1989—In her Porsche, reaching for her cellphone while speeding to the bank she owns, Wal-Mart heiress Alice Walton hits and kills Oleta Hardin, a 50 year-old Arkansas cannery worker. Walton is not charged.
1984—Congress nixes Contra funding. President Reagan sells arms to the Ayatollah to make up the difference.
1975—Operation Babylift begins with a C-5A flight out of Tan Son Nhut. It crashes into a nearby rice paddy killing 154, including 78 kids.
1970—On the National Mall, 50,000 followers of a radio televangelist hold a “March for Victory,” protesting the Vietnamization of the Vietnam War.
1968—Martin Luther King, Jr. is murdered in Memphis, perhaps by James Earl Ray; if so, with help from others who are still unknown.
1967—In Palo Alto, Robert Jones’ students adopt a cross-chest salute and form a movement, “The Third Wave.”
1967—Martin Luther King, Jr. denounces the Vietnam War and calls for common cause between civil rights and antiwar movements. He is then denounced by 168 major newspapers.
1953—Busy CIA head Allen Dulles OKs plans to (a) knock over Iran’s elected government, and (b) study controlling people’s minds with drugs.
1949—NATO forms to counter the U.S.S.R. The U.S.S.R. disbanded in 1991, but NATO is still here.
1877—A home in Somerville, Mass. gets the world’s first home telephone.