2020—“I think we are going to be very good with the coronavirus,” says the oaf in the Oval, “at some point, that’s going to sort of just disappear.”
1981—Irish Cardinal Tomás Ó Fiaich descends in a helicopter for a mass on London’s Clapham Common, bearing the head of Oliver Plunkett.
1973—The U.S. military draft ends. Henceforth, the ranks will be replenished by economic coercion.
1968—A DC-8 carrying 214 U.S. soldiers to Vietnam strays into Soviet airspace and lands in the USSR.
1956—On TV, Elvis sings “Hound Dog” to a basset hound in formal wear.
1942—Not knowing Aussie POWs are aboard, Sturgeon sinks the Montevideo Maru. More than 1,000 perish.
1917—In Boston, 8,000 Socialists march to protest the Great War; 12,000 upright citizens respond by rioting and wrecking their HQ. Order is restored with a bayonet charge.
1916—On the first day of the Battle of the Somme, 19,240 British soldiers die and 35,493 go missing. On the plus side, the Brits take three square miles.
1898—Buffalo Soldiers take San Juan Hill, while T.R. takes the credit.
1884—Allan Pinkerton, founder of the strike-breaking, union-busting detective agency, dies of gangrene at 64 after biting his tongue in a fall.
1681—Irish Archbishop Oliver Plunkett, found guilty of treason after a rigged trial on bogus charges, is drawn and quartered in London.