2001—Five journalists receive letters laced with anthrax. Five people die, the perps remain unknown.
2001—Complying with a White House request, EPA head Christine Todd Whitman says it’s safe to breathe the air at “Ground Zero.” It isn’t.
1987—The N.Y. Times reports the FBI’s been spying on public library patrons.
1980—Cuban Arnoldo Tamayo becomes the first Black person in space, thanks to the Soviet Union.
1980—A dropped 30-pound socket wrench hits a Titan II missile fuel tank in Damascus, Ark. The tank springs a leak; the leaking fuel catches fire.
1975—The FBI catches “Tanya,” press baron Wm. Randolph Hearst’s bank-robbing granddaughter.
1970—RIP Jimi Hendrix.
1961—UN Secretary General Dag Hammarskjöld and 15 others are murdered when their DC-6 is brought down in Northern Rhodesia.
1947—The CIA’s fell meddling starts.
1931—Japanese troops blow up their own railroad at Mukden, Manchuria, blaming it on the Chinese to justify an attack on Chinese Nationalists.
1873—Railroad baron Jay Cooke goes bust, sparking the Panic of 1873. A five-year depression ensues.
1755—Mark and Phillis, enslaved Blacks, are executed in Charlestown, Mass. for poisoning Captain John Codman, their “owner.” She is burned at the stake; he is hanged. His gibbeted body is displayed for 20 years.