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2000—Bill Clinton goes to Vietnam — finally, when it’s safe, as President. 1989—U.S.-backed pro-government “freedom fighters” in El Salvador murder six Jesuit priests, their housekeeper, and the housekeeper’s daughter. 1969—President Nixon’s Communications Director Herb Klein says he opposes government intervention in the news but the networks are asking for it if they don’t regulate themselves. 1966—Strasbourg students blow the student government’s annual budget to publish a pamphlet, “On the Poverty of Student Life.” Hilarity ensues, including the Situationist Movement. 1965—Mission accomplished with 79 KIA & 121 WIA, U.S. units in Ia Drang propose withdrawal. Gen. Wm. Westmoreland says “stay.” 1890—George Seldes is born. At 19 …

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2010—Ex-cop James B. Fowler pleads guilty to the 1965 murder of civil rights activist Jimmie Lee Jackson in Ala. He gets six months. 2008—Somali pirates take the MV Sirius Star. With a total value of $250 million, it’s the largest prize ever. 1996—British officials return the Stone of Scone to the Scots from whom they stole it 700 years earlier. 1995—President Bill Clinton begins abusing his power over White House intern Monica Lewinsky. 1967—The NVA mortars the Dak To ammo dump; 1,100 tons of ordnance create the war’s biggest explosion. 1967—“I have never been more encouraged,” says General Westmoreland. Tet is 77 days away. 1967—The …

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2002—Donald Rumsfeld predicts the Iraq War will last “five days or five weeks or five months…[no] longer….” 1968—In Quang Tri, Marine PFC Frank Baldino, 19, is killed by a tiger. 1965—The First Cav, choppering into the Ia Drang Valley, is surprised to discover six battalions of NVA. 1943—U.S.S. W.D. Porter accidentally launches a torpedo—in the direction of U.S.S. Iowa. FDR, aboard Iowa en route to Cairo, is amused. 1942—Seaman Calvin L. Graham is wounded at Guadalcanal. He’s 12. 1932—Nison Miller is denied citizenship due to “ignorance.” Dolt 45 will make his grandson Stephen his immigration policy czar. 1927—Workmen in Pittsburgh, using an open flame blowlamp …

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2003—Because he would not remove his Ten Commandments monument from the courthouse, Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore is himself removed. 1982—The Vietnam Veterans Memorial is dedicated in Washington, D.C. Richard Nixon, Henry Kissinger, and Robert McNamara are no-shows. 1974—Karen Silkwood, a disgruntled Kerr-McGee worker, turns up conveniently dead. 1970—Up to half a million die as a cyclone hits Bangladesh. 1965—The dysfunctional tinderbox Yarmouth Castle burns en route to Nassau; 90 passengers burn or drown, deserted by captain and crew. 1942—The torpedoed cruiser U.S.S. Juneau sinks in 20 minutes, 100 of 673 surviving the explosion. Two other cruisers depart, assuming no survivors. Eight days later, ten …

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2001—Flight 587 falls apart and crashes off Queens, N.Y., killing 261. 1970—A half ton of dynamite set off by Oregon highway workers sends parts of an eight-ton sperm whale 100 feet in the air. The tail crushes Walter Umanhofer’s new Olds, bought from a lot advertising “a whale of a deal.” 1941—Abe “Kid Twist” Reles earns the posthumous sobriquet “the canary who sang but couldn’t fly” when he autodefenestrates (or is defenestrated) from the sixth floor of a Coney Island hotel while under the protection of six New York City cops. 1926—The first documented aerial bombing conducted in the U.S. leaves Shady Rest, bootlegger Charlie …

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2000—Republicans go to court to stop manual recounts in Florida. 1956—The last pockets of resistance are suppressed in Hungary. 1940—In Taranto, Brit biplanes sink half the Italian Navy at anchor. 1933—“The Great Black Blizzard,” first great dust storm, hits the Plains. 1919—Centralia, Wash. Legionaires attack an I.W.W. union hall. Oops—the Wobblies are armed. With four attackers dead, the surviving Legionaires kidnap, torture, and kill Wobblie and fellow WW I vet Wesley Everest. 1918—The War to End Wars ends, too late for 2,738 who die this day. 1906—Last living widow of a Revolutionary War veteran, Esther Sumner Damon dies in Plainfield, Vt. at 92. 1887—Albert Parsons, …

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