2000—“This is still a dangerous world… of madmen and uncertainty and potential mental losses,” warns George W.[MD] Bush.
1969—After warnings from enlisted men aboard the nuke-powered USS Enterprise go unheeded, the exhaust of a flight deck tractor cooks off a Zuni rocket. It hits an F-4’s fuel tank, causing a fire which detonates 4.5 tons of bombs. This goat rodeo kills 27, injures 85, and nearly sinks the ship.
1967—The First Human Be-In is held—in San Francisco, of course.
1963—Standing on a gold star marking the spot where Jefferson Davis was sworn in as president of the Confederacy, George Wallace, being sworn in as Governor of Alabama, vows, “segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever.”
1878—The U.S. Supreme Court rules that railroads may provide unequal levels of service on the basis of race.
1858—Four men try to assassinate Emperor Napoleon III. Two get the guillotine, two go to Devil’s Island. One, Charles deRudio, escapes, serves with the Union in the Civil War, and in Custer’s 7th Cavalry. Surviving Little Bighorn, he dies in bed at 78.
1850—Anarchist Mikhail Bakunin is sentenced to death at 35. That sentence suspended, he spends years in a dungeon, contracts scurvy, is sent to Siberia, escapes, travels the world making trouble for authorities, and eventually dies in Switzerland at 62.