Thurs, Nov 12

2001—Flight 587 falls apart and crashes off Queens, N.Y., killing 261.

1970—A half ton of dynamite set off by Oregon highway workers sends parts of an eight-ton sperm whale 100 feet in the air. The tail crushes Walter Umanhofer’s new Olds, bought from a lot advertising “a whale of a deal.”

1941—Abe “Kid Twist” Reles earns the posthumous sobriquet “the canary who sang but couldn’t fly” when he autodefenestrates (or is defenestrated) from the sixth floor of a Coney Island hotel while under the protection of six New York City cops.

1926—The first documented aerial bombing conducted in the U.S. leaves Shady Rest, bootlegger Charlie Birger’s Benton, Ill. roadhouse, undamaged. The dynamite the Shelton Gang drops from a Curtis “Jenny” kills only Birger’s bulldog and pet bird.

1914—At a White House meeting, Monroe Trotter, a Black newspaper publisher, criticizes President Wilson’s policy of segregating federal employees. Wilson tells him to leave.

1816—T. Jefferson writes, “I hope we shall…crush in its birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength, and to bid defiance to the laws of their country.”

1779—Twenty enslaved New Hampshirites—Daniel Fowle’s enslaved pressman Primus X being notably absent—petition the legislature for the abolition of slavery. They are ignored.

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