2002—Donald Rumsfeld predicts the Iraq War will last “five days or five weeks or five months…[no] longer….”
1968—In Quang Tri, Marine PFC Frank Baldino, 19, is killed by a tiger.
1965—The First Cav, choppering into the Ia Drang Valley, is surprised to discover six battalions of NVA.
1942—Seaman Calvin L. Graham is wounded at Guadalcanal. He’s 12.
1932—Nison Miller’s petition for U.S. citizenship is denied on grounds of “ignorance.” Donald Trump puts his grandson Stephen in charge of immigration policy 84 years later.
1927—Workmen in Pittsburgh, using an open flame blowlamp to fix a leak in the world’s largest gasometer, ignite 5 million cubic feet of natural gas, clearing one square mile and killing 28.
1925—D.C. Stephenson, ex-Grand Dragon of the Indiana KKK, is convicted of rape, torture, and murder.
1919—Gov. S. McKelvie orders all IWW members in Nebraska arrested.
1917—Before locking up 33 women for protesting in front of the White House, guards beat them with clubs.
1909—Birth of Joseph R. McCarthy, “a great American [whose] stature will grow with the passage of time,” according to a memorial tribute from N.H. Sen. Styles Bridges.
1908—A heart attack fells the Chief of the Imperial Military Cabinet, Dietrich Graf von Hülsen-Haeseler, at 56 while he dances before Kaiser Wilhem II in a ballerina’s tutu.