2018—Hoping not to get shot like their late peers, a million American students walk out of school to demand gun control that works.
1977—RIP Fanny Lou Hamer, organizer of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, who said, “Nobody’s free until everybody’s free.”
1965—“Except for Vietnam,” the AP reports Richard Nixon saying, “U.S. foreign policy is in a shambles.”
1964—We still don’t know who killed JFK, but on this day a jury decided Jack Ruby killed Lee Harvey Oswald.
1961—A B-52, its cabin temps over 130° due to a heater snafu and its crew’s performance perhaps sub-par due to bennie use, runs out of fuel over Yuba City, Calif, and crashes with two nukes on board. All aboard survive.
1927—Edward Abbey, writer and anarchist, is born in…Pennsylvania?
1912—Strikers in Lawrence, Mass. win more bread—and a few roses, too.
1891—A mob of 20,000 in New Orleans lynches 11 Italian immigrants recently acquitted of murder.
1888—Kentucky’s State Treasurer, James “Honest Dick” Tate, vanishes with $247,000 in state funds.
1883—Ex-journalist Karl Marx dies in London, impoverished, of course.
1757—For not “doing his utmost” in battle at Minorca, the Royal Navy has Admiral John Byng shot.
1471—Sir Thomas Malory, author of Le Morte d’Arthur, dies months after being sprung from Newgate Prison.