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[GermanStar]

Mar 29 1951
Julius and Ethel Rosenberg are both convicted of conspiracy to commit espionage.

Mar 29 1977
Lee Harvey Oswald's best friend, and coincidentally a friend of both Jackie Kennedy and George HW Bush, Dallas socialite George de Mohrenschildt dies from a self-inflicted shotgun wound to the mouth, at 3:45 pm. It is likely he was going to be called to testify before the House Select Committee on Assassinations.

Mar 29 1979
A U.S. House of Representatives committee report finds that John F. Kennedy's assassination was the result of a conspiracy.

Mar 29 1992
Arkansas Governor and Presidential candidate Bill Clinton tells the New York Times: "When I was in England, I experimented with marijuana a time or two, and I didn't like it. I didn't inhale, and never tried it again."

Mar 29 1997
Kazuo Konya, a former member of the Aum cult, tells Tokyo Municipal Court that he paid $8,100 for the privilege of drinking the guru's blood in a 1988 initiation ritual. Other former cult members also testify they paid for blood, strands of Shoko Asahara's hair, and his bath water. Some say they paid $2,400 for an intravenous injection of an unknown substance. Ironically, all throughout, Asahara preached to his followers that they should renounce materialism.

Mar 29 2006
Jack Abramoff, Washington D.C. lobbyist extraordinaire, is sentenced to almost six years in prison for defrauding Native American tribes, corruption of public officials and other various fraud charges. He is also ordered to pay $21M in fines. In exchange for a short sentence, Jack agrees to name names. This makes Ralph Reed and Tom DeLay very nervous.

[GermanStar]

Mar 30 315
The Donation of Constantine grants to the See of Rome dominion over all earthly thrones of Europe, a document made by that Roman emperor after his conversion to Christianity in return for being cured from leprosy. But in 1440, anachronisms in the document prove that it was really a fraud written around 752 AD, during the reign of and under orders of Pope Stephen II.

Mar 30 1282
After vespers on Easter Monday, a French soldier touches the breast of a young Sicilian bride, causing an outrage that precipitated the slaughter of perhaps 2,000 Frenchmen living and ruling over Sicily.

Mar 30 1968
Two children in the Bowery come across the body of a homeless drug addict later identified as Bobby Driscol, 31, the voice of Disney's "Peter Pan".

Mar 30 1981
While President Reagan undergoes surgery for a life-threatening gunshot wound, Secretary of State Alexander Haig announces to the press: "As of now, I am in control here, in the White House, pending return of the Vice President."

Mar 30 1995
A police officer who was also a member of the Aum Supreme Truth cult fires three shots into Takaji Kunimatsu, chief of Japan's National Police Agency. Takaji is seriously wounded but survives. Investigators try unsuccessfully to hide the fact that the gunman was a police officer.

[GermanStar]

Mar 31 1492
Ferdinand and Isabel expel all of the Jews from Spain. Even with the infusions of gold and silver arriving during the 16th century from the Americas, this is an act from which Spain never recovers. By expelling their merchant and banking class, Jews and Muslims, the country is left ill-equipped to process the new wealth, which ultimately winds up in the coffers of other countries and squandered on disastrous military campaigns.

Mar 31 1889
Phallic symbol Eiffel Tower completed.

Mar 31 1959
The Dalai Lama is forced to leave Tibet, after the Red Communists make it very unpleasant for him to stay. He accuses the Chinese of making genocide against the Tibetan people, by systematic destruction of Tibetan culture and execution of thousands of prominent citizens.

Mar 31 1991
Danny Bonaduce arrested for assault after he fought with a transvestite prostitute. No contest, 750 hours community service.

Mar 31 1995
The president of the Selena Fan Club, Yolanda Saldivar, kills the Tejano music popstar Selena in Corpus Christi, TX. "It just went off, I didn't mean to do it. I didn't mean to kill anybody". That might be true, but the jury did not believe her.

Mar 31 1996
During a homebrew exorcism in Rhode Island, a man accidentally punctures the esophagus of his mother-in-law when he jams two pointy steel crucifixes down her throat, causing a large quantity of blood to gush out. Mario Garcia is later charged with assault with a dangerous weapon.

