Sat, Aug 12

2004—N.J. Gov. Jim McGreevey resigns after admitting he’s been sleeping with a man who is not his wife. 1985—A 747 with 524 on board, enroute to Osaka, crashes after the tail falls off. Many survive but, due to delays, only four are rescued alive. 1977—CBS reports that the state won’t replace a washed-out bridge in Vulcan, W. Va., so the town has asked the U.S.S.R. for foreign aid. 1958—Art Kane takes the photo known as “A Great Day in Harlem:” 57 jazz greats on a brownstone stoop. 1955—Ike raises the minimum wage from 75 cents to $1 per hour. 1953—Russia tests an H-bomb. Yup, it …

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Fri, Aug 11

2017—A “good person” rallying for White Supremacy in Charlottesville, Va. commits vehicular homicide. 2009—President Obama speaks inside Portsmouth, N.H. High School. Outside a Libertarian packs a 9-mm pistol and totes a sign calling for the “blood of patriots and tyrants.” 1972—Delta Co., 3/21st Infantry, conduct the last U.S. combat patrol in Vietnam; booby traps wound two. 1966—The first Coast Guardsmen (2) are killed in Vietnam when B-57s and F-4s attack the cutter Point Welcome. 1965—A white L.A. cop pulls over a Black driver in Watts. Five days of riots cost 34 lives, mostly Black, and $200 million in damage. 1942—Ten years after her scandalous Ecstacy …

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Thurs, Aug 10

2019—Mysterious sex criminal and pal of bigwigs Jeffrey Epstein is found conveniently but mysteriously dead in his closely unguarded N.Y.C. jail cell. 2000—“I want you to know,” George W.[MD] Bush tells farmers in Salinas, Calif., “that farmers are not going to be secondary thoughts to a Bush administration. They will be in the forethought of our thinking.” 1974—“I take my instructions from General Haig,” says a Colonel overseeing Richard Nixon’s attempt to spirit files out of the White House. White House Counsel Benton Becker calls the Colonel’s bluff, and three full Air Force trucks are unloaded. 1973—Free Marketeer Charles Koch writes Free Marketeer Friedrich von …

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Wed, Aug 9

2014—Ferguson, Mo. cop Darren Wilson shoots unarmed Michael Brown, 18, whose body is then left uncovered on the street for four hours. 1997—New York City cop Justin Volpe sodomizes Haitian immigrant Abner Louima with a broomstick. 1989—George Herbert [Hoover] Walker Bush signs the Savings and Loan bailout. Among the bailees: his boys Neil and Jeb. 1974—Richard Milhous Nixon vacates the White House—finally. 1945—In Nagasaki, Hiroshima blast survivor Tsutomu Yamaguchi’s boss doubts his account of the devastation—until an A-bomb explodes. 1936—Lincoln Steffens, one of the original muckrakers, dies at 70. 1882—Two days after a fatal brawl, a batch of Hatfields march three McCoys into Kentucky. There, …

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Tues, Aug 8

2022—The FBI raids Trumpland. 1989—E. Robert Wallach, a close pal of Ed “Meese is a Pig” Meese, is convicted of racketeering. He pocketed $425,000 to influence Meese and others as part of Wedtech Corp.’s scheme to win defense contracts. 1986—Elliott Abrams cadges $10 million from Brunei’s Foreign Minister in a London park, to be used overthrowing the democratically-elected government of Nicaragua. 1974—Rep. Earl Landgrebe [R-Ind.], says “Don’t confuse me with the facts. I’ve got a closed mind. I will not vote for impeachment. I’m going to stick with my President even if he and I have to be taken out of this building and shot.” …

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Mon, Aug 7

2016—Verrückt (German for “insane”), the world’s tallest waterslide, built in Kansas City by men who later admitted that they didn’t know what they were doing, and exempt from state licensing, decapitates the 10-year-old son of a Kansas state rep. 1974—Three GOP bigwigs tell Nixon he’s through. Len Garment talks him out of pardoning the Watergate conspirators. Nixon’s man Al Haig meets again in secret with Jerry Ford. Move along; nothing to see here. 1964—Congress falls for the Gulf of Tonkin hoax. L.B.J. gets unprecedented and unconstitutional power. Sen. Wayne Morse (D-Ore.) votes no, saying “future generations will look with dismay and great disappointment upon a …

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