2002—The ten largest U.S. brokerage houses cough up $1.44 billion in fines rather than risk a trial over charges that they fleeced their customers.
2002—Sen. Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-Miss.) steps down after lamenting Strom Thurmond’s failure to win the Presidency on a racist platform in 1948.
1989—The U.S. invades Panama to arrest ex-CIA asset Manuel Noriega.
1986—Chased by a mob of young white men, Trinidadian Michael Griffith is run over and killed in Howard Beach, Queens, New York.
1983—Once and future Defense Secretary Don Rumsfeld visits Baghdad to shake mass murderer Saddam Hussein’s hand and convey Ronald Reagan’s best wishes.
1973—Basque terrorists detonate a bomb which sends a Dodge Dart over a five-story building. Inside was Spanish Prime Minister Luis Carrero Blanco, aka “Spain’s first astronaut.”
1960—CIA chief Allen Dulles meets with bigwigs from Standard Oil, Texaco, ITT, Domino Sugar, and other major U.S. corporations, who instruct him to overthrow Fidel Castro.
1946—Businessmen Charles Luciano, Meyer Lansky, Frank Costello, Vito Genovese, Joseph Bonnano and others confer in Havana, Cuba.
1786—Hannah Ocuish, a cognitively-impaired 12-year-old Pequot Indian girl, thanks the executioner for his kindness before she’s hanged.