Mar 31 2005
Long-time vegetable Terri Schiavo is finally expires despite manufactured outrage from Tom DeLay, Bill Frist and Rick Santorum. An autopsy eventually revealed that Terri had checked out a long time ago, having suffered extensive brain damage, directly contradicting Dr. Frist's earlier diagnosis made from the floor of the Senate.

[GermanStar]

Apr 1
April Fool's Day

Apr 1 1793
Unsen volcano erupts, accompanied by several devastating earthquakes. The Japanese island is completely destroyed, killing approximately 53,000 inhabitants.

Apr 1 1946
A 7.8 magnitude earthquake near the Aleutian Islands causes a tsunami that smashes 25-foot-tall waves into Hawaii. Over 170 people are killed, mostly in Hilo. As a result, the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center is established.

Apr 1 1961
Jim Bakker and Tammy Faye get married!

Apr 1 1984
Legendary Motown singer Marvin Gaye, who had recently moved back in with his parents, physically batters his own father. Minutes later Dad returns with a gun, shooting Marvin twice in the chest and killing him instantly.

Apr 1 1996
Wilson Pickett arrested for possession of cocaine, after a screaming, bloodied woman is seen running from his house.

Apr 1 1998
Ukranian serial killer Anatoly Onoprienko is sentenced to death for some 52 murders over the preceding decade. The versatile Onoprienko's weapons of choice include hammers, firearms, pillows, dumbbells and fire.

[GermanStar]

Apr 2 1459
Vlad the Impaler impales thousands of merchants and burghers of the town of Brasov, in Transylvania. Some estimate as many as 30,000 impalements, but it was probably more on the order of 2,000.

Apr 2 1725
Casanova born.

Apr 2 1932
World-famous aviator Charles Lindbergh and Dr. John F. Condon turn over $50,000 in ransom money to an unidentified man in a Bronx cemetery. Lindbergh's kidnapped infant, however, is never returned -- his corpse is discovered the following month.

Apr 2 1974
A streaker interrupts actor David Niven during his presentation at the Academy Awards. Niven's off-the-cuff remark -- "probably the only laugh that man will ever get in his life is by stripping and showing off his shortcomings" -- was actually prepared in advance.

Apr 2 1979
A mishap in a secret Soviet biological warfare laboratory at Sverdlovsk results in the release of airborne anthrax spores, killing 66. Livestock fifty kilometers away also die.

Apr 2 1986
A bomb explodes on a TWA Rome/Athens flight, causing three adults and one infant to be sucked out of the resulting hole in the fuselage. They plunge to their deaths.

Apr 2 1992
John Gotti found guilty for the death of mobster Paul Castellano.

[GermanStar]

Apr 3 1882
Notorious outlaw Jesse James is shot and killed in his own home for a $5,000 reward. The assailants are Charles and Robert Ford, both members of the James gang.

Apr 3 1924
Brilliant actor and total loon Marlon Brando is born.

Apr 3 1936
Bruno Hauptmann executed via Electric Chair, for the kidnap and murder of the Lindbergh baby.

Apr 3 1996
US Commerce Secretary Ron Brown's plane goes down in Dubrovnik (Croatia), killing 35. Although many who view Brown's body comment that he appeared to have been shot in the head, this is never fully investigated.

Apr 3 1996
The Unabomber, Theodore Kaczynski is arrested in his Lincoln, Montana cabin. It takes the FBI months to search the tiny 8 x 10 foot dwelling.

Apr 3 1999
Bad news for Egyptian rapists! Egypt repeals a 1904 law granting rapists the right to escape punishment if they marry their victims. It seems that this was encouraging the abundant practice of rape, rather than discouraging it.

[GermanStar]

Apr 4 1561
Over Nuremberg, Germany, a battle in the sky transpires between black and blood-red balls, disks, and crosses. It is never made clear who prevailed in this UFO incident.

Apr 4 1958
Lana Turner's 14 year old daughter stabs her mother's boyfriend. A coroner's jury finds she committed justifiable homicide.

Apr 4 1968
Martin Luther King, Jr. is shot dead by a sniper in Memphis, Tennessee.

