Sat, July 31

2001—Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld sends a memo to Under Secretary for Policy Douglas Feith: “We ought to have on our radar screen oil—Venezuela, the Caucasus, Indonesia—anywhere we think it may exist and how it fits into our strategies.”

1999—Eugene Shoemaker becomes the first Earthling to have his cremated remains interred on the moon.

1996—Gerald Ford and George H.[H.] Walker Bush uphold the dignity of their former office by speaking for pay before followers of the Rev. Sun Myung Moon.

1974—Richard Nixon’s former advisor John Ehrlichman gets a free five-year stay at a felons’ country club.

1972—Tom Eagleton withdraws his candidacy; the public is shocked.

1971—The “Justice” Department OK’s ITT’s ownership of Hartford Fire Insurance; ITT’s recent $400,000 “contribution” to the GOP convention is a mere coincidence.

1961—Bruce Britt Sr. outruns cops at 120 mph, runs aboard a DC-3 in Chico, Calif., and shoots two men; but the first U.S. skyjacking fails.

1950—Chicago OK’s a plan to tattoo citizens with their blood type.

1938—New York Yankee Jake Powell is suspended for saying on Chicago radio that he’d “hit every colored person in Chicago over the head with a club.”

1921—Pennsylvania censors a Will Rogers movie because it portrays hoboes in too favorable a light.

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