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[GermanStar]

Aug 31 1422
Henry V dies of dysentery!

Aug 31 1888
Jack the Ripper kills his first known victim, prostitute Mary Ann Nichols, slitting her throat from ear to ear.

Aug 31 1919
The American Communist Party is established, providing entertainment for Joseph McCarthy and J. Edgar Hoover for decades.

Aug 31 1997
Lady Diana, and her boyfriend Dodi Fayed, killed in car crash inside a Paris tunnel. The driver was drunk and they were going very, very fast.

Aug 31 1999
A video game machine explodes at an underground Moscow arcade, injuring perhaps thirty people and killing several others.

[GermanStar]

Sep 1 1923
A 7.9 magnitude earthquake strikes the cities of Tokyo and Yokohama at noon. Almost 142,000 people are killed by falling building or in the resulting fires. Yokohama suffers 88 separate blazes, which rage unabated for two days. In all, 694,000 homes are destroyed, leaving 1.5 million survivors homeless.

Sep 1 1939
Hitler reluctantly invades Poland, but only after being provoked by warmongering Poles. The previous night, a Polish commando team shot their way into a German radio station in the border town of Gleiwitz, and broadcasted a radical call to arms against the peaceloving people of Germany. Except that it was all an elaborate sham engineered by Nazi general Reinhard Heydrich, dubbed Operation Canned Goods.

Sep 1 1941
The Third Reich passes a law requiring Jews to wear a prominent yellow star in public.

Sep 1 1956
Elvis Presley buys his mama a pink Cadillac.

Sep 1 1969
Troops led by Muammar Qaddafi execute Operation Jerusalem, seizing control of Libya in a military coup.

Sep 1 1983
Korean Air flight 007 strays off-course, approaching the Kamchatka peninsula. The Soviet Union scrambles fighter jets to intercept the Boeing 747, and gives the order to shoot down the passenger plane five minutes after it crosses the border. Two surface-to-air missiles later, and there are 269 corpses floating in the sea.

[GermanStar]

Sep 2 1666
A kitchen fire breaks out in Thomas Farynor's bakery on Pudding Lane, unleashing four days of destruction. 436 acres in the city are converted to ash, including 13,200 homes. 200,000 residents are rendered homeless by what comes to be known as the Great Fire of London.

Sep 2 1898
The 25,800 men of the Anglo-Egyptian Nile Expeditionary Force prevail over 52,000 Mahdists near Omdurman, Sudan. During the five-hour battle, 11,000 Mahdists are killed, 16,000 wounded, and 5,000 captured as prisoners of war. Meanwhile, the British force suffers only 48 deaths.

Sep 2 1945
On the shelter deck of the USS Missouri in Yokohama harbor, 11 representatives of Emperor Hirohito sign the Instrument of Surrender.

Sep 2 1993
Gay porn star Tom Farrell is killed by a hit-and-run driver while urinating late at night by the side of a road.

Sep 2 2005
President George W Bush praises Michael Brown, FEMA director, just after Hurricane Katrina: "Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job." Despite the President's upbeat assessment, Americans saw a disconnected and ineffective response from FEMA courtesy of cable news networks.

[GermanStar]

Sep 3 1941
At Auschwitz, the Germans conduct a live trial on 600 Russian POWs and 298 sick prisoners to test the lethality of an insecticide known as Zyklon-B. It turns out to be extremely effective at killing people.

Sep 3 1962
american poet edward estlin cummings dies from a brain hemorrhage after splitting firewood in north conway, new hampshire

Sep 3 1969
Ho Chi Minh dies of heart failure in Hanoi, Vietnam. He had asked to be cremated and his ashes buried on three hilltops. Contrary to his express wishes, Uncle Ho is embalmed and put on display in a mausoleum just like Lenin's.

Sep 3 1971
The office of Daniel Ellsberg's Beverly Hills psychiatrist is burglarized by Nixon's plumbers, led by CIA operative E. Howard Hunt. Watergate investigators later uncover a memo about the burglary addressed to White House domestic affairs adviser John Ehrlichman, predating the actual crime.

