2002—Donald Rumsfeld predicts the Iraq War will last “five days or five weeks or five months…[no] longer….”
1968—In Quang Tri, Marine PFC Frank Baldino, 19, is killed by a tiger.
1965—The First Cav, choppering into the Ia Drang Valley, is surprised to discover six battalions of NVA.
1943—USS W.D. Porter accidentally launches a torpedo—in the direction of USS Iowa. FDR, aboard Iowa en route to Cairo, is amused.
1942—Seaman Calvin L. Graham is wounded at Guadalcanal. He’s 12.
1932—Nison Miller is denied citizenship due to “ignorance.” Dolt 45 will make his grandson Stephen his immigration policy czar.
1927—Workmen in Pittsburgh, using an open flame blowlamp to fix a leak in the world’s largest gasometer, ignite 5 million cubic feet of natural gas, clearing one square mile and killing 28.
1925—D.C. Stephenson, ex-Grand Dragon of the Indiana KKK, is convicted of rape, torture, and murder.
1917—Before locking up 33 women for protesting in front of the White House, guards beat them with clubs.
1909—“A great American [whose] stature will grow with the passage of time,” according to N.H. Sen. Styles Bridges: Joe McCarthy is born.
1908—A heart attack fells the Chief of the Imperial Military Cabinet, Dietrich Graf von Hülsen-Haeseler, at 56, while he dances before Kaiser Wilhem II in a ballerina’s tutu.