2015—The day after eight die in a Philadelphia derailment, Congress votes to slash Amtrak’s budget.
2005—A Pentagon commission recommends closing the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard.
1985—A Philadelphia police helicopter bombs MOVE headquarters, killing 11 and leaving 250 homeless.
1971—President Nixon tells his flunkies to get a new IRS head: “a ruthless son of a bitch … who will go after our enemies and not go after our friends.”
1957—Ngo Dinh Diem is treated to a ticker tape parade in New York City.
1946—Authorities in Germany order the destruction of 30,000 books—American military authorities.
1945—After a brief court martial in Amsterdam—and Germany’s surrender—Bruno Dorfer and Rainer Beck, deserters from the Wehrmacht’s Kriegsmarine, are executed by German soldiers using German rifles provided by the Seaforth Highlanders.
1930—The New Hampshire Historical Society announces it’s acquired one of three known copies of The Monster of Monsters, the pamphlet that got Daniel Fowle thrown in prison in 1754.
1929—Capone, Lansky, Luciano, Lucchese, Torrio, Nitti, Siegel, &c., &c. meet in Atlantic City, N.J.
1862—Robert Smalls, enslaved helmsman of the Confederate military transport Planter, commandeers the vessel, pilots it out of Charleston harbor, and turns it over to the U.S. Navy.