2016—Police in Dallas use a bomb-armed robot to kill a man suspected of having murdered five officers.
1976—The State of New York yanks Richard Nixon’s law license.
1969—The U.S. begins withdrawing troops from Vietnam.
1962—The U.S. detonates a nuke 250 miles up, knocking out phones in Hawaii, 900 miles to the east, and crippling seven satellites.
1959—Viet Cong forces attack Bien Hoa air base, killing two U.S. advisors as they watch a movie.
1947—Radio reports say a UFO has crashed at Roswell, N.M.
1945—At a POW camp in Salina, Utah, Army Pvt. Clarence V. Bertucci machine guns 29 Germans; nine die.
1898—Jefferson Randolph “Soapy” Smith II, “King of the Frontier Con Men,” dies in a Skagway shootout.
1876—In Hamburg, S.C., 100 white men attack 40 black militiamen, capturing 25, of whom they murder five. No one is ever convicted.
1860—Clotilda lands in Mobile Bay with an illegal cargo. It’s the last ship to import enslaved Africans.
1853—Commodore Perry convinces the Japanese it’s better to trade with Americans than get shelled by them.
1835—The Liberty Bell cracks tolling the death of Supreme Court Chief Justice John Marshall.
1776—Philadelphia’s Liberty Bell summons citizens to hear the Declaration of Independence being read.