2001—Sen. Russ Feingold votes “nay” on the “PATRIOT” Act.
1983—U.S. troops protect us (and distract from the loss of 241 Marines in Beirut) by invading Grenada.
1978—In response to GOP malfeasance, FISA is enacted—thereby enabling future GOP malfeasance.
1973—Henry Kissinger, Alexander Haig, and other unelected officials raise America’s military readiness level to DEF CON 3 as Nixon sleeps.
1962—Nuclear-armed jets scramble from Duluth AFB because a guard, thinking it’s an infiltrator, has shot a bear climbing a fence.
1960—Martin Luther King, Jr. gets four months at hard labor in Decatur, Ga. on old traffic charges.
1944—A Japanese armada surprises “Taffy 3”—a far smaller U.S. Navy task force—off Samar Island in Leyte Gulf. Taffy 3’s ferocious counterattack tips the strategic balance in the Pacific.
1944—U.S.S. Tang, captained by Dover, N.H.’s Richard H. O’Kane, is sunk by its own malfunctioning torpedo; 74 crewmen perish; 9 survive the sinking and a Japanese prison camp.
1920—Greece’s King Alexander of Greece dies, bitten by his pet monkey.
1917—Bolsheviks take over the Winter Palace and Petrograd in general.
1854—A handful of inept, confused British aristocrats send 664 cavalrymen charging into Russian cannon fire at Balaclava. Half of them end up killed, captured, or wounded.