Apr 4 1988
Arizona Governor Evan Mecham becomes the first U.S. governor to be impeached and removed from office in nearly 60 years. He was convicted for obstructing justice by discouraging a state official from investigating a death threat, and also misusing $80,000 in public money. Mecham was known for rescinding the state's observation of Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, requesting lists of state employees who were gay, and using the word "pickaninnies."

Apr 4 2006
Brian J. Doyle, a Department of Homeland Security official, is arrested and charged with using a computer to seduce a child as well as 16 counts of transmitting harmful material to a minor. Doyle had arranged a meeting with what he thought was a 14-year-old girl but turned out to be police. In chat, he bragged about working for DHS and sent her pornographic movies.

[GermanStar]

Apr 5 1815
Mount Tambora erupts in what is now Indonesia, killing 12,000 and spewing eighty cubic kilometers of ash into the atmosphere at once. The blast is heard more than 900 miles away, and makes summer feel like winter in many parts of the world.

Apr 5 1944
The Nazis begin deporting jews from Hungary.

Apr 5 1949
Twenty newborn babies and 57 other people die as St. Anthony's Hospital in Effingham, IL is destroyed by fire.

Apr 5 1951
Julius and Ethel Rosenberg are sentenced to death for acts of treason, which in this case means giving atomic bomb secrets to the Soviet Union.

Apr 5 1990
London physician Raymond Crocket is removed from the medical register after it is shown that he paid for and removed kidneys from Turkish donors brought to England.

Apr 5 1994
Kurt Cobain blows his head off.

Apr 5 1997
Allen Ginsberg dies. We are sure that Allen's work for NAMBLA (North American Man/Boy Love Association) has touched us all.

Apr 5 1998
"Hollywood is run by Jews; it is owned by Jews, and they should have a greater sensitivity about the issue of -- of people who are suffering. Because they've exploited -- we have seen the -- we have seen the Nigger and Greaseball, we've seen the Chink, we've seen the slit-eyed dangerous Jap, we have seen the wily Filipino, we've seen everything but we never saw the Kike. Because they knew perfectly well, that that is where you draw the wagons around." --Marlon Brando, on Larry King Live

Apr 5 2005
Rapper C-Murder (AKA C Miller) is sentenced to life in prison for the murder of a teenager in Harvey, Louisiana. C-Murder, brother of rapper/CEO Master P, goes on to release an entire album while behind bars, and even manages to film a music video. Quote the Sheriff: "Suffice it to say, I'm not pleased."

[GermanStar]

Apr 6 1868
Mormon prophet Brigham Young marries 23-year-old Ann Eliza Webb. This is Young's 27th wife, 18 of which are still married to him.

Apr 6 1976
Howard Hughes dies of health complications related to syphilis.

Apr 6 1990
Police trace a series of obscene phone calls to the president's private White House telephone. The caller turns out to be the president of American University in Washington, Richard E. Berendzen, who was apparently hung up over some personal ad. He is later forced to resign his position but is never charged with any crime.

Apr 6 1994
The presidents of Rwanda and Burundi are both killed in a mysterious plane crash near the Rwandan capital. Consequently, widespread violence erupts in Rwanda amidst rumors that the plane had been shot down.

[GermanStar]

Apr 7 1948
Twenty Buddhist monks in Shanghai are immolated as their monastery burns.

Apr 7 1970
The X-rated movie Midnight Cowboy wins the Oscar for Best Picture.

Apr 7 1989
Soviet nuclear submarine Komsomolets sinks in the Norwegian sea, with two nuclear reactors and two nuclear torpedoes aboard. 41 crew members die, and the submarine remains one mile below the surface of the ocean, with its nuclear weapons intact.

Apr 7 1994
Courtney Love arrested on drug charges in Beverly Hills. What a surprise!

Apr 7 1998
Wendy O. Williams, former porn star and singer for the Plasmatics, kills herself with a gun near her Connecticut home.

Apr 7 1998
Pop singer George Michael is arrested by an undercover police officer after wanking in front him in a public toilet.

Apr 7 1999
A bomb goes off in the "Valley of the Fallen" church, which is carved into a mountainside north of Madrid. The church houses the mortal remains of dictator Francisco Franco. The terrorist group GRAPO claims responsibility, and while there were no injuries, the damage was extensive.