[GermanStar]

Sep 4 1976
George W Bush is arrested in Kennebunkport, Maine for driving with a blood-alcohol level of 0.10 percent. He pays the $150 fine and has his driving privileges suspended for a month. Years later, during Bush's 2000 campaign for President, a WPXT-TV reporter from Portland, Maine uncovers the arrest record just one week prior to election day. It is also revealed that Bush's V.P. candidate, Dick Cheney, had arrests for drunken driving in 1962 and 1963.

Sep 4 1991
25 workers are killed when a fire breaks out at the Imperial Foods food processing plant in Hamlet, North Carolina. Most of the victims -- predominantly single mothers -- die of smoke inhalation. The facility's rear exit had been padlocked by management to deter employee pilferage. The Imperial plant had never once in its 11-year history been inspected by the state. The owner, Emmet Roe, later receives 19 years in prison for the 25 counts of involuntary manslaughter.

Sep 4 1993
3'11" actor Herve Villechaize puts a pistol to his chest and commits suicide in his North Hollywood, California home.

Sep 4 2000
During a campaign stop in Naperville, Illinois, Presidential candidate George W Bush turns to running mate Dick Cheney and says, "There's Adam Clymer, major league asshole from the New York Times." Cheney responds, "Oh yeah, he is, big-time." Unbeknownst to the men, their comments are transmitted clearly to the television news feed. Rather than offer a mea culpa to Clymer, Bush later issues this non-apology: "I regret that a private comment I made to the vice-presidential candidate made it onto the public airwaves. I regret everybody heard what I said."

[GermanStar]

Sep 5 1921
Undiscovered actress Virginia Rappe somehow ruptures her bladder during actor-comedian Fatty Arbuckle's party at the Saint Francis Hotel in San Francisco. Three days later, the feverish woman is checked into a maternity hospital, where she dies from peritonitis. Arbuckle is eventually tried for murder, but acquitted.

Sep 5 1949
A former sharpshooter in World War II, pharmacy student Howard Unruh kills 13 neighbors in Camden, New Jersey with a souvenir Luger. He later tells a reporter "I'm no psycho. I have a good mind. I'd have killed a thousand if I had enough bullets."

Sep 5 1972
Five Palestinians armed with machine guns sneak into the Olympic Village in Munich. There they take nine Israeli athletes hostage, killing two others in the process. Later, they demand safe passage out of the country and the release of 200 Palestinians from prison in Israel. Ultimately, none of the athletes makes it out alive.

Sep 5 1975
Manson Family member Lynette "Squeaky" Fromme almost assassinates President Gerald Ford with a .45 automatic in Sacramento, California. But Fromme is tackled by a Secret Service agent before she can remember to rack a round into the firing chamber.

Sep 5 1989
During a televised speech from the Oval Office, President George HW Bush holds up a bag of crack cocaine purchased across the street at Lafayette Park. Three weeks later, a DEA official admits to The Washington Post that crack dealers don't actually hang out in Lafayette Park, so they purposely lured one to the spot. "We had to manipulate him to get him down there. It wasn't easy." Reportedly, the seller's first question was: "Where the f**k is the White House?"

Sep 5 1990
In his testimony before the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee, LAPD chief Daryl Gates opines: "Casual drug users should be taken out and shot."

Sep 5 1991
Disgraced children's television star Pee-wee Herman returns to the public eye for the first time after his masturbation arrest, appearing on the MTV Video Music Awards. He opens with the line: "Heard any good jokes lately?"

Sep 5 2001
Hank the Angry Drunken Dwarf, a regular of the Howard Stern "Wack Pack" and a midget alcoholic, died yesterday at the tender age of 39. Sleep well, little souse.

Sep 5 2003
One Disneyland guest is killed and 10 others injured when the Big Thunder Mountain Railroad coaster jumps the tracks in Frontierland.

