2012—Three elderly troublemakers infiltrate Oak Ridge, Tenn. and spill blood on its nuclear weapons plant.
2006—High winds topple the North Church’s spire onto Pleasant Street.
1967—Gov. Reagan signs a gun control bill 87 days after armed Black Panthers visit the Calif. State House.
1945—A kamikaze biplane sinks the “tin can” USS Callaghan off Okinawa.
1945—A B-25 hits the Empire State Building; six floors burn, 13 die, 26 are injured. Among them: elevator operator Betty Oliver. The cable of the elevator evacuating her snaps; it plummets 80 stories. She survives that, too.
1942—USS YP-422 is commissioned in Neponset, Mass. It’s briefly commanded by Lieut. L. Ron Hubbard.
1934—A sideshow in Skegness goes awry: defrocked Anglican Harold Davidson, “The Prostitute’s Priest,” is fatally bitten in the neck by a lion.
1932—GIs under Gen. MacArthur, including six tanks under Maj. George S. Patton, drive the “Bonus Expeditionary Force”—20,000 hungry World War I vets—out of Washington D.C., killing two in the process.
1919—Chicago is engulfed by a race riot in which the Hamburg Athletic Club plays a leading role. Its president: future Mayor Richard J. Daley.
1915—President Wilson gives National City Bank what it asked for: an invasion of Haiti by U.S. Marines.
1914—Austria-Hungary attacks Serbia, getting WW I underway.