Apr 7 2155
First Contact between humans and the prominently-coiffured Centauri Alliance. (Babylon 5 timeline)

[GermanStar]

Apr 8 1916
Auto racer Bob Burman crashes and burns during a race in Corona, California. He dies and takes his mechanic Eric Scroeder and a track policeman with him. Burman was in the lead during most of the race but his Peugot broke a wheel sending his car crashing through a crowd barrier and into a pole and badly injuring 5 spectators.

Apr 8 1988
Rev. Jimmy Swaggart resigns from his ministry when it is revealed that he has been consorting with a prostitute, Debra Murphree. She says he was a frequent client but only liked to watch her undress. Only a few months earlier, Swaggart had been giving Rev. Jim Bakker shit about Jessica Hahn.

Apr 8 1991
Retired horse jockey Willie Shoemaker loses control of his Ford Bronco; the resulting crash renders him paralyzed from the neck down. Shoemaker is later arrested for drunk driving, but no charges are ever filed.

Apr 8 1992
Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat suffers only minor injuries after his airplane crashes into the Libyan desert. However, three others on board the craft are killed.

Apr 8 1994
Kurt Cobain's body is found 3 days after committing suicide with a shotgun.

[GermanStar]

Apr 9 1241
Mongols collect nine bags of ears after a battle with Henry, Duke of Poland, at Liegnitz. A feigned retreat separated the 500 Teutonic Knights from their infantry, and the Mongols slaughtered the entire infantry. Apparently you can fit 25,000 ears into nine bags.

Apr 9 1940
Nazi Germany invades Denmark and Norway. Norwegian national socialist Vidkun Quisling seizes the opportunity to declare himself the new prime minister of Norway, but the Germans replace him only five days later.

Apr 9 1948
Jewish terror groups Irgun and Lehi massacre Arab villagers of Deir Yassin located on Jerusalem-Tel Aviv road. News of massacre creates panic among other Palestinians, who flee former mandatory Palestine at onset of first Arab-Israeli war.

Apr 9 1992
Former Panamanian leader Manuel Noriega convicted of drug trafficking, money laundering, and racketeering by a federal court in Miami.

[GermanStar]

Apr 10 1848
250 people die in a bridge collapse in Yarmouth, England. They had gathered on the suspension bridge to watch a clown boat be pulled by a flock of geese.

Apr 10 1917
133 people are killed in an explosion at the Eddystone ammunition factory in Chester, PA. Satan is immediately implicated, with one official declaring the blast to be "the result of a diabolical plot conceived in the degenerate brain of a demon in human guise." It later turns out to have been caused by poorly-maintained powder loading machinery.

Apr 10 1919
Mexican revolutionary leader Emiliano Zapata and his bodyguards are shot to death after being lured to a meeting by army colonel Jesus Guajardo. For his deception, Guajardo collects a reward of 52,000 pesos and is promoted to the rank of general.

Apr 10 1942
Approximately 66,000 Filipino and 11,796 U.S. soldiers near the Philippine town of Mariveles surrender to Japanese forces. Unable to feed their wounded and starving POWs, the Japanese opt for the 61-mile "Bataan Death March" to mitigate the problem.

Apr 10 1945
Buchenwald death camp liberated by U.S. forces.

Apr 10 1947
Agents of the FBI pay a visit to Screen Actors Guild president Ronald Reagan and his wife, actress Jane Wyman. They accuse the couple of belonging to Communist front groups. Reagan quickly agrees to become a secret informer.

Apr 10 1992
Comedian Sam Kinison killed in a car accident.

Apr 10 1997
The Jerusalem Post reports that high rabbinical sources have confirmed the birth of a rare red heifer named Melody in a kibbutz near Haifa. The ashes from such a beast will be needed to ceremonially purify any Jews before they would be permitted to enter the former site of Solomon's Temple in Jerusalem. At present, the parcel is occupied by the Dome of the Rock mosque, which is located on the spot where Muslims believe that Mohammed rode his horse into Heaven. The goal here is to reconstruct the Hebrew temple, but this would necessitate tearing down the mosque, virtually guaranteeing outright war between Israel and the Arab world. Even more ominous, the construction project is a necessary prerequisite for the second coming of Christ, which itself involves all the End Times stuff in the book of Revelation. Melody is the first red heifer in 2,000 years, and quite possibly the last.

