2004—American warplanes miss Abu Musab al Zarqawi but kill 13 people at a wedding instead.
1991—Speaker of the House Tom Foley [D-Wash.] announces that the House’s sergeant-at-arms will no longer fix traffic tickets for Members.
1985—Dining at the White House, President Reagan “praises incessantly” his guest’s most recent work of art: Rambo: First Blood, Part II.
1974—The Franklin National Bank collapses, undermined by Mafioso Michele Sindona, a close buddy of President Nixon’s Treasury Secretary David Kennedy.
1969—A three-day riot branded “Days of Rage” begins in Chicago.
1968—Washington, D.C. riots after police shoot a Black man.
1967—Ernesto “Che” Guevara is captured by Bolivian troops led by the CIA’s Felix Rodriguez.
1955—“The nations of the world will have to unite” warns loopy General Douglas MacArthur, “for the next war will be an interplanetary war.”
1942—Shot down on a mission for which he volunteered, Capt. Harl Pease, of Plymouth, N.H., is beheaded by his Japanese captors.
1918—In the Argonne, ex-pacifist Cpl. Alvin C. York kills 25 German soldiers and captures 132.
1871—According to myth, a cow starts a fire that burns Chicago and kills 200. Meanwhile, Peshtigo, Wisc. burns completely and 600 die.