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[GermanStar]

Jul 22 1376
The Pied Piper of Hamelin makes off with the town's rats and children.

Jul 22 1587
Roanoke, the colony founded by Sir Walter Raleigh, is found to be missing.

Jul 22 1934
John Dillinger is killed by the FBI at the Biograph Cinema in Chicago. After seeing this picture, many people come to believe that he must have possessed an enormous schlong. Actually, it is his arm in rigor mortis. (A competing theory holds that this is not Dillinger at all, but some patsy chosen because of the FBI's inability to capture the gangster.)

Jul 22 1946
91 people are killed in Jerusalem, when the Jewish terror group Irgun bombs the British administrative headquarters, located in the King David Hotel.

Jul 22 1991
Tracy Edwards escapes from Jeffrey Dahmer's apartment, handcuffs still attached. After being summoned to the scene, Milwaukee police encounter the partial remains of 11 previous victims. Dahmer is ultimately charged with 15 murders.

Jul 22 1994
In court, O.J. pleads "absolutely, 100% not guilty" of savagely killing his ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ronald Goldman.

[GermanStar]

Jul 23 1944
The Red Cross is finally allowed to tour the Theresienstadt ghetto, only nine months after their initial request. The Nazis spent the time constructing fake stores, cafes, schools, and flower gardens. Ultimately, the ICRC finds conditions in the camp only moderately acceptable. Following the inspection, the Nazis produce a propaganda film in the "model Jewish settlement." Then they ship most of the cast off to Auschwitz.

Jul 23 1967
After 73 negroes are arrested at a nightclub in Detroit, a race riot breaks out and continues for seven days. 43 people are killed, more than 2,000 injured, and at least 1,400 acts of arson. On a positive note, store looting is perpetrated by both blacks and whites.

Jul 23 1972
Organizational meetings are held at the Rockefeller estate for the Trilateral Commission, a group of powerbrokers representing the U.S., Europe, and Japan. Rockefeller, Jimmy Carter, Walter Mondale, and Zbigniew Brzezinski attend. If you ever wonder who THEY are, it's them.

Jul 23 1982
Vic Morrow is killed filming a stunt sequence for Twilight Zone: The Movie near Valencia, California. Morrow and two child actors are chopped into bits by the main rotor when a helicopter positioned dangerously close to the talent suddenly crashes.

Jul 23 1984
Vanessa Williams, the first black Miss America, relinquishes her crown after Penthouse magazine announced its plans to publish lesbian-themed photos of her in its September issue. Prior to entering the Miss America contest Williams had certified having committed no embarrassing acts of "moral turpitude."

Jul 23 1996
Harry Morgan, Col. Potter on TV's M*A*S*H, is arraigned on charges of spousal abuse. LAPD officers responding to a 911 call at the couple's Brentwood, California home had discovered his wife Barbara bruised and bleeding from her face.

Jul 23 1997
Andrew Cunanan, the homosexual serial killer whose five victims included fashion designer Gianni Versace, is found dead on the houseboat he was squatting in. Self-inflicted gunshot wound.

[GermanStar]

Jul 24 1704
After a three-day siege, a force of 1,800 English and Dutch troops seizes Gibraltar from Spain. In 1713, the Treaty of Utrecht officially deeds it to Great Britain, who never gives it back.

Jul 24 1915
Almost 800 Western Electric employees and their family members perish when the chartered steamer Eastland rolls over in Chicago harbor. History blames the top-heaviness of the ship, exacerbated (ironically) by the recent addition of lifeboats.

Jul 24 1980
Comedic actor Peter Sellers dies of a heart attack in the Dorchester Hotel, London.

Jul 24 1993
After a game in Los Angeles, New York Mets outfielder Vince Coleman tosses an M-100 firecracker at a crowd of baseball fans in Dodger Stadium's parking lot. The firework injures three children waiting for autographs, including two-year-old Amanda Santos. Coleman spends 200 hours performing community service and the rest of the year not playing professional baseball.