Apr 10 2003
FBI agents raid the Noonday, Texas home of avowed white supremacist William Joseph Krar. Upon searching the domicile and some rented storage units, the agents turn up an arsenal including briefcase bombs with remote-controlled detonators, full-auto machine guns, silencers, nearly 500,000 rounds of ammunition, a 1953 military land mine, more than 800 grams of sodium cyanide, and a copy of The Turner Diaries. Krar later receives 11 years for possession of a dangerous chemical weapon.

[GermanStar]

Apr 11 34
Jesus Christ resurrected?

Apr 11 1890
Death of Joseph Merrick, the Elephant Man.

Apr 11 1979
Kampala, the capital of Uganda, falls to the Tanzanians and dictator Idi Amin is overthrown. Amin, an occasional cannibal who killed perhaps 300,000 during his reign, had made the mistake of invading Tanzania.

Apr 11 1991
Brian Huntley of Hull, England is convicted of raping a prostitute, aged 19. Because she demanded the rapist use a condom, Huntley is given a short 3 years imprisonment. The next day's headline of the Daily Mirror: "Judge praises rapist who wore condom".

Apr 11 1996
Jessica Dubroff, a 7-year-old pilot hoping to become the youngest American ever to fly coast-to-coast, is killed along with her father and flight instructor when their single-engine plane crashes on takeoff in Cheyenne, WY.

Apr 11 2006
Rapper Proof is shot to death at the CCC Club on 8 Mile Road in Detroit, Michigan. He manages to kill Keith Bender Jr. before dying from a gunshot to the head. Proof was a founding member of D-12, a rap supergroup featuring Eminem.

[GermanStar]

Apr 12 1945
Franklin D. Roosevelt, the only president ever elected to four terms of office, dies of a cerebral hemorrhage in Warm Springs, GA. The following day, Vice President Harry S. Truman assumes the post and is told for the first time about the Manhattan Project.

Apr 12 1960
Eric Peugeot, 4-year-old son of the auto manufacturer, is kidnapped in Paris. The child is later freed after a $300,000 ransom is paid. Ultimately, the perpetrators are caught and sent to prison.

Apr 12 1961
Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Alexeyevich Gargarin is the first man in space, aboard Vostok I.

Apr 12 1988
U.S. patent 4,736,866 is granted to Harvard University for a genetically-modified mouse, engineered to be particularly susceptible to carcinogens. The cancer-prone "Harvard Oncomouse" is the world's first patented creature, and perhaps also the most screwed.

Apr 12 1989
1960s counterculture icon Abbie Hoffman kills himself by overdosing on barbiturates.

Apr 12 1992
EuroDisney opens to the public, attracting a meager 50,000 visitors. Expectations had been about ten times as many. This underwhelming response by the European public will continue for more than a year. Finally, after 18 months of retooling, the resort is ultimately rechristened Disneyland Paris.

Apr 12 1994
The US Tax Court rules that Indiana exotic dancer Chesty Love can claim a $2,088 tax credit for depreciation on her 56FF breast implants. The judge found that Love's surgical augmentation did in fact increase her income, also that she was unable to derive any personal benefit from them, as the oversized mammaries "contorted her body into a grotesque appearance."

Apr 12 1995
To celebrate David Letterman's 49th birthday, actress Drew Barrymore climbs atop the Late Night desk and flashes her bosomy protuberances at the man.

Apr 12 1995
The Hong Kong Eastern Express reports that China sanctions the consumption of aborted human fetuses as a "health benefit." One practitioner willing to admit a taste for this is Dr. Zou Qin of the Luo Hu Clinic, who boasts having consumed more than 100 meals of human veal -- stew and soup, mostly.

[GermanStar]

Apr 13 1883
Convicted cannibal Alfred Packer is sentenced to death in Colorado.

Apr 13 1919
British troops fire on a crowd of Indians peacefully protesting the occupation, leaving 379 dead and 1,200 wounded.

