2006—Publisher and Bush appointee Phillip Merrill is discovered shot and weighted down in Chesapeake Bay where the CIA’s Bill Colby and John Paisley ended up; all suicides, though.
1969—Tobar, Nev.—named for a sign pointing to a saloon—is dealt a death blow by an exploding railroad car full of bombs en route to Vietnam.
1968—“The Green Berets” is released. The New Yorker calls it “unspeakable…stupid…rotten…false in every detail.”
1965—Thousands of funlovers at The Weirs throw rocks at cops and burn overturned cars. The N.H. National Guard peppers them with birdshot as Laconia’s Riot Squad arrests 150.
1954—Warned by Sen. Styles Bridges (R-N.H.) that his son’s homosexuality would be exposed if he did not resign, Sen. Lester C. Hunt (D-Wyo.) shoots himself dead in his Senate office.
1953—Julius and Ethel Rosenberg become the first native-born Americans executed for espionage.
1947—Crewman Gene Roddenberry pulls passengers from a crashed Pan Am plane burning in the Libyan desert. He fends off looting Berbers, then hikes out and brings back rescuers.
1893—Lizzie Borden gets off.
1879—Gen. Wm. T. Sherman, at the Michigan Military Academy, tells his audience, “There is many a boy here today who looks on war as all glory, but, boys, it is all hell.”
1865—Slaves in Texas learn they’re free; now this date is “Juneteenth.”