2021—After poisoning U.S. discourse for 37 years, oxygen thief Rush Limbaugh shuts his lying trap.
2017—President Trump declares the press to be the enemy of the people.
2015—A study finds that previous tallies of lynchings in the U.S. had under-counted by at least 800.
2006—Harry Whittington apologizes to Dick “Dick” Cheney for having absorbed a face full of his birdshot.
2003—Covert CIA agents grab Abu Omar in Milan, blowing an Italian surveillance program; 23 agents are later convicted of kidnapping.
2000—“I hate the g__ks,” Sen. John McCain tells reporters. “I will hate them as long as I live”—that’s 18 years.
1985—General William Westmoreland drops his libel suit against CBS. Apparently the network was right: he had covered up VC troop strength.
1974—PFC Robert Preston takes a stolen Huey on a tour of D.C, landing in a hail of bullets on the White House Lawn. Superficially wounded, he smiles and laughs on the way to Walter Reed.
1971—The U.S. Army’s top-ranked enlisted man is indicted for conspiring to defraud enlisted men’s clubs.
1936—The Supreme Court rules that confessions obtained by police violence, i.e., relentless whipping with buckled leather belts, are inadmissible; the guilty verdict in question had been won by prosecutor and future Senator John Stennis [D-Miss].
1862—RIP Henry D. Thoreau.