2004—Weeks after telling Chris Matthews, “we’re going to break up the giant media enterprises,” Howard Dean addresses a screaming crowd in Iowa. Video techs create a clip using sound from his mike only, which makes him sound unhinged. It is aired 633 times over the next four days.
2001—On his last full day in office, Bill Clinton admits he perjured himself when he denied having sex with “that woman,” Monica Lewinsky.
1996—Hollywood producer Don Simpson [Crimson Tide], 52, succumbs to his $2,000/day drug habit.
1989—Frank F. Fowle III, an actor whose favorite Iliad line was “Let me not then die ingloriously and without a struggle,” succumbs to stab wounds suffered during a fight with a thief.
1985—At the Houston Astrodome, 35,000 watch Canadian daredevil Karel Soucek’s 180-foot barrel drop go wrong; he dies hours later.
1968—The AEC sets off an H-bomb 90 miles from its usual test site in an attempt to placate Howard Hughes. Alas, the site is unsuitable.
1920—The ACLU is founded.
1915—Two Britons are killed and three are injured during the first Zeppelin attack of WW I.
1915—Factory guards in Roosevelt, N.J. shoot 20 rioting strikers.
1847—Charles Bent, the first Governor of the New Mexico Territory, is scalped at his Taos home in front of his wife and children.