2015—It snows so hard in Portsmouth that mail carriers fail to make their appointed rounds.
2008—The NSA warns that a malfunctioning satellite as big as a bus is about to fall out of orbit.
2005—Veep Dick “Dick” Cheney wears a down parka and ski cap to an Auschwitz memorial ceremony.
2005—Salon reveals thathack writer Michael McManus has been paid $10,000 to promote Bush programs.
1973—Eleven hours before a cease fire takes effect, an artillery shell makes Col. William B. Nolde the last official American combat casualty of the Vietnam War.
1972—White house “plumber” G. Gordon Liddy presents Attorney General John Mitchell with a plan to disrupt the Democratic Convention using “mugging squads, kidnapping teams, and prostitutes.” The plan is rejected—because it’s too expensive.
1970—Nixon’s Palace Guard gets new uniforms: white with gold buttons and aiguillettes, topped by comic opera hats. They last two weeks.
1967—“How are we going to get to the moon if we can’t talk between two or three buildings,” asks Gus Grissom during an Apollo launch rehearsal, minutes before a fire kills him, Ed White, and Roger B. Chaffee.
1957—Martin Luther King’s home is bombed for the second time.
1820—The Russian sloop Vostok makes the first sighting of Antarctica.