2003—When lightning sets fire to a warehouse in Bardstown, Ky., 800,000 gallons of Jim Beam gush out of 19,000 barrels. Thousands of fish die in a flaming river, while high winds whip up a 100-foot firenado.
1997—Skynet goes online, removing human decisions from strategic defense systems. What could go wrong?
1992—Republicans re-nominate the Bush/Quayle ticket. [Snicker.]
1991—The captain and officers of the sinking Oceanos abandon the ship—and its passengers. Entertainers organize a successful rescue of all aboard.
1987—The FCC jettisons the Fairness Doctrine, declaring it “restricts the journalistic freedom of broadcasters.”
1964—The USS Maddox and USS Turner Joy report a second torpedo attack in Gulf of Tonkin. There are no casualties; nor is there any damage. Defense Secretary McNamara withholds from President Johnson warnings that it may just be a false alarm.
1961—Barack Hussein Obama is allegedly born in Honolulu, Hawaii.
1948—J. Parnell Thomas [R-N.J.], the rabidly anti-commie chair of HUAC, is exposed in Drew Pearson’s column as a tax-dodging grifter.
1945—The U.S. Ambassador to the U.S.S.R. accepts a gift: a wooden Great Seal of the U.S. It hangs in his Moscow office for five years, bugged.
1942—The Bracero program begins. Mexican workers now get to be exploited north of the border, too.