2016—Bloomberg reports that Frederick Trump, Donald’s grandpa, once ran a brothel in British Columbia.
2010—Arizona kills Jeffrey Landrigan, using drugs imported illegally.
2003—Iraqi resistance fighters nearly get Deputy Defence Secretary Paul Wolfowitz with a rocket in Baghdad.
1972—Four years after helping to scuttle peace talks and get Richard Nixon elected, Henry Kissinger announces that “Peace is at hand.”
1971—Governor Reagan, calling the White House, refers to “those monkeys from those African countries…damn them, they’re still uncomfortable wearing shoes,” which President Nixon finds hilarious.
1966—Aboard the carrier U.S.S. Oriskany off Vietnam, a sailor throws an accidentally-ignited flare into a locker full of warheads. Explosions ensue, 44 die and 156 are injured.
1962—As air strikes loom, Kennedy gets a telegram from Khrushchev offering to swap Soviet missiles in Cuba for U.S. missiles in Turkey.
1924—Standard Oil’s brand new leaded gas plant in New Jersey claims the first of five fatalities in one week.
1917—Allies gain a few hundred yards of mud at Passchendaele at the cost of 12,000 casualties.
1881—The Clanton brothers shoot it out with the alleged law at the O.K. Corral in Tombstone, Arizona.
1825—The Erie Canal opens, its construction having taken 1,000 lives.