Volume 266 | No. 21

2007—China executes its Director of the State Food and Drug Administration for taking bribes that resulted in 40 deaths. 2001—A Phoenix FBI agent sends a memo to FBI HQ warning of “an inordinate number” of suspicious characters in local flight schools, possibly as part of a bin Laden plot. It’s ignored. 2001—CIA boss George Tenet tries to warn George Bush and Condi Rice about Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda, but can’t get their attention. 1985—French secret police in the South Pacific blow up Greenpeace’s boat, Rainbow Warrior. 1972—Water being used to fight an arson fire destroys the U.S.S. Forrestal’s computers and nearly capsizes her. 1949—Pamir, …

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2004—“I trust God speaks through me,” George W.[MD] Bush tells a group of Amish people. “Without that, I couldn’t do my job.” 1993—To prove it’s unbreakable, Toronto lawyer Garry Hoy hurls himself against a 24th floor window. It pops from its frame; he falls to his death. 1986—Ed “Meese is a Pig” Meese publishes a 1,960-page report on pornography packed with obscene titles. 1964—Senator Strom Thurmond [D-S.C.], 61, wrestles Senator Ralph Yarborough [D-Texas], also 61, to the floor to prevent a committee quorum. 1958—A 1,700-foot mega-tsunami hits Lituya Bay, Alaska. 1951—Dashiell Hammett, 57, tubercular author of The Maltese Falcon, is sentenced to six months in …

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2016—Police in Dallas use a bomb-armed robot to kill a man suspected of having murdered five officers. 1976—The State of New York yanks Richard Nixon’s law license. 1969—The U.S. begins withdrawing troops from Vietnam. 1962—The U.S. detonates a nuke 250 miles up, knocking out phones in Hawaii, 900 miles to the east, and crippling seven satellites. 1959—Viet Cong forces attack Bien Hoa air base, killing two U.S. advisors as they watch a movie. 1947—Radio reports say a UFO has crashed at Roswell, N.M. 1945—At a POW camp in Salina, Utah, Army Pvt. Clarence V. Bertucci machine guns 29 Germans; nine die. 1898—Jefferson Randolph “Soapy” Smith …

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1986—Reagan’s A.G., Ed Meese, attains quasi-legislative status for Presidential Signing Statements, which previously had had little impact, merely by persuading West Publishing to include them in law books. 1972—Near Danang, Battery B of the 82nd Field Arty. takes out four men from the 196th Inf. Bde. in the last major friendly fire incident of the war. 1967—His Tet Offensive plan OK’d by the Politburo, Gen. Nguyen Chi Thanh parties himself to death. 1954—As puppet Premier Diem arrives in Saigon, U.S. Gen. John W. O’Daniel, says “the war in Vietnam can be won without bringing in one single American soldier to fight.” 1950—FBI Chief J. Edgar …

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2013—A runaway fuel train derails and burns, destroying half of downtown Lac Megantic, Quebec. 2001—Ex-FBI Special Agent, devout Catholic, patron of strippers, and exhibitionist Robert Hanssen pleads guilty to selling U.S. secrets to the U.S.S.R., then to the Russians. 1971—President Nixon sets up a “Plumbers Unit” to stop leaks. 1962—To test its dirt-moving capacity, the AEC sets off a buried nuke in Nevada. It creates Sedan Crater—the nation’s biggest—and irradiates more Americans than any other test. 1924—Democrats “deplore and condemn…religious or racial dissension” during the longest convention ever held, but balk at naming the Klan. 1916—Major Douglas MacArthur, newly-appointed censor at the War Department, says …

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2009—Terry Herbert finds a spectacular hoard of Anglo-Saxon gold ornaments on Fred Johnson’s farm in the West Midlands. It makes both men rich—and bitter enemies. 1968—The US. Congress effectively tramples on the First Amendment to ineffectually “protect” the flag. 1968—The Marine base at Khe Sanh is abandoned 90 days after the lifting of a 78-day siege which cost 737 lives. 1950—Shipped out hastily, without a plan, ill-equipped and outnumbered ten to one, Task Force Smith is decimated by North Koreans at Osan. Gen. “Dugout Doug” MacArthur lets his troops take the blame. 1937—Leaving Berlin, IBM President Tom Watson thanks Adolf Hitler for a big order …

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