Apr 13 1970
56 hours and 205,000 miles from planet Earth, the crew aboard Apollo 13 hears "a pretty loud bang" when oxygen tank number two spontaneously explodes. Astronaut Jack Swigert informs Mission Control in Houston: "Hey, we've got a problem here." Miraculously, the crew manages to return home in their crippled spacecraft.

Apr 13 1981
Washington Post reporter Janet Cooke wins a Pulitzer Prize for her story about Jimmy, an 8 year old heroin addict. Strangely, police could find no trace of this boy. And this was one of those investigative journalism Pulitzers, not a fiction Pulitzer, so she was forced to return the award two days later. Cooke later clerked part-time at a department store cosmetics counter in Kalamazoo, Michigan.

Apr 13 1982
David Crosby of CSNY arrested while freebasing cocaine and for illegal possession of a .45 handgun. Sentence: 5 years.

Apr 13 1984
Itinerant serial killer Henry Lee Lucas found guilty by a Texas jury for the murder of "Orange Socks", a hitchhiker whose name is not known. Lucas and his partner Ottis Toole are thought to have killed as many as 200 people. Ironically new evidence places Lucas in Florida at the supposed time of the Orange Socks murder.

Apr 13 1990
The Soviet Union admits to Katyn Massacre of 15,000 Polish army officers.

Apr 13 1992
Chicago's downtown business center is crippled by massive flooding, as 124 million gallons of water inundate 50 miles of underground freight tunnels and adjoining basements. City workers dump sandbags, rocks, and mattresses into the Chicago River in a vain attempt to slow the floodwaters. All told, it will take 12 days to seal the leak and drain the tunnels. The disaster causes $800 million in damage, and the IRS graciously grants one week of amnesty for Chicago-area residents to file their tax returns.

Apr 13 1994
The United Nations Human Rights Committee declares sodomy to be a basic human right. The committee determined that laws against assfucking (particularly in Tasmania) breach articles of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.

[GermanStar]

Apr 14 73
With the 10th Roman Legion about to breach the gates of their mountaintop fortress, 960 Sicarii Jews commit mass suicide at Masada. According to Josephus, the radical cult selected ten swordsmen by lottery to perform the killing. Then they held a second lottery to choose one man to kill the remaining nine. Finally, the last one fell on his sword.

Apr 14 1865
President Abraham Lincoln receives a cranial gunshot wound from the nation's most famous actor, John Wilkes Booth. Lincoln dies the following day, primarily from ill-advised attempts to extract the bullet lodged in his brain.

Apr 14 1986
Hindus crossing a bridge over the sacred Ganges river at Hardwar, India to bathe during the Kumbha Mela fete somehow stampede. 46 pilgrims are trampled.

Apr 14 1989
California winery worker Ramon Salcido picks up a butcher knife and kills his wife, mother-in-law, two sisters-in-law, and two of his own daughters. Then he goes to work and kills his supervisor.

[GermanStar]

Apr 15 1792
The Guillotine is first tested on human corpses.

Apr 15 1912
Unsinkable ship Titanic sinks after being torn by iceberg, with a loss of 1493 passengers.

Apr 15 1945
British and Canadian troops liberate the Bergen-Belsen death camp in northern Germany.

Apr 15 1955
The first McDonald's franchise opens in Des Plains, a suburb of Chicago. Because it is the first one launched by Ray Kroc, he names it "McDonald's #1" despite the fact that the McDonald brothers had already opened eight of their chain restaurants before they began accepting licensees. Kroc's unfortunate numbering system guarantees perpetual confusion for amateur fast food historians the world over.

Apr 15 1962
Actress Clara Blandick, 80, the Auntie Em of the Wizard of Oz, takes an overdose of sleeping pills and ties a plastic bag around her head in a Hollywood hotel room. Prior to this, she had prominently arranged her resume and press clippings so the newspapers would get her obituary right.

Apr 15 1989
96 soccer fans are crushed to death at Hillsborough stadium in Sheffield, England. During the opening minutes of the FA Cup semi-final between Liverpool and Nottingham Forest, Sheffield police order a gate opened at one end of the stadium. A throng of 2,000 Liverpool fans attempt to surge into the seating section, smashing more than 250 already-seated fans against the security fence.