[GermanStar]

Sep 6 1901
While shaking hands at the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, New York, President William McKinley is shot twice in the abdomen at point-blank range with a .32 caliber revolver. He dies a week later. The assassin, an anarchist by the name of Leon Frank Czolgosz, actually is a lone gunman (for once).

Sep 6 1951
During a drinking party in Mexico City, author William S. Burroughs instructs his wife Joan to balance a glass of gin on her head. He then takes careful aim with his new .38 pistol, and unintentionally blows her brains out in front of their friends. The Mexican authorities later charge Burroughs with criminal imprudence.

Sep 6 1966
Parliamentary messenger Demetrios Tsafendas assassinates Prime Minister Hendrik Verwoerd, by sticking a knife in his chest on the floor of the South African legislature. The apartheid system had been Verwoerd's brainchild.

Sep 6 1986
In Istanbul, two Arab terrorists step inside the Neve Shalom synagogue on Buyuk Hendek Street during Sabbath services. They unload into the worshippers with submachine guns and grenades, killing 22 and wounding six. The incident is later attributed to Abu Nidal's terror organization.

[GermanStar]

Sep 7 1978
Keith Moon, drummer for The Who, dies in his London residence from an overdose of chlormethiazole edisylate, a prescription drug used to treat alcoholism. Moon's flat, #12 Curzon Place, was the same spot where Mama Cass died of a heart attack in 1974.

Sep 7 1978
Walking to the bus stop, BBC journalist Georgi Markov suddenly feels a sharp pain in his right calf. A KGB assassin had jabbed him with an umbrella tip, rigged to inject a tiny platinum sphere. The pellet is laden with ricin, a castor-based toxin with no known antidote. Markov dies in the hospital four agonizing days later.

Sep 7 1996
Standing up through the open sunroof of a BMW 750 sedan, rap artist Tupac Shakur is talking to some women at a Las Vegas street intersection when a white Cadillac pulls alongside. Gunfire erupts, and Shakur is shot four times. He dies in the hospital a week later.

[GermanStar]

Sep 8 1888
The "terribly mutilated" body of prostitute Annie Chapman is found in the backyard of 29 Hanbury Street, Spitalfields. It is the second known victim attributed to Jack the Ripper.

Sep 8 1935
Dr. Carl Austin Weiss confronts Senator Huey Long in a narrow corridor of the State House in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Weiss draws a .32 caliber pistol and fires one slug into Long's abdomen. The Senator's bodyguards immediately make Swiss cheese out of Weiss, riddling him with 61 bullets. Long is rushed to the hospital, where he dies two days later.

Sep 8 1966
Star Trek debuts on NBC, with the airing of an episode titled "The Man Trap." The science fiction show proceeds to suffer in the ratings against established sitcoms Bewitched and My Three Sons.

Sep 8 1974
President Gerald Ford pardons Richard M. Nixon, out of respect for Nixon's family. "Theirs is an American tragedy in which we all have played a part. It could go on and on and on, or someone must write the end to it. I have concluded that only I can do that, and if I can, I must."

Sep 8 1974
In Idaho, daredevil Evel Knievel climbs into his X-2 Skycycle (really just a rocket on wheels) and hits the ignition. The vehicle manages to clear the quarter-mile-wide Snake River Canyon, but then the parachute deploys prematurely and prevailing winds push him back into the chasm. Total ripoff.

Sep 8 1993
The refrigerated remains of President Ferdinand Marcos, whose corpse spent several years exiled in Hawaii, returns to the Philippines for its final resting place. Luckily, Imelda had preserved her husband, so they are finally able to put him on display just like Lenin, Stalin, and Pol Pot -- under glass in a mausoleum of his very own.

[GermanStar]

Sep 9 1087
William the Conqueror dies of internal injuries, sustained six weeks prior in a horse riding accident at Mantes-la-Jolie. When the corpulent king was later laid to rest in the foundations of a church, William's "swollen bowels burst, and an intolerable stench assailed the nostrils of the by-standers and the whole crowd."

