2005—Veep Dick “Dick” Cheney tells Larry King the insurgency in Iraq is “in the last throes.”
1970—The Soviet sub K-108, diving off Kamchatka, bashes into the sail of the U.S.S. Tautog giving it a permanent 2-degree bend.
1965—Navy Lts. Clinton B. Johnson and Charles Hartman, flying prop-driven Douglas A-1 Skyraiders, down a MiG jet fighter over Vietnam.
1963—The White House-Kremlin “Hot Line” is installed.
1962—For the second time in less than a fortnight, a Thor rocket malfunctions and drops an A-bomb into the South Pacific.
1953—Lt. Gen. John W. “Iron Mike” O’Daniel arrives in Saigon to confer with French General Henri Navarre on how to bring peace to Vietnam.
1947—Truman vetoes Taft-Hartley. Within three days Congress betrays labor by overriding his veto.
1943—KKK and pals attack striking African-American auto workers in Detroit; 34 die, 1,300 are arrested.
1942—Four prisoners in Nazi uniforms drive out Auschwitz’s main gate in the commandant’s car.
1941—The sub U.S.S. 0-9 sinks east of the Isles of Shoals with 33 aboard.
1940—NAACP official Elbert Williams becomes the organization’s first martyr, in Brownsville, Tenn.
1790—T. Jefferson, J. Madison, and A. Hamilton make a deal: a Capitol on the Potomac, with states’ debts.