Apr 15 1990
Greta Garbo dead.

Apr 15 1990
Mass food poisoning kills 150 people at an engagement party in Basti, Uttar Pradesh. Advice: Don't eat the bread.

Apr 15 1999
Sean "Puffy" Combs is accused of beating Steve Stoute, a record manager from Interscope Records. Stoute refused to remove images of Combs shot for a Nas video (Hate Me Now). Police arrested Combs for aggravated assault.

Apr 15 1999
Dutch airlines KLM issues an apology for shredding 400 ground squirrels at Schipol Airport in Amsterdam. The squirrels did not have proper importation papers, and thus were forced to meet their fate of grinding steel rotary blades. A public outcry forced KLM's apology.

[GermanStar]

Apr 16 1943
Chemist Albert Hofmann inadvertently experiences the world's first acid trip when a tiny quantity of lysergic acid diethylamide accidently seeps through the skin of his finger. After leaving work early, he went home and settled into "a not unpleasant intoxicated condition." Then he had solid two hours of visual hallucinations: "I perceived an uninterrupted stream of fantastic pictures, extraordinary shapes with intense, kaleidoscopic play of colors." It will be another three days before Hofmann gets up the courage to swallow 250 micrograms and ride his bicycle home.

Apr 16 1947
552 people are killed in Texas City, TX when 2,300 tons of ammonium nitrate fertilizer aboard the S.S. Grandcamp suddenly explodes. The blast generates a 2,000-foot mushroom cloud and is heard 160 miles away, leading some witnesses to believe that they had just been hit by a Russian A-bomb. 3,000 people suffer injuries and perhaps 200 more are unaccounted for. One-third of Texas City is decimated, twenty blocks of the waterfront are obliterated, and windows more than ten miles away are shattered.

Apr 16 1953
President Eisenhower addresses the nation concerning the relative priorities of "guns" versus "butter." In a fair fight, we'd have to bet on the guns.

Apr 16 1966
Alongside FBI officials, New York district attorney G. Gordon Liddy arrests Timothy Leary for possession of marijuana after raiding his Millbrook estate. The Supreme Court later rules this bust unconstitutional.

Apr 16 1995
Marlon Brando's daughter Cheyenne hangs herself in Tahiti.

[GermanStar]

Apr 17 1792
The Guillotine is tested at Bicetre Hospital in Paris, decapitating a sheep and a number of human cadavers.

Apr 17 1961
In an effort to overthrow Fidel Castro, 1,500 Cuban exiles make a series of amphibious landings at the Bay of Pigs. After it becomes painfully obvious in just a matter of hours that the forces were trained, equipped, and armed by the United States, President John F. Kennedy withholds necessary air cover. In three days of fighting, Cuba captures 1,197 of the rebels and kills approximately 200.

Apr 17 1965
The FBI Laboratory in Washington reports their inability to make out the vocals on the hit single "Louie Louie." Thus, the Bureau is unable to determine whether the record constitutes obscene matter.

Apr 17 1969
A Los Angeles jury convicts Sirhan Sirhan of assassinating Senator Robert F. Kennedy. Sirhan receives a death sentence, but it is later reduced to life in prison.

Apr 17 1974
Vinnie Taylor of Sha Na Na dies of a smack overdose.

Apr 17 1984
London police officer Yvonne Fletcher is shot dead and ten bystanders are wounded when a gunman in the Libyan Embassy opens fire on a crowd of protestors gathered outside. One week later, the British government cuts off all diplomatic relations and the Libyans are deported. The Libyan Government finally "accepts general responsibility for the behaviour of its diplomats inside its London Embassy at the time of the shooting" in July 1999, and pays an undisclosed sum to Fletcher's family.

Apr 17 1997
After a newspaper publishes photographs of Belgian paratroopers committing human rights violations during a 1993 UN peacekeeping mission in Somalia, Belgium's Defense Minister Jean-Pol Poncelet announces that the elite fighting unit may be disbanded. The photos depict one soldier urinating on a Somali corpse, and two men swinging a child over a campfire by the wrists and ankles.