Mon, Aug 24

1970—Graduate student Robert Fassnacht is killed and three others are injured when peaceniks blow up a physics lab at the U. of Wisconsin.

1967—Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin scatter 300 one-dollar bills on the floor of the Stock Exchange. Bedlam erupts as capitalists scramble.

1964—I.F. Stone reports the U.S. government and press “have kept the full truth about the Tonkin Bay incidents from the American public.”

1963—The State Dept. orders Amb. Lodge to encourage Vietnamese generals to stage a coup.

1954—Genial old Ike signs the first U.S. law banning a political party—the Communist Party, of course.

1936—After a 12-year hiatus, J. Edgar Hoover gets the OK from FDR to begin the FBI’s Golden Age of spying on domestic political groups.

1889—On St. Pierre, off Newfoundland, murderer Auguste Neel becomes the only person ever to be guillotined in North America.

1827—The Mechanics Gazette, first U.S. labor paper, is published in Philadelphia. By 1832 there are 68 labor newspapers.

1814—Thanks to tactical errors and sheer panic, British troops are able to march unopposed into Washington, D.C. where they set fire to the White House and the Library of Congress.

1456—The binders having finished their work, Gutenberg’s Bible is available for sale in Mainz, Germany.

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