2017—President Donald Trump fires FBI Director James Comey.
1999—At the University of Chicago, two students competing in a scavenger hunt build a plutonium-producing reactor. They come in second.
1989—“What a waste it is to lose one’s mind,” says Veep Candidate Dan Quayle, addressing the Negro College Fund, “or not to have a mind is being very wasteful, how true that is.”
1980—The Liberian-flagged Summit Venture knocks out a span of St. Petersburg, Fla.’s Sunshine Skyway Bridge, causing a Greyhound to plunge into Tampa Bay killing 35.
1974—Congress finally begins to ponder impeaching Richard Nixon.
1970—Richard Nixon chats with antiwar students on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial at 4 a.m.
1969—The New York Times reports the U.S. is bombing Cambodia.
1967—Because he won’t fight in Vietnam, Muhammad Ali is stripped of the title he won in the ring.
1963—The U.S. orbits 480 million bits of wire .7 inches long in a failed communications experiment.
1961—FCC chairman Newton Minow calls American television “a vast wasteland.”
1960—“The” pill is approved.
1958—On CBS’s “Trackdown,” lawman Hoby Gilman exposes a con man who claims that only he can save the town from destruction. The con man’s name is Walter Trump.