1999—Senator Bob Smith [R-N.H.] drops out of the Republican Presidential primary race—and the Party, to boot. Delusional, he’ll run for President as an Independent.
1987—Senator Warren B. Rudman [R-N.H] sets Ollie North straight during the Iran-Contra hearings: “The American people have the constitutional right to be wrong.”
1977—During a heat wave and a financial crisis, with Son of Sam on the loose, lightning strikes cause a blackout in New York City. Chaos ensues.
1959—A sodium-cooled nuclear reactor in Simi Valley, Calif. has a partial meltdown, releasing 300 times more radiation than Three Mile Island—a fact kept secret for 20 years.
1950—A B-50 Superfortress crashes in Lebanon, Ohio, killing its crew of 16. Since the Mark 4 nuke on board has no fissile pit installed, the crater left by its explosion is just 25 feet deep.
1948—Israeli troops drive 70,000 Palestinians from their homes in Lydda and Remleh.
1943—Student Alexander Schmorell and Professor Kurt Huber, co-conspirators in the anti-Nazi pamphleteering group White Rose, are guillotined in Munich.
1863—Enraged by draft laws exempting the rich, and egged on by Democrats, a New York mob goes on a three-day rampage. They level whole blocks and attack Horace Greeley’s pro-Union New York Tribune.