Sep 9 1942
On orders of Heinrich Himmler, Auschwitz prisoners are forced to exhume and burn 107,000 decaying corpses from the camp's mass graves. They are cremated in gigantic, open-pit bonfires.

Sep 9 1956
Elvis Presley makes his first-ever appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show, performing four songs for guest host Charles Laughton. Ed himself had vowed never to have Presley on his show, but Sullivan is at home, recuperating from a severe head injury.

Sep 9 1971
1,300 inmates riot inside the Attica Correctional Facility in western New York state, commandeering the prison and taking 40 guards hostage. The national guard stages an assault five days later, killing 42 people in the process (10 of them being captives).

Sep 9 1999
A bomb planted by Chechen terrorists explodes in a Moscow apartment building on Guryanov Street, killing more than 90 people. It is part of a series of apartment bombings in Russia leaving more than 400 dead.

Sep 9 2003
Edward Teller, the "Father of the Hydrogen Bomb" and purported model for Dr. Strangelove, dies at the age of 95 at his home on the Stanford University campus. His role in the destruction of colleague J. Robert Oppenheimer's career during the McCarthy era resulted in his own ostracism by many of his peers.

[GermanStar]

Sep 10 1846
1,000 members of the Illinois State Militia, under the command of one Thomas Brockman, begin what will become a six-day campaign to drive out the Mormon settlement of Nauvoo. The first day consists of a cannon bombardment of the town, and things escalate from there. A treaty signed at the end of the week exchanges a Mormon surrender for the preservation of life and property, but the Illinois side flagrantly violates this agreement by raping and looting the village.

Sep 10 1977
Convicted torture-killer Hamida Djandoubi, an immigrant from Tunisia, becomes the last person executed by France when he is guillotined in Marseilles.

Sep 10 1990
Liberian president Samuel Doe is stripped naked, beaten, and tortured to death. He had been taken hostage in Monrovia the previous day by rebels led by Prince Johnson. They capture the entire process on videotape, which soon becomes West Africa's most-watched snuff film. Most memorable moment: when they cut off one of Doe's ears and Johnson chews it up.

Sep 10 1993
The X-Files premieres on the Fox network. 7.4 million homes tune in for the science fiction/conspiracy/detective show.

[GermanStar]

Sep 11 1973
With the blessing of Henry Kissinger and the CIA, general Augusto Pinochet stages a violent coup in Chile, overthrowing the government of Salvador Allende, the country's democratically-elected but nonetheless Marxist president.

Sep 11 1978
Janet Parker, a medical photographer, is the final victim of smallpox. It is likely she contracted the disease at Birmingham University's medical lab, an accident while working on an unrelated project.

Sep 11 1987
Upset over delays due to live coverage of a pro tennis match, television anchorman Dan Rather walks off the set of the CBS Evening News. When the sports program ends unexpectedly, Rather is nowhere to be found. The network feed goes dark for six whole minutes before Dan can be persuaded to return.

Sep 11 1987
Actor Lorne Greene, star of television's Bonanza and Battlestar Galactica, dies of pneumonia in Santa Monica, California. Greene, whose credits also include 1986's Vasectomy: A Delicate Matter, was 504 in dog years.

Sep 11 1991
Boxer Mike Tyson is arrested for raping Desiree Washington in an Indianapolis hotel room. After his conviction and three years spent behind bars, Tyson continues to maintain his innocence, telling one reporter: "I just hate her guts... I really wish I did now... now I really do want to rape her."

Sep 11 2001
The single largest terrorist attack in history occurs when four commercial jetliners are hijacked, two of which slam into the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York. Another plane is crashed into the Pentagon. 2,915 people are killed in the attacks, coordinated by Saudi terrorist Osama bin Laden. The civilized world is horrified; especially after seeing footage of Palestinians celebrating in the streets.
For the first time in U.S. history, all flights are grounded throughout the country. All major government facilities are evacuated as well as many local facilities. The federal government uses this sneak attack as a pretext to crack down on civil liberties, in the form of the USA PATRIOT Act and similar efforts, which continue to this day.

