2017—As an aide tells him, “Don’t look,” President Trump takes off his protective glasses and stares at the sun as it is being eclipsed.
2017—The Navy destroyer USS McCain collides with a freighter in the Gulf of Molucca; ten sailors die. Just 65 days before, the destroyer USS Fitzgerald hit a freighter off Honshu, killing seven aboard.
2017—Taxpayers fund a $27,000 trip so Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin and Sen. Mitch McConnell can visit Fort Knox and fondle some gold.
1992—Samuel Weaver, 14, and U.S. Marshal W.F. Degan die in a shootout at Ruby Ridge, Idaho. Troubles ensue.
1982—The U.S.-trained Atlacatl Battalion murders more than 200 Salvadorans at El Calabozo.
1976—A two-day occupation of the Seabrook, N.H. nuke site begins.
1969—Traffic on Boston’s Southeast Expressway is held up: three Penn Central engines cross the roadway.
1963—Ngo Dinh Nhu’s secret police kill hundreds of Buddhist protestors across Vietnam—for democracy.
1927—Justice Louis Brandeis refuses to hear a request for a stay of execution of anarchists Sacco and Vanzetti.
1831—Nat Turner begins a slave rebellion in Virginia. About 60 whites are killed in two days; whites kill twice as many Blacks in response.
1791—Haitians rise in revolt; 12 years later, history’s greatest rebellion of enslaved people ends in victory.