2003—Four Air Force generals are sacked over a massive rape scandal.
1997—Florida’s “Old Sparky” sets Pedro Medina on fire as it kills him.
1976—Execs at the Ford plant in Argentina begin doing the new military junta’s bidding. Work incentives include torture, kidnapping, & murder.
1971—Three dairy co-ops get $600 million in milk price supports for a $427,000 “contribution” towards Dick “Original Dick” Nixon’s re-election.
1966—“Of all the forms of inequality,” says MLK Jr., “injustice in health care is the most shocking and inhumane.”
1966—Fifteen WW II and Korean War veterans burn discharge papers in NYC to protest the Vietnam War.
1965—In Montgomery, Ala., 25,000 civil rights marchers arrive at the state capitol, thanks to the National Guard.
1960—The head of Oliver Cromwell, struck off in an “execution” two years after his death and piked for decades, is buried at his Cambridge alma mater.
1955—U.S. Customs seizes Allen Ginsburg’s “Howl” as “obscene.”
1947—A Centralia, Ill. coal mine, long the subject of ignored complaints and warnings, explodes, killing 111.
1931—In Alabama, the Scottsboro Boys are arrested on bogus charges.
1931—RIP, Ida B. Wells: fierce foe of lynching, born of enslaved ancestors.
1911—The Triangle Shirtwaist Fire kills 146 sweatshop workers in New York City. The factory’s fire doors had been locked shut to enhance profits.