2019—Health authorities in Wuhan, China send hospitals an alert and begin investigating a rise in pneumonia.
2015—At the North Pole, the temperature rises above 32° for six hours.
2006—Saddam Hussein’s inelegant demise is captured by cellphone.
1994—In Brookline, Mass., John Salvi lives out his “pro-life” creed by killing two health care workers.
1978—A House Select Committee concludes that conspirators “probably” helped kill JFK and MLK.
1971—Daniel Ellsberg is indicted for having set free the truth.
1970—An unsafe Kentucky coal mine explodes, killing 38 miners.
1947—Irgun fighters kill six Arabs and wound 42 in a grenade attack at a Haifa oil refinery. Arabs retaliate by beating 39 Jews to death.
1936—The General Motors sit-down strike spreads from Cleveland to Flint.
1922—Godless Commies establish the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics on the ruins of a pious Empire.
1905—Idaho’s ex-Governor Frank Steunenberg opens his front gate; a bomb planted by miners blows him up.
1903—At 3:15 p.m. fire breaks out in Chicago’s new, “fireproof” Iroquois Theater. By 3:30, 600 people are dead.
1828—In Dover, N.H., protesting a women-only wage cut, 400 “mill girls” conduct the first all-woman strike.
1768—Teacher Ruth Blay, 31, is hanged in Portsmouth for concealing the birth of her illegitimate child.