2015—Professing concern about the lives of fetuses, Robert L. Dear murders three adults and wounds nine more as he shoots up a Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado.
2011—Ex-Arapahoe County (Colo.) Sheriff Patrick Sullivan, arrested for exchanging methamphetamine for sex with a male informant, is incarcerated in an eponymous jail.
1976—After Jerry Lee Lewis accidentally plugs his bass player in the chest twice with a .357 magnum, he’s charged with discharging a firearm within city limits.
1963—LBJ sets up the Warren Commission to rule out a conspiracy in the assassination of John F. Kennedy.
1960—On learning that, thanks to the CIA, the Congo’s Patrice Lumumba had been arrested, genial old Ike orders that agency to heighten its efforts to assassinate Fidel Castro.
1947—French soldiers massacre over 300 civilians, mostly women and children, halving the population of My Trach, in Vietnam.
1864—Ignoring a truce flag, Col. (& ex-minister) John Chivington leads a Colorado militia in the slaughter and mutilation of 150 Cheyenne women, children, and old men at Sand Creek. A local paper says the soldiers had “covered themselves in glory” (a typo).
1781—His ship Zong low on water, captain Luke Collingwood orders 133 enslaved souls thrown overboard live, to stick underwriters with the loss.