1980—The rising popularity of skyjackings prompts the FAA to put more gun-totin’ sky marshals on airplanes.
1977—Ohio State’s “Big Ear” radio telescope records a 72-second burst suggesting there may be intelligent life…out there, somewhere.
1971—With the U.S. budget busted by the Vietnam War, Richard Nixon reneges on the gold standard.
1969—Half a million half-naked, drugged-up baby boomers begin a three-day mud wallow in Bethel, N.Y.
1966—The New York Herald Tribune, founded as the Tribune by N.H.-born Horace Greeley 125 years earlier, succumbs to a strike called by a labor union also founded by Greeley.
1953—TR’s grandson Kermit sends Iran’s Imperial Guard to arrest the Prime Minister, but they’re captured by his guards. The Shah flees to Rome.
1943—About 35,000 Allied troops land on Kiska, one of the Rat Islands in the Aleutians. Though unopposed—the Japanese had evacuated two weeks earlier—300 end up missing in action or killed by friendly fire.
1935—RIP Will Rogers and Wiley Post, in a plane crash in Alaska.
1921—The Times of London exposes the “Protocol of the Elders of Zion” as an anti-Semitic fraud. Undeterred, Henry Ford continues publishing it.
1908—The Illinois state militia subdues a mob of rioting whites. Seven people are dead; the Black part of Springfield is left a smoking ruin.