2014—Ferguson, Mo. cop Darren Wilson shoots unarmed Michael Brown, whose body is then left uncovered on the street for four hours.
1997—New York cop Justin Volpe sodomizes Haitian immigrant Abner Louima with a broomstick.
1989—George Herbert [Hoover] Walker Bush signs the Savings and Loan bailout. Among the bailees: his boys Neil and Jeb.
1974—Richard Milhous Nixon vacates the White House — finally.
1945—In Nagasaki, the boss of Hiroshima blast survivor Tsutomu Yamaguchi doubts his account of the devastation. Then an A-bomb explodes.
1936—Lincoln Steffens, one of the original muckrakers, dies at 70.
1892—Reacting to a fatal disagreement two days earlier, a group of Hatfields tie three McCoys to a tree and shoot them.
1874—Paranormal chronicler Charles Fort materializes in Albany, N.Y.
1872—Fire destroys 547 buildings in Boston, killing 14.
1842—Herman Melville escapes from the Typee Valley in the Marquesas where he has been held captive by cannibals for a month.
1842—The Webster-Ashburton Treaty ends the Aroostook War.
1610—Under orders from Thomas West, 3rd and 12th Baron De La Warr, after whom Delaware is named, English settlers slaughter the Paspahegh, men, women, and children.