2008—The Center for Public Integrity documents 935 instances of “orchestrated deception” leading up to the Iraq War by President George W.[MD] Bush and seven top officials.
1997—Lottie Williams, walking in a Tulsa park, is hit on the shoulder by a small falling chunk of a Delta rocket.
1987—Pennsylvania Treasurer Budd Dwyer, charged with fraud, blows his brains out on live TV.
1973—The Supreme Court issues its Roe v. Wade decision.
1959—Illegally ordered to dig coal from under the Susquehanna River in Pennsylvania with nothing to gauge their clearance, twelve miners drown when the river breaks through.
1958—The FBI, developing a program to read Americans’ mail, discovers the CIA is already doing that.
1957—George “The Mad Bomber” Metesky, stiffed on a worker’s comp claim, is arrested in New York for planting 30 bombs over 16 years.
1945—Arthur Kasherman becomes the third muckraking Minneapolis newspaperman in 11 years to be shot dead on the street.
1932—El Salvadoran authorities begin settling a peasant uprising; over six months they murder 25,000.
1920—Civil libertarians report that the Army is torturing conscientious objectors on Alcatraz.
1862—President John Tyler is buried in Richmond, Va.; his coffin is draped with a Confederate flag.