2017—America learns the hard way it has 800 troops in Niger: four Green Berets are killed in an ambush.
2004—SpaceShipOne, Burt Rutan’s tourist rocket, makes it to space a second time, winning the Ansari X Prize.
2002—Knight-Ridder: “The White House and the Pentagon…are pressuring intelligence analysts to highlight information that supports Bush’s Iraq policy.” One paper runs the story.
2001—George W.[MD] Bush orders the NSA to spy on Americans without getting warrants, i.e., illegally.
1986—Dan Rather is attacked on the streets of New York by two men yelling, “What’s the frequency, Ken?”
1971—Pres. Nguyen Van Thieu, unopposed, is reelected. He says it’s “an achievement for democracy” in ’Nam.
1958—At 12:45 a.m., Thomas “Fitz” Fitzpatrick wins a bar bet by landing a “borrowed” Cessna on Amsterdam Ave. and 187th St in Manhattan, just as he had done two years earlier.
1957—Two bombs wound 13 GIs in Saigon—the first announced U.S. casualties in Vietnam.
1936—Two thousand British fascists try marching through largely-Jewish Stepney; 20,000 anti-fascists explain to them why that’s a bad idea.
1918—The world’s largest munitions factory explodes in South Amboy, N.J., killing 80. Thousands more are made homeless and are left exposed to the elements. Many catch influenza; 300 of them die from it.