Mon, Aug 3

1981—Federal air traffic controllers have the gall to go on strike.

1980—Ronald Reagan delivers his first post-convention speech, touting “states’ rights” two miles from where three murdered civil rights workers had been buried 19 years earlier.

1971—New Hampshire man Alan Shepard hits a golf ball on the moon.

1966—RIP Lenny Bruce, prosecuted to death at the age of 40.

1962—Given a huge shot of LSD by a CIA subcontractor, Tusko the elephant, “pride of the Oklahoma City Zoo,” keels over, defecates, and shudders. Big doses of anti-psychotics and tranquilizers don’t help; he dies.

1961—Leon Beardon and his son Cody skyjack a Boeing 707 being piloted by Byron Rickards over New Mexico. Rickards also piloted the first plane to be skyjacked: a Ford Tri-Motor, in Peru, in 1931.

1931—In Chicago, 60,000 march against eviction. A fatal riot ensues.

1929—The DA of San Bernardino brings a posse of fellow American Legionnaires on a raid. They bust Yetta Stromberg, 19, for raising a red flag.

1923—By kerosene light at 2:47 a.m. in Plymouth, Vt., John Coolidge swears in his son Calvin as President.

1922—The New York Society for the Suppression of Vice proposes that all literary manuscripts be screened to ensure they are not immoral.

1919—The Chicago race riot ends: 38 dead, 537 injured, 1,000 homeless.

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