Volume 270 | No. 19

2002—Donald Rumsfeld explains to the unknowing that unknown unknowns are “things we do not know we don’t know”—and he should know. 2001—Florida man Vance Flosenzier drags a seven-foot shark from shallow water; paramedics drag his nephew Jesse Arbogast’s arm from its mouth; doctors successfully re-attach the arm. 1990—AP reports that Adnan Khashoggi and Donald Trump were the only celebrities cheap enough to cash $0.13 checks sent by Spy. 1989—At a chaotic funeral attended by 10 million, Ayatolla Khomeini is twice jostled out of his coffin. 1989—Nuclear weapon manufacturing ends at Rocky Flats, Colo. when FBI and EPA agents raid the joint. 1980—Nuclear-armed B-52s go on …

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2013—News outlets reveal that the NSA, under a Top Secret court order, has been Hoovering™ up the phone records of millions of Americans. 2008—Despite Mayoral objections and a lack of public hearings, Blackwater opens a training facility in San Diego; a judge says Blackwater’s a person whose rights must not be violated. 2003—Two top editors at the New York Times resign in disgrace. Inexplicably, many other journos do not. 1976—In Idaho, the $100 million federal Teton Dam fails, killing 14 and causing $2 billion in damages. 1970—Nixon orders the bosses of the CIA, DIA, NSA, and FBI: stop these dissidents. Eventually this backfires. 1969—Taken three …

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2006—A Ukrainian man enters the lion cage at the Kiev zoo, saying “God will save me, if he exists.” He does not. 2004—Marvin Heemeyer destroys the Granby, Colo. Town Hall, the mayor’s home, and 11 other buildings with his home-made armored bulldozer because “God has asked me to do this.” Then he shoots himself. 2003—Feds get tough on white collar crime, i.e., Martha Stewart. 1974—Tied in the ninth, Cleveland forfeits after home team fans attack the Rangers with chairs, clubs and knives on Ten-Cent Beer Night. 1963—Allen Ginsberg visits Saigon to assess the political situation. 1962—A failing Thor rocket is blown up over the South …

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2002—Egypt says it warned the U.S., a week before 9/11, that al-Qaeda was about to strike the U.S. 1994—A jury finds Guy Chichester “not guilty.” Patrick Fleming, his lawyer, had argued that felling a 60-foot siren pole for a nuke plant was not felonious criminal mischief, but civil disobedience protected by Article 10 of the New Hampshire Constitution. 1983—In Medina, N.D., “Greatest Generation” veteran, Posse Comitatus co-founder, and anti-tax crank Gordon Kahl dies in a shootout with the FBI, having slain five U.S. Marshals. 1980—A failed 46-cent computer chip briefly convinces NORAD that 220 Soviet missiles are incoming. 1969—In the South China Sea, a navigational …

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2002—The CIA admits to Congress—in a classified document, to avoid undue alarm—that it had tracked one 9/11 hijacker months earlier than it had previously admitted. 1999—The Virginian-Pilot reports that evangelist Pat Robertson has had “extensive dealings” with Liberian war criminal Charles Taylor. 1976—Don Bolles, investigative reporter for the Arizona Republic, is mortally injured by a bomb under his car. A pair of patsies take the fall. 1972—Alfred W. McCoy explains to Congress that top South Vietnamese officials, the CIA, and the Mafia are all in the heroin racket together. 1971—“Treating [the press] with considerably more contempt,” Nixon writes to Haldeman, “is in the long run …

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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 New York Times swallows Chuck Colson’s bait: a “vets group” he created says that it backs the war. 1967—Disgruntled GIs found 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, …

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