Tues, Aug 25

1999—The FBI admits, six years after the fact, that the tear gas canisters it fired into David Koresh’s compound in Waco were incendiary—but still denies they started the fatal fire.

1995—In Athens, Ga., zany House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) announces his new policy for winning the drug war: executing “27 or 30 or 35 people at one time.”

1985—Ronald Reagan admits that, as head of the Screen Actors Guild, he ratted on its members to the FBI.

1967—J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI sets out to “expose, disrupt, misdirect [and] discredit” the Black Panthers.

1967—George Lincoln Rockwell, founder of the American Nazi Party, is shot dead by an ex-aide and former Marine with a broomhandle Mauser.

1950—Harry S Truman orders the U.S. Army to take over the nation’s railroads to prevent a strike.

1945—Hotheaded Army Capt. John Birch argues with Chinese Communists while snooping in Jiangsu Province. They shoot him.

1945—Bao Dai, puppet Emperor of Vietnam for France, and more recently for Japan, and puppet-to-be for America, surrenders his imperial seal and sword to Ho Chi Minh.

1925—The Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters is founded in Harlem: A. Philip Randolph, President.

1914—Germans burn the library at Louven, Belgium, full of medieval manuscripts and incunabula.

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