1981—Air traffic controllers give Ronald Reagan his cue to grandstand.
1980—Ronald Reagan touts “states’ rights” in his first post-convention speech—two miles from the site where, 19 years earlier, three murdered civil rights workers were buried.
1971—New Hampshire man Alan Shepard hits a golf ball on the moon.
1966—RIP Lenny Bruce, prosecuted to death at the age of 40.
1962—Given a huge shot of LSD by a CIA subcontractor, Tusko the elephant, “pride of the Oklahoma City Zoo,” keels over, defecates, and shudders. Big doses of anti-psychotics and tranquilizers don’t help; he dies.
1961—Byron Rickards, piloting a Boeing 707 over New Mexico, is skyjacked by father and son team Leon and Cody Beardon. In 1931, in Peru, Rickards’ Ford Tri-Motor had become the first plane ever skyjacked.
1931—In Chicago, 60,000 march against eviction. A fatal riot ensues.
1929—The DA of San Bernardino brings a posse of fellow American Legionnaires on a raid. They bust Yetta Stromberg, 19, for raising a red flag.
1923—By lamplight, at 2:47 a.m. in Plymouth, Vermont, John Coolidge swears in his son Calvin as President.
1922—The New York Society for the Suppression of Vice proposes that all literary manuscripts be screened to ensure they are not immoral.
1919—The Chicago race riot ends: 38 dead, 537 injured, 1,000 homeless.