier.
1937—The first Social Security check is mailed to Ida May Fuller: $22.54.
1932—Saying “Goodbye, everybody,” Hart Crane, 32, leaps from the Orizaba into the Gulf of Mexico. His body is never found.
1930—A boy and girl burn to death within sight of their mothers after a sightseeing plane crashes in Greenland, N.H. Burned in futile attempts to save them was pilot Clyde Robinson.
1865—The steamboat Sultana explodes on the Mississippi: 1,800 dead; 1,450 are just-freed Union POWs.
1861—Abraham Lincoln suspends the writ of habeas corpus.