Thurs, Aug 5

2009—Terry Herbert finds a spectacular hoard of Anglo-Saxon gold ornaments on Fred Johnson’s farm in the West Midlands. It makes both men rich—and bitter enemies.

1968—The US. Congress effectively tramples on the First Amendment to ineffectively “protect” the flag.

1968—The Marine base at Khe Sanh is abandoned 90 days after the lifting of a 78-day siege which cost 737 lives.

1950—Shipped out hastily, without a plan, ill-equipped and outnumbered ten to one, Task Force Smith is decimated by North Koreans at Osan. Gen. “Dugout Doug” MacArthur lets his troops take the blame.

1937—Leaving Berlin, IBM President Tom Watson thanks Adolf Hitler for a big order and assures the anti-Semitic tyrant he will “do all in [his] power to create more intimate bonds between our two great nations.”

1935—Workers finally get some help: FDR signs the Labor Relations Act.

1934—During a dock workers’ strike in San Francisco, Joseph Roush, a Federal Laboratories sales rep, fires a long-distance tear gas shell at strikers. Hit in the skull, one later dies. Roush writes to his boss, “as he was a Communist, I had no feeling in the matter and I am sorry that I did not get more.”

1894—A massive fire, probably arson, destroys six buildings at the World’s Columbian Exposition. Machinery Hall, where Daniel Fowle’s printing press was last seen, is among them.

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