Fri, Dec 29

2006—The UK pays off its $100,000,000 WW II debt to the U.S.

1989—Playwright Vaclav Havel becomes President of Czechoslovakia.

1975—Eleven people are killed and 74 wounded when a bomb explodes in a storage locker at LaGuardia Airport. The crime remains unsolved.

1972—Operation Linebacker II, which Richard “Dick” Nixon will call “my terrible personal ordeal,” ends. U.S. losses: 15 downed B-52s, 12 other aircraft, 43 KIA, & 49 POWs.

1930—Fred Newton arrives at New Orleans after swimming 1,826 miles down the Mississippi River.

1916—Poisoned, stabbed, beaten, shot three times, and thrown unconscious into the freezing Neva River, the Russian Tsarina Alexandra’s favorite faith-healer Grigori Yefimovich Rasputin dies by drowning.

1900—Harvard professor Albert B. Hart says states where lynching is prevalent should legalize the practice and thus preserve law and order.

1890—The 7th Cavalry massacres about 300 Lakota Sioux men, women, and children on their reservation at Wounded Knee. For this, a grateful nation bestows 20 Medals of Honor.

1876—A poorly-designed, uninspected railroad bridge collapses in Ashtabula, Ohio, killing 92.

1837—In Buffalo, N.Y., Canadian militiamen burn the USS Carolina, which has been caught running guns to revolutionaries.

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