Jul 24 1998
Russell E. Weston Jr., who believed Navy Seals were hiding in his cornfield, kills two cops and wounds a civilian with a .38 at the U.S. Capitol building. It is later revealed that Weston is a schizophrenic who stopped taking his medication. Two days prior to the Capitol shooting, at his grandmother's insistence, Weston shot and killed his family's 25 cats because they had fleas.

Jul 24 1999
Former Guns N' Roses guitarist "Slash" is arrested in West Hollywood for allegedly beating his girlfriend at the Le Parc Hotel five days prior.

Jul 24 2002
By a vote of 420 to 1, James Traficant is expelled from the House of Representatives for a variety of abuses, chiefly: bribery, tax evasion, and racketeering. Traficant himself could not vote on the matter; the sole vote against expulsion came from embattled Congressman Gary Condit. Primarily he will be remembered for his magnificent toupee. At least we think it's a toupee.

[GermanStar]

Jul 25 1485
In Toledo, Spain, over 400 dead bodies are charged with heresy and burned in effigy, in a great public spectacle. What a wonderful thing, this Spanish Inquisition.

Jul 25 1917
Margaretha Geertruida Zelle, also known as Mata Hari, is found guilty of spying and is sentenced to death. There is no actual evidence that she is a spy.

Jul 25 1985
Rock Hudson acknowledges he has AIDS.

Jul 25 1990
At a baseball game, actress Rosanne Arnold warbles the Star Spangled Banner, grabs her crotch, and endears herself to an entire nation.

Jul 25 1999
Woodstock '99 festival ends in looting and rioting, leaving 12 trailers burned, towers toppled, and several women raped during the course of the show. About 500 state troopers were needed to quell the mass uprising of peace and love, apparently triggered by overpriced vendors and commercialization.

Jul 25 2000
A right tire explosion on the Concorde causes the plane to crash after takeoff from Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris, leaving 113 dead. It is the first crash in Concorde's history, and the only supersonic commercial flight to ever crash.

[GermanStar]

Jul 26 1826
Schoolmaster Cayetano Ripoll is hanged in Valencia, after uttering his last words: "I die reconciled to God and to man." He is the last person executed by the Spanish Inquisition.

Jul 26 1947
The National Security Council is created.

Jul 26 1959
A partial meltdown occurs at America's first commercial nuclear power plant in Simi Hills, California. The radiation leak from the Santa Susana Field Laboratory causes an estimated 1,800 cancer deaths, making it the worst nuclear accident in U.S. history.

Jul 26 1984
Serial killer and cannibal Ed Gein dies at the Mendota Mental Health Institute, a home for the criminally insane. Gein inspired the films Psycho and Silence of the Lambs.

Jul 26 1991
Actor Paul Reubens (aka "Pee-wee Herman") is arrested in Sarasota, Florida for jacking off twice with his left hand inside the South Trail XXX Cinema. It was screening the triple feature Catalina Five-O: Tiger Shark, Nancy Nurse, and Turn Up The Heat. Following his masturbatorial debut, Reubens loses his children's television show and product endorsements.

Jul 26 1998
Three spectators are killed by flying debris during the U.S. 500 race at Michigan Speedway. The debris resulted when the car driven by Adrian Fernandez impacted the wall of the raceway, flinging pieces of his suspension into the crowd. Tragically, Fernandez' knees are lightly bruised in the accident and he is unable to complete the race.

[GermanStar]

Jul 27 1890
At the Chateau d'Auvers, Vincent van Gogh presses a revolver to his chest and pulls the trigger. Somehow the bullet misses the vital organs, and the painter manages to stumble over to a friend's house. The following night, Van Gogh dies of an infection in the arms of his brother Theo.

Jul 27 1980
Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi, the exiled Shah of Iran, dies of lymphatic cancer in Cairo.

Jul 27 1996
During a celebration for the Atlanta Olympics, overfed security guard Richard Jewell notices a suspicious green knapsack in Centennial Park. He immediately alerts police and helps to clear people from the area shortly before the pipe bomb explodes. For his trouble, Jewell becomes the FBI's preliminary suspect and news organizations run wild with the story. Because he didn't do it, numerous media outlets end up paying him large undisclosed settlements. Also, the FBI uses the event as an excuse to lobby for further clampdowns on civil liberties.

