2008—Lehman Bros. drops 90 percent; the Dow is down 500 points.
2004—A 911 call brings D.C. cops to the bathroom of Rep. Don Sherwood (R-Pa.), 63. His mistress, Cynthia Ore, 28, says he choked her.
1982—Israeli Defense Forces surround Palestinian refugee camps Sabra and Shatila and let Christian Phalangist militiamen slaughter 3,500.
1980—A nuclear-armed B-52 burns for hours at Grand Forks AFB, N.D., but hey—nothing exploded!
1963—Two Klansmen bomb Birmingham’s 16th St. Baptist Church, killing four girls and injuring 22. One bomber is convicted 14 years later, despite the FBI withholding evidence.
1940—RAF pilot Ray Holmes, his Hurricane out of ammo, sees a Dornier heading for Buckingham Palace. He rams it and parachutes to safety.
1921—The War Department removes the names of 17 men from its list of “slackers.” One was unfit, the rest were in uniform; one died in service.
1915—The Portsmouth-built U.S.S. Portsmouth, which took San Francisco (then Yerba Buena) from Mexico in 1846, helped Britain take Canton in the Second Opium War, and blockaded Texas during the Civil War, is torched as part of a festival in Boston.
1830—At the opening of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway, the first steam railroad, William Huskisson, M.P., becomes the first person killed by a train.