2008—As America
elects Obama, California restricts LGBT rights.

1979—Militant
Shi’ite Muslims take 66 Americans hostage in Teheran, dooming the Carter
administration.

1964—Lenny Bruce
is found guilty of obscenity in New York City.

1960—In Dallas,
a vicious “Mink Coat Mob” angrily confronts Lyndon and Lady Bird Johnson.
Revulsion at its tactics cost Nixon Texas.

1958—A U.S. B-47
bomber carrying nukes crashes near Abilene, Texas. High explosives detonate.
Nuclear materials are recovered later.

1955—CIA HQ
responds to Caracas Station re: report that Adolf Hitler has been seen in
Argentina—“we suggest that this matter be dropped.”

1952—Univac I
gives CBS a nearly dead-on prediction: Eisenhower 438, Stevenson 93. The
network doesn’t air it because it contradicts the polls.

1928—Asked who
shot him, the dying gangster Arnold Rothstein tells police, “My mudder did it.”

1924—Wyoming elects
Nellie Rayloe Ross, the U.S.’s 1st female Governor.

1918—As he helps
his men build a raft from duckboards, Lieutenant Wilfred Owen, the British
poet, is shot dead. It’s a week before the Armistice.

1798—Vermont
elects Matthew Lyon, in jail for sedition, to Congress.

1791—Native
Americans destroy one quarter of the U.S. Army in the Battle of the Wabash—896
of 1,000 soldiers are killed, wounded, or captured.