2014—In McCutcheon v. FEC, the Supreme Court rules that rich folks deserve to have more influence in elections than the unwashed proletariat.
1982—U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Jeanne Kirkpatrick dines at the Argentine embassy hours after Argentina invades the Falklands.
1974—Governor Ronald Reagan’s former speechwriter Robert Opel streaks the 46th Oscars ceremony.
1969—President Dwight D. Eisenhower is buried in an $80 G.I. coffin.
1963—Martin Luther King, Jr. leads a voter registration drive in Birmingham. Police Chief “Bull” Connor responds with dogs and fire hoses.
1958—San Francisco columnist Herb Caen introduces his readers and the world to the term “beatnik.”
1942—Three soldiers, two black and one white, are shot to death, and five are wounded, near Ft. Dix, N.J., in a fight over use of a payphone.
1917—In the corridor outside his Senate office, Henry Cabot Lodge (R-Mass.), 66, starts a brawl with Alexander Bannwart, a 36-year old pacifist and Lodge’s constituent.
1902—“The Electric Theatre,” the 1st full-time movie house, opens in L.A.
1865—In Richmond, Confederate troops burn the city to the ground as President Jefferson Davis flees.
1863—In Richmond, women rioting in the streets for bread are dispersed at bayonet point by troops under the direction of President Jefferson Davis.