Sep 11 2003
Tommy Chong, half of the perpetually high comedy duo Cheech and Chong, is sentenced to nine months in federal prison. Chong was targeted and made an example of as the result of two U.S. investigations (Operation Pipe Dreams and Operation Headhunter) which sought to close down businesses selling bongs and other marijuana-related drug paraphernalia over the Internet.

[GermanStar]

Sep 12 1878
The magnificent phallic symbol Cleopatra's Needle is erected in London on the bank of the Thames. It doesn't really have anything to do with Cleopatra. The obelisk has a twin in New York's Central Park, also named Cleopatra's Needle. It has nothing to do with Cleopatra, either.

Sep 12 1966
NBC television premieres The Monkees, a sitcom about four guys in a rock band. When the show becomes a hit, the fictional Monkees somehow release a string of albums, even though three of the actors can't even play their instruments.

Sep 12 1970
After releasing most of their captives, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine blows up three hijacked passenger jets in the Jordanian desert. The 40 remaining Israeli hostages are taken to secret locations in Amman, Jordan.

Sep 12 1977
The body of Steven Biko is discovered on the floor of a jail cell in Pretoria. The South African civil rights activist had been beaten and tortured six days earlier, during an interrogation in Port Elizabeth. Police officials claim that Biko probably suffered the fatal injuries when he "fell out of bed."

Sep 12 1992
Anthony Perkins, star of the Hitchcock classic Psycho, dies of AIDS in his Hollywood hills home. His extraordinary versatility as an actor is captured in the films Psycho II, Psycho III, and Psycho IV: The New Beginning.

Sep 12 1994
After a night of boozing and smoking crack, Frank Corder steals a Cessna P150 and crashes it into the south lawn of the White House. The wreckage tumbles over a tree and a hedge before coming to rest against the West Wing of the Executive Mansion. Corder's flamboyant suicide attack never actually imperiled President Clinton's life, since the First Family was sleeping elsewhere at the time.

[GermanStar]

Sep 13 1848
A 13-pound tamping iron is blown through the head of railroad construction foreman Phineas P. Gage, entering beneath the left cheekbone and exiting the top of his head. The metal bar lands 30 yards away, taking with it much of his left frontal lobe. Gage never loses consciousness, even while the doctors examine his wound. Two months later, he is well enough to return home and resume an active life of work and travel. The steel rod, along with a cast of Gage's head, and his skull, are now on display at Harvard Medical Schools's Warren Anatomical Museum.

Sep 13 1916
Mary the circus elephant is publicly executed in the Erwin, Tennessee railyard, after killing a drifter named Red Eldridge the previous day. The five-ton animal is hanged from a derrick car in front of 3,000 onlookers, and left hanging for half an hour.

Sep 13 1971
After 1,300 rioting prisoners reject a list of proposed concessions because it lacks immunity from prosecution, New York Governor (Broken link for Nelson Rockefeller) orders an attack to retake Attica prison. In all, 29 prisoners die and 85 are wounded; and 10 hostages are killed. For months thereafter, prisoners receive inhumane beatings from guards.

Sep 13 1974
The Rockford Files debuts on NBC television featuring James Garner.

Sep 13 1996
Death Row Records rap artist Tupac Shakur dies in Las Vegas from gunshot wounds inflicted during a drive-by. The rapper was shot four times by persons unknown, leaving him in a coma for six days. 2PAC had recently spent 8 months in prison for sexual assault.

[GermanStar]

Sep 14 1927
Legendary dancer Isadora Duncan is killed in Nice, France when her long silk scarf gets tangled in the rear wheel of the convertible she's riding in. Her neck is broken and an artery severed. Some accounts have her thrown against the pavement and dragged for 100 feet. The freak accident occurs in full view of a number of friends.

