2016—GOP Senators deny Obama’s Supreme Court nominee a hearing.
2008—Because one maintenance crew fails to warn another that humid air confuses its sensors, a $1.4 billion B-2 bomber crashes in Guam.
2004—Rod Paige, U.S. Sec. of Education, calls the nation’s largest teachers union a “terrorist organization.”
1974—Days after presiding over his paper’s 100th birthday, and owing mobsters thousands, Oakland Tribune owner and ex-Sen. William Knowland (R-Calif.) shoots himself dead.
1971—Lt. William Calley confesses to mass murder, and says his CO, Capt. Ernest Medina, ordered it.
1942—The huge [356-foot] Japanese submarine I-17 fires more than a dozen 5.5 inch rounds at the Richmond oil refinery near Santa Barbara, Calif.
1922—Henri Landru is executed in France for having 11 wives. (Hadn’t he suffered enough?)
1915—The First Amendment doesn’t apply to movies, say the Supremes.
1868—In Great Barrington, Mass., W.E.B. Du Bois is born.
1836—The siege of the Alamo begins.
1775—“Give me liberty, or give me death,” says Patrick Henry—maybe.
1669—Diarist Samuel Pepys, visiting Westminster Abbey with his family, kisses and fondles Katherine of Valois, interred more than 200 years earlier.
1455—In Mainz, Germany, Johannes Gutenberg gets started on the world’s first big print job. It’s a Bible.