Volume 270 | No. 12

2001—“My plan reduces the national debt, and fast,” says G.W.[MD] Bush, “…economists worry that we’re going to run out of debt to retire.” 1989—Bad door latch design results in nine passengers being sucked out of a Boeing 747 southwest of Hawaii. 1988—SCOTUS says it’s OK to portray Jerry Falwell drunkenly losing his cherry to his mama in an outhouse. 1988—Capitol cops carry Sen. Bob “The Groper” Packwood (R-Ore.) into the Senate to make up a quorum. 1942—Turned away from Istanbul, MV Struma, a decrepit hulk carrying 791 Jewish refugees, is torpedoed by a Soviet sub. The 19-year old sole survivor, David Stoliar, lives to be …

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2008—Because one maintenance crew fails to warn another that humid air confuses its sensors, a  $1.4 billion B-2 bomber crashes in Guam. 2004—Rod Paige, U.S. Sec. of Education, calls the nation’s largest teachers union a “terrorist organization.” 1974—Days after presiding over his paper’s 100th birthday, and deep in debt to mobsters, Oakland Tribune owner and ex-Sen. William Knowland (R-Calif.), shoots himself dead. 1971—Lt. William Calley confesses to mass murder, and says his CO, Capt. Ernest Medina, ordered it. 1966—Barry Bondhus dumps human digestive byproduct on draft files in Elk River, Minn. He gets 14 months. 1954—Jonas Salk starts disrupting man’s natural relationship with polio. 1942—The …

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2018—After jabbing him in the legs and groin for 2.5 hours, Alabama prison officials wheel cancer patient Doyle Hamm out of the death chamber alive. 2004—A Pentagon document leaks: it says climate change may spell doom. 1994—The FBI arrests a spy: 32-year CIA officer Aldrich Ames. 1974—Samuel Byck, planning to crash an airliner into the White House, carelessly shoots the pilot before takeoff. He’s then shot dead, too. 1965—The New York Times calls the late Malcolm X “an extraordinary and twisted man [who turned] many true gifts to evil purposes.” 1965—Sam Lovejoy derails a planned nuke plant in Montague, Mass. by downing a tower with …

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