Jul 27 2002
A Sukhoi SU-27 fighter crashes and explodes at an air show in the Ukraine, killing 78 and injuring more than 100 others. It is the worst airshow crash in history. The two pilots ejected and survived.

[GermanStar]

Jul 28 1794
After his Reign of Terror turns against him, Maximilien Robespierre is guillotined in Paris.

Jul 28 1841
James Boulard and Henry Mallin pull the decomposed body of a young woman from the Hudson River near Hoboken, New Jersey. Mary Cecilia Rogers, who worked at a popular cigar store, is initially thought to have been killed in the course of a brutal gang rape, but ultimately it seems more likely that she died from a botched abortion. Years later, novelist Edgar Allen Poe adapts the sensational news story about "The Beautiful Cigar Girl" into the short story "The Mystery of Marie Roget."

Jul 28 1870
Andrew Carr is hanged at Richmond Prison, Dublin. He is dropped from too high, causing his head to separate from the rest of his body -- the greater portion of which twitches for several minutes.

Jul 28 1945
A US Army B-25 bomber crashes into the Empire State Building between the 78th and 79th floors. An engine plunges down an elevator shaft, sparking a fire in the basement. Eleven people in the building are killed, in addition to the three man bomber crew.

Jul 28 1957
A C-124 transport plane carrying three nuclear weapons jettisons its precious cargo into the Atlantic, somewhere east of Delaware and New Jersey. The bombs are never recovered.

[GermanStar]

Jul 29 1921
The Council on Foreign Relations is incorporated in New York City by a group of bankers and other influentials, including John D Rockefeller. The CFR remains a vital component of the New World Order, and is surpassed in importance only by the Trilateral Commission. Now that you have this information, you know too much.

Jul 29 1921
Adolf Hitler is selected as leader of the National Socialist Party.

Jul 29 1941
The Grigglestone Colliery explodes, leaving 20 dead.

Jul 29 1968
Pope Paul VI issues encyclical Humanae Vitae, prohibiting all unnatural forms of birth control.

Jul 29 1974
Mama Cass Elliot, a very large part of The Mamas and the Papas, dies in London. Although initial reports ascribe the cause of death to choking on a ham sandwich, in actuality it was a heart attack.

[GermanStar]

Jul 30 1419
Hussites marching on the Prague Town Hall defenestrate (throw from windows to splatter down below) the Catholic city government, replacing them with a system of four Captains.

Jul 30 1938
In his Dearborn, Michigan office Henry Ford proudly accepts a Nazi medal on his 75th birthday. The Grand Cross of the Order of the German Eagle is the highest award the Reich can bestow on foreigners. The medal arrives with a note of personal greetings from Adolf Hitler. A rabid anti-semite, Ford paid for copies of the racist hoax Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion to be deposited in major U.S. libraries.

Jul 30 1975
Jimmy Hoffa probably dead. God we miss him.

Jul 30 1987
During the annual hajj, Saudi police open fire on a mob of pilgrims protesting America in Mecca. 402 Muslims, including 275 Iranians, are shot and killed during their "Renunciation of Infidels" rally. Iran boycotts the hajj for the next three years.

[GermanStar]

Jul 31 1941
Reichsmarschall Hermann Goering issues an order directing Reinhard Heydrich to carry out the final solution to the "Jewish question."

Jul 31 1945
Wearing a stolen army uniform, prisoner John Giles attempts to escape from Alcatraz island by boarding an outbound cargo boat. But instead of San Francisco, the vessel heads for Angel Island, where Giles is promptly captured.

Jul 31 1966
Beatles records are burned in Birmingham, Alabama -- only because John Lennon innocently declared that the band happens to be "more popular than Jesus."

Jul 31 1969
The San Francisco Chronicle, the Examiner, and the Vallejo Times-Herald receive nearly identical letters from the Zodiac Killer. Specific details are given about recent murder scenes, along with the demand that a "cipher" be printed on on the front page of the papers (or else Zodiac will go on a "ram-Page").

Jul 31 1998
Diminutive actor Gary Coleman, former child star of the ABC television sitcom Diff'rent Strokes, is arrested in Hawthorne, California for allegedly battering an autograph seeker in a uniform shop. Coleman, then a security guard at Fox Hills Mall, was shopping for a bulletproof vest.