Sep 14 1956
Surgeons Walter Freeman and Egas Moniz perform America's first prefrontal lobotomy on a depressed, 63-year-old Kansas woman in Washington, D.C. They successfully create a lethargic dullard, and the duo hails the result for years to come as a medical triumph, despite the fact that two of their next twenty lobotomy subjects end as fatalities.

Sep 14 1982
Grace Kelly, American-born princess of Monaco, dies after a high speed car crash the previous day. She and daughter Princess Stephanie were badly injured when their British Rover 3500 plunged into a ravine, tumbling 45 feet. In the official version of events, Grace suffered a mild stroke while driving; however, rumors persist that 17-year-old Princess Stephanie was actually behind the wheel.

[GermanStar]

Sep 15 1830
The Right Hon. William Huskisson becomes the world's first rail fatality, after a locomotive runs over his left leg near Manchester, England.

Sep 15 1885
P.T. Barnum's prize elephant Jumbo is struck dead by a freight train in St. Thomas, Ontario, Canada. It takes 150 men to haul the carcass up an embankment, from whence it is taken to a taxidermist. The stuffed Jumbo becomes a featured attraction in Barnum's circus.

Sep 15 1935
The newly-enacted Nuremberg Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honor forbids Jews from marrying or having sex with Germanic individuals, punishable by imprisonment.

Sep 15 1954
In front of thousands of spectating New Yorkers at 51st and Lexington, Marilyn Monroe performs the now-famous skirt blowing scene during filming for The Seven Year Itch. The event basically boils down to a publicity stunt, as the whole thing gets reshot later on a Hollywood soundstage.

Sep 15 1972
Indictments are brought against the seven Watergate conspirators: McCord, Frank Sturgis, Barker, Martinez, González, E. Howard Hunt, and Liddy.

Sep 15 1996
Serial killer and dimwitted homosexual Ottis Toole dies in prison from cirrhosis of the liver. In their heyday, he and Henry Lee Lucas had traveled the country, killing perhaps as many as 600 victims. Toole twice confessed to the murder of Adam Walsh, son of America's Most Wanted host John Walsh, but recanted both times.

Sep 15 1998
Rap artist Coolio is arrested in Lawndale, California after being pulled over for driving a 1996 Hummer on the wrong side of the road. He was carrying an expired license, a loaded 9mm semiautomatic firearm, and a small quantity of marijuana.

[GermanStar]

Sep 16 1498
Tomas de Torquemada, Grand Inquisitor of the Spanish Inquisition, dies in Avila, Spain. More than 2,000 heretics were burned to death and 9,654 otherwise tortured under his aegis before all the Jews were expelled in 1492. In 1836, vandals break into Torquemada's tomb, cremate the bones, and scatter his ashes upon the winds.

Sep 16 1920
A horse-drawn carriage parked at the corner of Wall and Broad streets suddenly explodes just past mid-day. 100 pounds of dynamite hurls 500 pounds of steel shrapnel into a crowd of New Yorkers, killing 40 and wounding almost 300 others. No one is ever charged in the world's first car bombing.

Sep 16 1968
Presidential candidate Richard M. Nixon appears on the NBC comedy show Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In and asks "'Sock it to me'?"

Sep 16 1985
Art Scholl, Hollywood's greatest aerobatics pilot, loses control of his Pitts S-2A biplane over the Pacific Ocean during the filming of Top Gun. Before heading off to the Danger Zone in the sky, Scholl's last words were "I have a problem -- I have a real problem."

Sep 16 1999
Disney Infoseek executive Patrick Naughton travels to the Santa Monica pier to meet a 13-year-old girl he was attempting to seduce via an Internet chatroom called "dad&daughtersex." The girl was actually an undercover cop. Disney fires Naughton almost immediately after the news breaks; the executive later pleads guilty to the charge of crossing state lines to have sex with a minor.

Sep 16 2005
John Ellis Bush, son of Florida Governor Jeb Bush, is arrested for being drunk in public and resisting arrest outside a bar in Austin, TX.

