Volume 266 | No. 10

2009—While giving a TED Talk on malaria prevention at Long Beach, Calif., Bill Gates releases a jarful of mosquitoes to feast on the audience. 1976—Lockheed admits to paying $22 million in bribes to sell aircraft. 1974—William Randolph Hearst’s granddaughter Patty, 19, is kidnapped by the Symbionese Liberation Army. 1968—Cholon, Saigon’s Chinatown, is declared a free-fire zone; South Vietnamese pilots bomb their own capitol. 1968—Ur-beat Neal Cassady, 41, dies alongside railroad tracks in Mexico. 1913—Rosa Louise McCauley Parks is born in Tuskegee, Ala. 1912—Franz Reichelt, an Austrian tailor, tests an experimental parachute/overcoat from the Eiffel Tower. His design is fatally flawed. 1899—Five months after being liberated …

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2012—“Today is the day that in 1924 Woodrow Wilson died, that son of a bitch,” radio-active dingbat Glenn Beck says, “and I’m happy.” 2006—After Don Rumsfeld likens H. Chavez to Hitler, Venezuela’s VP compares the U.S. to the Third Reich. 1959—In Iowa, a plane crash kills Buddy Holly, “The Big Bopper,” and Richie Valens. 1956—Elvis Presley, Carl Perkins, Jerry Lee Lewis, and Johnny Cash jam at Sun studio in Memphis. 1933—The Senate fires Sergeant at Arms David S. Barry for writing, “there are not many crooks in Congress…who sell their vote for money, and it is pretty well known who those few are; but there …

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2015—A week after a two-foot snowstorm, Po’Town gets 18 inches more. 1991—Before Desert Storm ground combat begins, the Pentagon bans the press from the Dover morgue. 1979—Zbigniew Brzezinski advises Jimmy Carter, “We should be careful not to overgeneralize…. Islamic revivalist movements…are not likely to be the wave of the future.” 1972—In Dublin, Irish Catholics, irate over “Bloody Sunday,” burn the British Embassy. 1970—Capt. Gary Faust bails out after his F-106 goes into a spin over Montana. The pilotless plane lands in a cornfield and is returned to service. 1966—Australians burn their conscription papers in Sydney. 1965—Protesting a protest against the jailing of MLK, Daniel P. …

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2005—Canada OK’s same-sex marriage; the world does not end. 2004—Janet Jackson’s nipple is briefly bared on TV; the world nearly ends. 2003—The space shuttle Columbia disintegrates over Texas. 1974—Richard Nixon meets for twenty minutes with the Messiah, aka Reverend Sun Myung Moon. 1971—“The President is aware of what is going on in Southeast Asia,” Ron Ziegler tells reporters. “That is not to say anything is going on in Southeast Asia.” Certainly not an invasion of Laos one week later. 1968—In Saigon, AP photographer and former Marine Eddie Adams snaps the anti-Iwo Jima Flag Raising photo of the Vietnam War: General Nguyen Ngoc Loan shooting VC …

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2003—At the White House, George W.[MD] Bush tells Tony Blair he’s going to invade Iraq with or without WMDs, and diplomacy will have to fit around the military strategy. 1984—President Reagan alleges the U.S. has a problem with “people who are sleeping on the grates…homeless…you might say, by choice.” 1971—In Detroit, Vietnam Veterans Against the War testify about U.S. policies in Vietnam. Few listen. 1968—The Viet Cong and NVA send a message with coordinated attacks from the Delta to the DMZ, including the U.S. Embassy in Saigon: we’re not giving up. The U.S. brass don’t hear it, but the public does. General “Clueless” Westmoreland says …

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2005—A U.S. official reports that $9,000,000,000 is … well … sort of … missing in Iraq. 1981—An FB-111A “Aardvark” based at Pease AFB crashes near homes at Mariner’s Village, about 1.25 miles northwest of Market Square. One apartment building is destroyed; no one is injured. 1976—The Supreme Court decides that limiting campaign contributions would unfairly restrict the speech of a privileged minority group: people with unlimited amounts of money. 1972—“Bloody Sunday” in Northern Ireland: British soldiers gun down 14 Catholic civil-rights marchers. 1968—Two hundred colonels in the U.S. MACV staff attend a pool party in Saigon. “Not one … knew Tet was coming” the next …

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