1999—Sen. Bob Smith [R-N.H.] drops out of the GOP Presidential primary—and the GOP, to boot. Delusional, he runs as an Independent.
1987—Senator Warren B. Rudman [R-N.H] sets Ollie North straight during the Iran-Contra hearings: “The American people have the constitutional right to be wrong.”
1977—During a heat wave and a financial crisis, with Son of Sam on the loose, lightning strikes cause a blackout in New York City. Chaos ensues.
1959—A sodium-cooled nuclear reactor in Simi Valley, Calif. has a partial meltdown, releasing 300 times more radiation than Three Mile Island—a fact kept secret for 20 years.
1950—A B-50 Superfortress crashes in Lebanon, Ohio, killing its crew of 16. Since the Mark 4 nuke on board has no fissile pit installed, the crater left by its explosion is just 25 feet deep.
1948—Israeli troops drive 70,000 Palestinians from Lydda and Remleh.
1944—T.S. Eliot, writing on behalf of Faber & Faber, sends George Orwell a letter rejecting Animal Farm.
1943—Alexander Schmorell and Kurt Huber, of the anti-Nazi pamphleteering group White Rose, are guillotined in Munich.
1863—Enraged by draft laws exempting the rich, and egged on by Democrats, a New York mob begins a three-day rampage. Whole blocks are leveled and Horace Greeley’s pro-Union New York Tribune is attacked.