2009—New Hampshire becomes the first state to legalize same-sex marriage without a court order.
2002—Egypt says it warned the U.S., a week before 9/11, that al-Qaeda was about to strike the U.S.
1983—In Medina, N.D., “Greatest Generation” veteran, Posse Comitatus co-founder, and anti-tax crank Gordon Kahl dies in a shootout with the FBI, having slain five U.S. Marshals.
1980—A failed 46-cent computer chip briefly convinces NORAD that 220 Soviet missiles are incoming.
1974—Brown & Williamson tests a cigarette blended to smell like pot.
1969—In the South China Sea, a navigational mistake takes the destroyer U.S.S. Evans under the bow of the carrier HMAS Melbourne. The bow of the Evans sinks with 73 of her crew. “The Wall” does not include their names.
1961—Henry R. Marshall, investigating LBJ’s pal Billy Sol Estes for the Agriculture Department, is found with five .22 slugs in him from a bolt-action rifle. Verdict: “suicide.”
1947—At West Point, 56 years before #43 preemptively attacks Iraq, #34 tells graduates, “War is mankind’s most tragic and stupid folly; to seek or advise its deliberate provocation is a black crime against all men.”
1924—RIP Franz Kafka; last words: “Kill me, or else you are a murderer!”
1678—In Portsmouth, New Hampshire, tything men are appointed “to inspect the neighbor’s families.”