2003—Because life is sacred, Florida poisons Paul Hill, who shotgunned Dr. John Britton and his bodyguard because life is sacred. Rinse & repeat.
1991—Locked doors, dead phones, and a lack of fire alarms kill 25 workers in a North Carolina chicken plant.
1971—As Richard Nixon speaks at a Milk Producers’ convention in Chicago, an aide pockets his fee: a $5,000 bribe, which will pay the Plumbers who are, this day, breaking into the office of Daniel Ellsberg’s psychiatrist—at Nixon’s behest.
1955—Mamie Till Mobley holds an open-casket funeral for her murdered and mutilated son Emmett.
1950—American advisors arrive in Saigon to support NATO: France wants Vietnam, so the U.S. helps it fight Vietnamese anti-colonialists.
1948—Duval County officials “find” 200 votes, making LBJ a Senator.
1925—On a PR tour of the Midwest, ordered by Navy brass over the objections of its Commander, an Ohio native who knows its summer storms, the airship U.S.S. Shenandoah crashes in Ohio in a summer storm; 14 die.
1923—Milo, Maine holds a Centennial Parade. Marchers include 75 Klansmen in full, hooded regalia.
1903—Griffith J. Griffith, the closeted drunk who gave Los Angeles Griffith Park in 1896, shoots his kneeling wife for conspiring with the Pope to poison him. She loses an eye but lives, he gets two years in San Quentin.