Jul 31 1999
Police arrest James Donald Ray for f**king two sheep to death at El Capitan High School in Lakeside, California. A previous sexual attack against one of the sheep prompted the police stakeout, which nabs the 38-year-old in flagrante delicto cum ewe.

[GermanStar]

Aug 1 1589
King Henri III of France is assassinated by a crazy Jacobin monk. Among his crimes are opposing the Catholic League, and his love of... handsome young men.

Aug 1 1936
Adolf Hitler presides over the opening ceremony of the Olympics. The Chancellor of Germany announces: "I proclaim the games of Berlin, celebrating the eleventh Olympiad of the modern era, to be open." The whole thing makes for a great film by Leni Riefenstahl.

Aug 1 1954
The middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River overflow, submerging 8 million acres. The floodwaters kill more than 30,000 Chinese and displace 18.9 million others.

Aug 1 1966
Former Eagle Scout and United States Marine Charles Whitman carries a sniper rifle onto University of Texas at Austin. There he climbs to the top of UT tower and begins firing indiscriminately at dozens of people, killing 13. Whitman is finally taken out 96 minutes later by three Austin PD officers.

Aug 1 1971
The Sonny and Cher Comedy Hour debuts on CBS television as a summer replacement show.

Aug 1 1981
Cable music network MTV launches, by airing "Video Killed the Radio Star" by The Buggles, followed by Pat Benatar's "You Better Run." That's right, kids: once upon a time, MTV actually played music videos.

Aug 1 1994
Trading on the NASDAQ stock market is halted for 34 minutes after a squirrel commits suicide by gnawing through a power line near the organization's computer center in Trumbull, Connecticut. Systems in place to perform automatic switchover to standby generators didn't exactly, uh, work.

[GermanStar]

Aug 2 1876
Drinking at a saloon in Deadwood, Dakota Territory, Jack McCall notices Wild Bill Hickok playing poker at a corner table. Then he calmly walks over to the table and blows a wide hole in the back of Hickok's head with a .45 revolver. The professional gambler and onetime lawman was holding a pair of Aces and a pair of eights, now known as the "Dead Man's Hand."

Aug 2 1923
President Warren G. Harding dies suddenly at the Palace Hotel in San Francisco. His wife Florence forbids an autopsy, and the President's body is embalmed shortly after death. It is speculated by many that the cause of death, initially reported as "a stroke of apoplexy," was in fact poison administered by the First Lady.

Aug 2 1990
After Kuwait refuses to waive Iraq's war debts, 100,000 Iraqi soldiers stream across the border and seize control of Kuwait City. Their troops outnumbered 5-to-1, the Kuwaitis mount no resistance whatsoever. In so doing, Saddam Hussein precipitates the first Gulf War.

[GermanStar]

Aug 3 1950
The U.S. Army knowingly kills hundreds of civilian refugees when Maj. General Hobart R. Gay gives the order to demolish the bridge, including refugees, over the Naktong River at Waegwan, Korea.

Aug 3 1963
Almost a year after the world barely averted World War III during the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Hotline between the Pentagon and the Kremlin goes live. The system consists of two teletype machines, with a full-time communications link routed through London, Copenhagen, Stockholm, and Helsinki. Not to be confused with the Batphone.

Aug 3 1966
Comedian and social critic Lenny Bruce dies of a morphine overdose in his Hollywood Hills home, two years after his original obituary was published in The Realist. At the time of his death, Bruce was being maliciously harassed by police and districts attorney in various states for his groundbreaking standup performances, causing great difficulty in finding venues at which to perform.

Aug 3 1996
An angry God makes "Macarena" by Los Del Rio #1 on the pop charts. The accompanying dancing disease afflicts millions before final eradication.

[GermanStar]

Aug 4 1892
Someone takes an axe and kills Lizzie Borden's millionaire parents. Andrew receives 10 whacks, and Abby 14. Lizzie is later tried for the murders, but acquitted.

