1984—The Miami Herald exposes Rex 84, a gummint plan to jail thousands of citizens if they get too unruly.
1968—Khe Sanh, where 737 Marines died in 78-day siege, is abandoned.
1968—Congress tramples on the First Amendment while falsely claiming it’s somehow “protecting” the flag.
1960—Isabel “Dimples” Cooper, 46, is buried in Culver City, Calif., a suicide. The former showgirl had become the mistress of Gen. “Dugout Doug” MacArthur in Manila in 1930, but her later Hollywood career had stalled.
1950—Ill-trained, poorly equipped, and outnumbered, Task Force Smith is decimated by North Koreans at Osan. Gen. “Dugout Doug” MacArthur blames the troops for his loss.
1937—IBM President Tom Watson, in Berlin, thanks Hitler for a big order and assures he will “do all in [his] power to create more intimate bonds between our two great nations.”
1935—Workers finally get some help: FDR signs the Labor Relations Act.
1934—A sales rep fires a long-distance tear gas shell at striking dock workers in San Francisco; hit in the skull, one later dies. Joseph Roush writes to his boss, “as he was a Communist, I had no feeling in the matter and I am sorry that I did not get more.”
1894—A massive fire, probably arson, destroys six buildings at the World’s Columbian Exposition. Machinery Hall, where Daniel Fowle’s printing press was last seen, is among them.