2008—JPMorgan buys Bear Stearns, with the New York Fed’s $30 billion.
2003—On “Meet the Press,” Dick “Dick” Cheney claims that Saddam Hussein “has, in fact, reconstituted nuclear weapons,” and that“we will, in fact, be greeted as liberators.”
1993—“The Storm of the Century” kills 318 on the East Coast.
1990—GOP race whisperer Lee Atwater “repents” on his deathbed; no lie detectors are present, however.
1988—Kurds in Iraq are gassed with ingredients Saddam Hussein bought from the U.S. and Europe.
1970—Sen. Roman Hruska (R-Neb.) defends G. Harrold [sic] Carswell as nominee to the Supreme Court: “there are a lot of mediocre judges and people and lawyers. They are entitled to a little representation, aren’t they?”
1968—U.S. GIs massacre hundreds of civilians at My Lai, in Vietnam.
1965—Alice Herz, 82, self-immolates in Detroit to protest the Vietnam War. She dies 10 days later.
1965—In Montgomery, Ala., police attack civil rights marchers.
1914—Henriette Caillaux, wife of the French Minister of Finance, pumps four slugs from a Browning .32 into Gaston Calmette, editor of Le Figaro. He dies, she skates.
1862—Four years of digging by hand pays off in Brighton, England; a 1,285-foot deep well hits water.
1846—Jurgis Bielinis’ birth inspires Lithuania’s “Book Smugglers Day.”