2017—D. Trump fires J. Comey.
1999—Two students win second place in a University of Chicago scavenger hunt by building a plutonium-producing reactor from found junk.
1991—Bush aide John Sununu is told to quit using military planes to visit his dentist in Boston or ski in N.H.
1989—“What a waste it is to lose one’s mind,” says Veep Candidate Dan Quayle, addressing the Negro College Fund, “or not to have a mind is being very wasteful, how true that is.”
1980—The SS Summit Venture collapses Fla.’s Sunshine Skyway Bridge; a Greyhound on it plunges, killing 35.
1974—Congress finally begins to ponder impeaching Richard Nixon.
1971—Major General Carl C. Turner, once the Army’s top cop, then the Chief of U.S. Marshals, pleads guilty to selling 136 confiscated guns he’d swindled from the Chicago P.D.
1970—Richard Nixon talks football with antiwar students on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial at 4 a.m.
1969—Enraged after reading in the New York Times that he’s illegally bombing Cambodia, Richard Nixon orders the illegal tapping of his staff.
1967—Because he won’t fight in Vietnam, Muhammad Ali is stripped of the championship he won in the ring.
1961—FCC chair Newton Minow calls U.S. TV “a vast wasteland.”
1864—Maj. Gen. John Sedgwick utters his last words: “They couldn’t hit an elephant at this distance.”