[GermanStar]

Sep 17 1859
San Francisco resident Joshua A. Norton proclaims himself Emperor of these United States, a title he retains until his death in 1880. The successor to Emperor Norton I has yet to be anointed.

Sep 17 1908
Thomas E. Selfridge becomes the world's first airplane fatality when the craft he's co-piloting with Orville Wright crashes near Fort Meyer, Virginia. An untested propeller ripped apart the plane's structure, causing it to nosedive from an altitude of 75 feet.

Sep 17 1939
The Soviet Union invades Poland, to fulfill its end of the secret protocols contained in the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact. They partition the country along pre-decided lines.

Sep 17 1965
CBS television premieres Hogan's Heroes, the first and perhaps only sitcom based in a German prisoner-of-war camp. The show is proof once and for all that Nazis are hilarious.

Sep 17 1980
Deposed Nicaraguan dictator Anastasio Somoza is assassinated in Asuncion, Paraguay when his limousine is stopped by a six-man hit squad, armed with machine guns and a bazooka. As it happens, Somoza's father, Anastasio Sr., was himself assassinated in 1956.

[GermanStar]

    
Sep 18 1931
The "Mukden Incident" occurs when Imperial Japanese troops occupying northern Manchuria blow up a portion of the railway near Mukden (now Shenyang), blame the destruction on Chinese saboteurs, and commence the annexation of Manchuria.

Sep 18 1932
24-year-old starlet Peg Entwhistle dives head first from the letter "H" of the HOLLYWOODLAND sign in Los Angeles. She is the first person to commit suicide at the landmark.

Sep 18 1946
Harry S. Truman signs the National Security Act of 1947 thus establishing the CIA.

Sep 18 1970
A sleeping Jimi Hendrix dies in London from of a barbiturate overdose when chunks of vomited tuna sandwich wind up in his lungs, causing him to choke.

Sep 18 1978
The four KISS members release their solo albums. Rock on!

Sep 18 1981
France abolishes capital punishment, relegating its noble guillotine to a museum. The machine had not seen active duty for four years.

Sep 18 1992
Two weeks after being outed in the New York weekly QW, attorney John Schlafly admits in an interview with the San Francisco Examiner that he is homosexual. This causes a certain amount of consternation for his mother, archconservative gay rights opponent Phyllis Schlafly.

Sep 18 1994
Vitas Gerulaitis is killed in his sleep in the guest cottage of a friend's Long Island estate. The professional tennis player dies from carbon monoxide poisoning, caused by a faulty propane swimming-pool heater.

[GermanStar]

Sep 19 1692
80-year-old farmer Giles Cory is pressed under stones in Salem, Massachusetts because he refused to enter a plea for the charge of witchcraft. More and more weight was stacked upon Cory, until his death two days later. According to one eyewitness account: "in pressing, his tongue being pressed out of his mouth, the sheriff with his cane forced it in again."

Sep 19 1931
Adolf Hitler's 23-year-old half niece, Geli Raubal, is found dead in her uncle's Munich apartment from a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the chest. Some allege that she and Adolf had a sexual relationship, which involved Geli pissing on him. Hitler conveniently happens to be out of town at the time of the shooting.

Sep 19 1934
Bruno Hauptmann is arrested for the kidnap-murder of the Lindbergh baby. We aren't sure if he did it, but he did have $11,000 of the ransom money. They fry him two years later.

Sep 19 1959
In a Cold War setback, Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev is annoyed to learn that he will not be permitted to visit Disneyland, due to concerns for his personal safety.

Sep 19 1961
Betty and Barney Hill are picked up near Indian Head, New Hampshire and anally probed by five beings in a flying saucer. The couple later describes the craft as being "banana-like, with pointed tips and windows."

Sep 19 1995
The New York Times and the Washington Post publish the Unabomber's rambling, 35,000-word anti-technology screed, "Industrial Society And Its Future." In exchange, he promises to halt his bombing campaign.