Volume 266 | No. 5

2014—Cards Against Humanity, to express its disdain for consumerism on Black Friday, removes all products but one from its online store: a $6 box of “literal feces, from an actual bull.” 2008—At a Long Island Wal-Mart, shoppers literally bust doors and trample Jdimytai Damour, 34, to death. 2005—Ex-Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham (R-Calif.) pleads guilty to selling votes and dodging taxes. 1979—Bogus data from HQ sendsAir New Zealand Flight 901 into Antarctica’s Mount Erebus; 257 perish. HQ’s “orchestrated litany of lies” eventually fails, and HQ’s busted. 1945—“As I understand it from the doctors,” Gen. Leslie R. Groves tells a Senate committee, radiation poisoning “is a very …

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2002—Donald Rumsfeld signs off on “Category III” interrogation techniques—namely, torture. 2001—Gen. Tommy Franks, working on catching Osama bin Laden, is told by Donald Rumsfeld to drop that and revise plans to attack Iraq. 1997—In New York, a lampost fatally stabs Macy’s Barney the Dinosaur balloon. Meanwhile, the Cat in the Hat knocks over a lampost, which then falls on two women, putting one in a month-long coma. 1969—At the 71st Evacuation Hospital in Pleiku, 100 soldiers fast on Thanksgiving to protest the war. 1965—The first Acid Test. 1953—“I knew it,” says 65 year-old Eugene O’Neill. “Born in a goddamn hotel room, dying in a hotel …

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2000—Katherine Harris, Florida’s Secretary of Stateand, coincidentally, the Bush campaign’s state co-chair, declares Dubya the winner. 1975—George Gainous, son of a heroin importer, climbs the White House fence to ask for his father’s pardon. Arrested 90 minutes later while chatting with President Ford’s daughter Susan, he later says, “If [Ford] can pardon Nixon he can pardon my father.” 1973—Rose Mary Woods takes the fall for the 18½ minute gap. 1933—Thomas H. Thurmond and John M. Holmes are lynched in San Jose, Calif. Jackie Coogan—“Uncle Fester,” 30 years later—helps ready a rope. Judge Timothy Fitzpatrick says in his personal opinion, the mob “did a damned good …

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1997—In Plymouth, Mass., police serve Native American demonstrators a generous helping of pepper-spray. 1986—As Ed “Meese is a Pig” Meese confesses that profits from illegal arms sales to Iran went to Nicaraguan contras, a reluctant Ronald Reagan fires Lt. Col. Oliver North. 1974—Britain outlaws the IRA after two bombs kill 21 and injure over 100 in Birmingham. 1968—Death of Upton Sinclair, writer and media critic. 1955—The ICC bans racial segregation in interstate bus transportation; the ban is ignored, though, until Freedom Riders force the issue in 1961. 1950—Great Appalachian Storm winds hit 110 mph in Concord, N.H. 1947—For refusing to rat out their friends to …

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2006—“The only way we can win [in Iraq],” says George W.[MD] Bush, “is to leave before the job is done.” 1979—The U.S. admits troops in ’Nam were hit by Agent Orange. 1976—Steven B. Williams rams a White House gate with his pickup truck at 25 mph. It doesn’t budge. 1971—Toting $200,000 in ransom cash, “D.B. Cooper” parachutes from a hijacked 727 over Washington State, into oblivion and America’s heart. 1965—The New York Times runs a full-page ad signed by 500 WW II and Korean War vets protesting escalation of the Vietnam War. 1963—Strip joint proprietor Jack Ruby, to spare Jackie Kennedy’s feelings, shoots Lee Harvey …

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1986—Two men escape from a maximum-security prison in Rome in a hijacked helicopter. 1981—R. Reagan signs a secret directive creating the [illegal] Contras. 1976—Jerry Lee Lewis is arrested outside Graceland for waving a pistol and demanding to see Elvis. 1970—A Lithuanian radio operator jumps from a Russian trawler onto the deck of the Coast Guard cutter Vigilant. Commander Ralph Eustis allows Soviet sailors to board the cutter and seize the radioman. 1958—On TV: Ron & Nancy Reagan in “A Turkey for the President.” 1946—To teach “a severe lesson”—namely, that Vietnam is ruled by the French—the cruiser Suffren shells the hell out of Haiphong, killing 6,000. …

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