2010—Gareth Williams, money-laundering investigator for MI6, is found dead inside a locked gym bag in a London “safe house.” Metropolitan Police rule he died alone by accident.
2000—The 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals rules that applicants can be denied jobs as cops on the grounds that they’re too smart.
1971—For the Chamber of Commerce, future Supreme Court Justice Lewis Powell lays out a plan for Right Wingers to reverse the New Deal with a huge propaganda campaign.
1968—Yippees nominate a pig for President, saying, “if we can’t have him in the White House, we can have him for breakfast.”
1966—Robert Strange McNamara announces new standards. Among an eventual 345,000 “substandard” inductees, the fatality rate is 3X higher.
1956—At the Gansevoort Destructor Station [real name] in New York City, six tons of books by Wilhelm Reich are burned under the supervision of the Food and Drug Administration.
1927—Bostonians use electricity to transform Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti from obscure Italian anarchists to immortal international symbols of the struggle for justice.
1917—Two racist cops harass Black soldiers from Camp Logan; 150 of their comrades arm themselves, march on Houston, and fire on cops. Seventeen die in the riot, mostly whites; 19 Black soldiers are hanged.