2010—An imaginary bus bomb inspires panic in Portsmouth, N.H.
2010—A Londoner scamming from his parents’ basement gives The Invisible Hand of the Market™ jitters: the Dow drops nine pct. in five minutes.
1996—Former CIA boss William Colby, missing for nine days, turns up in Chesapeake Bay, dead but fresh-looking, 20 feet from where his canoe had been found eight days earlier. Verdict: a routine drowning.
1982—LAPD Chief Darryl Gates explains “some blacks [die in choke holds because] the veins or arteries do not open up as fast as they do in normal people.”
1978—In Chicago, First Lady Rosalynn Carter shakes hands with Polish Constitution Day Parade chair (& serial killer) John Wayne Gacy.
1968—Students march in Paris, cops attack: up go the first barricades.
1967—Gen. Wallace Greene, Jr., U.S.M.C., says in Manchester, N.H. that America is winning the war in Vietnam, “and I say that without any doubt whatsoever.” He was wrong.
1937—A huge Nazi gasbag ignites over Lakehurst, New Jersey, 14 years before Rush Limbaugh is even born.
1868—Angry that Samuel Mills had dropped from sight when the gallows opened under him, hundreds of observers riot in Woodsville, N.H.
1862—RIP Henry D. Thoreau.
1844—Philadelphia Nativists attack Catholic Kensington again to defend their flag. Somehow violence results.