Aug 4 1964
Vietcong torpedo boats launch an unprovoked attack against the U.S.S. Maddox, while the destroyer is patrolling the Gulf of Tonkin. Except that it's only a hoax. Regardless, the Congress responds by passing the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, authorizing President Johnson "to take all necessary measures to repel any armed attack against the forces of the United States and to prevent further aggression." Which is how we wound up napalming those babies.

Aug 4 1993
Japan finally acknowledges that it forced 200,000 Korean and Chinese "comfort women" to service members of its armed forces between 1932 and 1945. Japan apologizes for the "immeasurable pain and incurable psychological wounds" it inflicted by forcing these women to be state whores, but makes no offer to pay reparations.

Aug 4 1994
Howard Stern withdraws his candidacy for governor of New York, ostensibly to avoid complying with the financial disclosure laws.

[GermanStar]

Aug 5 1955
Fruit-hat-wearing Brazilian superstar Carmen Miranda dead from cancer at 46.

Aug 5 1962
In her Brentwood, California home, Marilyn Monroe dies in bed, naked, after swallowing an overdose of sleeping pills. Or maybe she's killed by the CIA with a barbiturate enema. Either way, she's dead.

Aug 5 1963
The U.S., U.K. and Soviet Union agree to ban almost all nuclear testing. Underground testing is still permitted, however.

Aug 5 1980
The Osmonds musical group breaks up.

Aug 5 1983
Yankees outfielder Dave Winfield is charged in Toronto with cruelty to animals after fatally beaning a seagull with a baseball.

[GermanStar]

Aug 6 1890
Axe murderer William Kemmler becomes the first American executed by the Electric Chair, an invention created primarily to malign alternating current. It takes about four minutes for the electrons to kill the prisoner, by which time the odor of burnt flesh is inescapable. A newspaper headline the following morning reads KEMMLER WESTINGHOUSED, much to the glee of DC power proponent Thomas Edison.

Aug 6 1927
Andrew Warhola is born in Pittsburgh.

Aug 6 1945
At 9:15am, Col. Paul Tibbets releases "Little Boy" over Hiroshima and executes a hard, 159-degree turn. 40 seconds later, the Atomic Bomb detonates, yielding a 12.5 kiloton explosion and a huge, black mushroom cloud. About 45,000 people are killed immediately, and another 200,000 are killed in later years by leukemia and other radiation illnesses.

Aug 6 1970
750 unkempt Yippies show up at Disneyland, hell-bent "to liberate Minnie Mouse, have free rein of the park and infiltrate Tom Sawyer's Island," according to Youth International Party leaflets. Instead, they wind up scuffling with Disney security and other patrons, eventually prompting Anaheim police to close the park early and forcibly eject the dirty longhairs.

[GermanStar]

Aug 7 1882
Ellison Hatfield is stabbed 26 times and shot in the back by Tolbert McCoy and two of his brothers. Two days later, the Hatfield clan captures the three McCoys and executes them by firing squad. Thus begins generations of bloodshed between the families, ultimately causing about 100 casualties.

Aug 7 1953
Eisenhower signs legislation retroactively granting Ohio official statehood for the previous 150 years. In 1803, apparently everyone just assumed that Ohio was a state, even though Congress had never passed legislation to that effect. The nation remained blissfully unaware of this fact until nosy historians began snooping around in preparation for Ohio's sesquicentennial.

Aug 7 1956
A convoy of seven army trucks loaded with dynamite explodes in front of the railway terminal in Cali, Colombia. The downtown district is instantly leveled, killing 1,200 people and injuring thousands more in the process.

Aug 7 1960
Film and television actor David Duchovny is born in New York City. Two of his most popular TV roles include Special Agent Fox Mulder from The X-Files, and transvestite DEA agent Dennis Bryson in three episodes of Twin Peaks (second season, though).

Aug 7 1998
224 are killed and 2,200 injured when the U.S. Embassies in Kenya, Nairobi and Tanzania are simultaneously struck by powerful car bombs. Nairobi is hit particularly hard, with a multitude of charred corpses littering the streets. Three months later, the United States indicts Osama bin Laden and Muhammad Atef in absentia for the attacks.

