2007—China executes its Director of the State Food and Drug Administration for taking bribes that resulted in 40 deaths. Hmmm… .
2001—A Phoenix FBI agent sends a memo to FBI HQ warning of “an inordinate number” of suspicious characters in local flight schools, possibly as part of a bin Laden plot. It’s ignored.
2001—CIA boss George Tenet tries to warn George Bush and Condi Rice about Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda, but can’t get their attention.
1985—French secret police in the South Pacific blow up Greenpeace’s boat, Rainbow Warrior.
1985—Seventy-seven days after announcing New Coke, Coca-Cola announces Old Coke, aka Coke Classic.
1972—Water being used to fight an arson fire destroys the USS Forrestal’s computers and nearly capsizes her.
1958—Robert Earl Hughes, 32, dies of measles. At 1,071 pounds, he had been the heaviest human able to walk.
1929—The Portsmouth Herald reports that the Coast Guard has seized 129 cases of booze in Rye Harbor.
1926—Lightning sets fire to an Army powder warehouse at the Picatinny Arsenal in N.J. Millions of pounds of explosives go off over three days, destroying 187 buildings, killing 19 people, and injuring another 38.
1779—On Penobscot Bay, the British Navy destroys the Massachusetts fleet as it attempts to take the Loyalist stronghold at Castine.