Tues, Dec 8

2006—Congress votes to destroy the U.S. Postal Service by making it pre-fund pensions for 50 years.

2004—Soldiers in Iraq ask Sec. of Defense Rumsfeld why their vehicles aren’t armored. He says, “You go to war with the Army you have…not the Army you might want.”

1993—Bill Clinton signs NAFTA, shipping umpteen jobs elsewhere.

1982—To jumpstart a national dialogue on banning nuclear weapons, Norman D. Mayer, 66, threatens to blow up the Washington Monument with a dynamite-laden van. After ten hours, police shoot him dead.

1980—R.I.P. John Lennon.

1976—As a prop man moves a figure hanging from a gallows on the set of “The Six Million Dollar Man,” a human arm falls off. Turns out it’s Elmer McCurdy, born in Washington, Maine in 1880 and hanged in 1911.

1972—United Flight 553 crashes in Chicago killing 45 people including E. Howard Hunt’s wife Dorothy, who was carrying $10,000 in $100 bills.

1963—Lightning hits Pan Am Flight 214 over Maryland. A fuel tank explodes, a wing falls off, and 81 die.

1953—Good ol’ Ike announces Atoms for Peace, leading to an Iranian nuclear program four years later.

1864—Pope Pius IX denounces liberalism, socialism, & rationalism.

1854—Pope Pius IX proclaims Ineffabilis Deus, the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception.

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