[GermanStar]

Aug 8 1925
40,000 robed Klansmen march down Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, D.C. -- a bit less than 1% of total Klan membership.

Aug 8 1960
Brian Hyland's song "Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polka-Dot Bikini" reaches number one on the pop charts.

Aug 8 1963
By tampering with railway signals, a 15 man team halts the Glasgow-to-Euston Royal Mail train in Buckinghamshire. The criminals make off with 120 sacks containing £2.6 million in cash. The incident goes down in history as "The Great Train Robbery."

Aug 8 1973
Elmer Wayne Henley confesses to killing his partner and to the the sadistic murders of 27 teenage boys beginning in 1970. Following Henley's instructions, police dig up 27 bodies before calling off the search. This beat Juan Corona's record of 25 victims.

[GermanStar]

Aug 9 1945
Because of the dense cloud cover over Kokura, USAF Maj. Charles Sweeney diverts his B-29 Bock's Car to the designated secondary target, 95 miles to the south. There he drops "Fat Man" -- a 22 kiloton Atomic Bomb -- over the city of Nagasaki, population 270,000. The blast kills 24,000 immediately, but another 46,000 perish from radiation-related illnesses over the next four months.

Aug 9 1960
Harvard professor Timothy Leary consumes seven Psilocybe caerulescens mushrooms in Cuernavaca, Mexico. Five hours later, the self-described atheist experiences a "fullblown conversion experience" next to a swimming pool. It is Leary's first drug trip.

Aug 9 1969
Tate Murders by Charles Manson's followers: Frykowski - shot twice, bludgeoned 13 times, stabbed 51 times; Pregnant Sharon Tate stabbed in the neck, breast, back, womb.

Aug 9 1974
Finally bowing to pressure from Senator Barry Goldwater and RNC chairman George Bush, President Richard M. Nixon resigns from office. His successor, Gerald Ford, assures the American people that their "long national nightmare is over."

Aug 9 1995
Jerry Garcia dies of a heart attack at Serenity Knolls near Novato, California. He had checked himself into the drug rehab center a few days prior, in hopes of kicking his longstanding heroin habit.

Aug 9 1997
Officers of Brooklyn's 70th precinct sodomize 30 year old Haitian immigrant Abner Louima with a toilet plunger, then insert the feces-contaminated plunger into Louima's mouth. Later, NYPD officials try feebly to dismiss the suspect's injuries as having resulted from ordinary homosexual activity, but a medical examination proves that to be inconsistent with the evidence.

Aug 9 1999
The U.S. Government closes the Mustang Ranch, a 104 room bordello near Reno, Nevada. U.S. Customs seized the house of ill repute for tax violations, which it believed to be operated by a front corporation controlled by Joe Conforte, original owner of the property when it first opened in 1955.

[GermanStar]

Aug 10 1628
To assist in the war with Poland, Swedish King Gustavus Adolphus builds a magnificent warship, the Vasa, with 64 bronze cannon on two tiers. But on its maiden voyage, the lower gunports are accidentally left open, and the ship immediately sinks to the bottom of Stockholm harbor. The ship remains submerged until it is raised in 1961 to become a tourist attraction.

Aug 10 1966
Last words of James French, sent to the Electric Chair by the state of Oklahoma: "How about this for a headline for tomorrow's paper? FRENCH FRIES."

Aug 10 1969
Leno and Rosemary LaBianca are brutally murdered in their Los Feliz, California home by followers of Charles Manson. They take some of their victims' blood and smear HEALTER SKELTER on the refrigerator door.

Aug 10 1972
Paul McCartney and his wife Linda are arrested in Sweden after postal officials intercept a parcel of hashish addressed to their band, Wings.

Aug 10 1989
Disgruntled postal worker John Merlin Taylor blows his wife's brains out with a .22 Ruger, then drives to his job at the Orange Glen post office in Escondido, California. There he kills two coworkers on the back loading dock, then wounds another inside before blowing his own brains out.

Aug 10 1996
Heated by the sun, power lines begin to sag in Oregon. Somehow this triggers a series of failures which cascades throughout the Western states. Four million people lose electrical service in Oregon, Washington, California, Nevada, Arizona, Utah, Montana, and Texas.