2008—The New York Federal Reserve fronts JPMorgan $30 billion to buy Bear Stearns’ bankrupt corpse.
2003—On “Meet the Press,” Dick “Dick” Cheney claims that Saddam Hussein “has, in fact, reconstituted nuclear weapons,” and that“we will, in fact, be greeted as liberators.”
1995—Mississippi, after 130 years, ratifies the 13th Amendment, abolishing slavery; its actual certification takes another 18 years.
1993—“The Storm of the Century” kills 318 on the East Coast.
1990—GOP race whisperer Lee Atwater “repents” on his deathbed; no lie detectors are present, however.
1988—Kurds in Iraq are gassed with ingredients Saddam Hussein bought from the U.S. and Europe.
1970—Sen. Roman Hruska (R-Neb.) defends G. Harrold [sic] Carswell as nominee to the Supreme Court: “there are a lot of mediocre judges and people and lawyers. They are entitled to a little representation, aren’t they?”
1968—U.S. GIs massacre hundreds of civilians at My Lai, in Vietnam.
1965—Alice Herz, 82, self-immolates in Detroit to protest the Vietnam War. She dies 10 days later.
1965—In Montgomery, Ala., police attack civil rights marchers.
1914—Henriette Caillaux, wife of the French Minister of Finance, pumps four slugs from a Browning .32 into Gaston Calmette, editor of Le Figaro. He dies, she skates.