Volume 267 | No. 10

2021—An inebriated man in a red hat with “mouse ears” spends five hours wandering around Joint Base Andrews, home to Air Force One. 2018—At a rally, D.J. Trump says Democrats who didn’t applaud his State of the Union speech are traitors. 2007—Astronaut Lisa Marie Nowak is arrested for attempting to kidnap another astronaut’s girlfriend and misappropriating NASA diapers. 2003—Secretary of State Colin Powell tells the UN that Saddam Hussein’s Iraq is bristling with WMDs. 1981—For her husband’s 70th birthday, First Lady Nancy Reagan flies her manicurist in from Los Angeles. 1958—A B-47 bomber collides with a jet fighter near Tybee Island off the coast of …

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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,” says radio-active dingbat Glenn Beck, “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 rock out 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 …

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2018—A Tesla roadster is launched into space. The car company’s CEO is, unfortunately, not behind the wheel. 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.” 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 …

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2005—Though 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. 1974—Richard Nixon meets for twenty minutes with the Messiah, aka Reverend Sun Myung Moon. 1972—Rev. Billy Graham explains to President Nixon that a group of Jews, the Biblical “synagogue of Satan,” had the U.S. in a “stranglehold,” via banking and the media. Nixon replies, “I can’t ever say it, but I believe it.” 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 …

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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—It’s Tet: the VC and NVA attack from the Delta to the DMZ. Saigon—even the U.S. Embassy—is a war zone. U.S. brass don’t get the point—Gen. Wm. “Clueless” Westmoreland says Hue’s been retaken; he’s off by a month—but the public does. …

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