Sat, June 1

2020—The President asks, about people protesting outside the White House, “Can’t you just shoot them?” 2005—Having wrecked Iraq, Paul Wolfowitz starts on the World Bank. 2002—George W.[MD] Bush announces at West Point that we’ll attack pre-emptively if he feels like it. 1980—Ted Turner launches CNN—the 24-hour news cycle commences. 1971—The N.Y. Times swallows Chuck Colson’s bait: a “vets group” he created says that it backs the war. 1967—Disgruntled vets form Vietnam Veterans Against the War. 1954—The AEC pulls the security clearance of Manhattan Project boss J. Robert Oppenheimer. 1950—Maine’s Margaret C. Smith asks fellow Republicans to renounce the “Four Horsemen of Calumny–Fear, Ignorance, Bigotry, and …

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Fri, May 31

2020—Irene Triplett, the last recipient of a Civil War pension (via her pop), dies at 90 in Wilkesboro, N.C. 2009—Dr. George Tiller, while ushering in a Wichita, Kansas church, is shot dead to uphold the sanctity of life. 2007—New Hampshire becomes the first state to honor same-sex unions without court intervention. 1989—As Newt drives him from the Speakership, Jim Wright [D-Texas], denounces “mindless cannibalism.” 1921—A Black WW I veteran in Tulsa refuses a demand to surrender his pistol. During a struggle it fires; a massive “race war” ensues. 1921—The mistrial of Sacco and Vanzetti begins under Judge Webster “Did you see what I did with …

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Thurs, May 30

2019—The state Senate overrides Gov. Sununu’s veto: New Hampshire’s out of the killing business—except for that one Black guy on death row. 2007—Florida man Dale Rippy, a ’Nam vet, is attacked by a rabid bobcat. He strangles it with his bare hands. 1962—Missionary Archie E. Mitchell, sole survivor of a Bly, Ore. picnic devastated by a Japanese fire balloon, is captured, along with two others, by the Viet Cong. He’s never seen again. 1961—Plotters using CIA-supplied weapons assassinate Rafael Trujillo. They fail to neutralize his secret police, though, and will pay with their lives. 1937—Chicago cops attack strikers at Republic Steel: 10 are shot dead, …

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Wed, May 29

2020—A U.S. President, scared by a protest against a Minneapolis cop’s murder of George Floyd, hides for an hour in the White House bunker. 2017—A U.S. President asks an aide, at a Memorial Day observance, “I don’t get it. What was in it for them?” 2015—The Washington Post prints ex-Gov. John H. Sununu’s confession that in 1988 he bartered state assets—low numbered license plates—to buy support for G.H.[H.]W. Bush. 2008—Senator (and candidate) John McCain [R-Ariz.] says “Mosul is quiet” on a day when 30 die there. 2002—FBI head Robert Mueller says 9/11 might have been preventable. 2001—The Bush twins, charged with underage boozing, plead nolo. …

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Tues, May 28

 2009—Jonathan Trappe crosses the English Channel suspended from a cluster of 54 multicolored balloons. 1987—W. German Mathias Rust, 19, lands a rented Cessna in Red Square. 1986—The DOE calls off its search for a site to dump high-level nuclear waste from power plants; southwestern N.H. had been a candidate. 1972—Third time’s a charm: Nixon’s “Plumbers” finally break into DNC HQ in the Watergate Office Building. 1962—The stock market plummets 5.7 percent, the worst drop since 1929. 1959—The U.S. Army sends Able and Baker, two monkeys, into space. 1946—The Pentagon begins working on a long-range bomber to be powered by a nuclear reactor; 15 years and …

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Mon, May 27

2017—It’s the last “Last Call” at Portsmouth’s Coat of Arms. 1994—Charles Rodman Campbell does his best to dodge it, but Washington State’s hangman finally manages to get a noose around his neck. 1972—Nixon’s “Plumbers” fail for a second time to break into Democratic National HQ at the Watergate. 1962—Centralia, Pa. officials set a fire to clear an underground landfill. The fire spreads to a coal seam; the town is later abandoned. The fire is expected to burn another 250 years. 1959—NBC’s Today Show reports straight-faced on the Society for Indecency to Naked Animals’ satirical campaign to clothe quadrupeds. 1944—NBC censors Eddie Cantor: his song, “We’re …

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