This Day In History

Aug 27 1967
While The Beatles are away in Bangor, Brian Epstein is found dead in his home. Officially, the cause of death was accidental overdose of sleeping pills, but many believe it was suicide. He was becoming increasingly depressed over his lack of involvement with the Beatles and also his personal turmoil caused by trying to keep his homosexuality a secret.



Aug 27 1968
TV newsman Dan Rather gets beaten up in front of cameras on the floor of the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. The reporter is trying to interview a delegate being dragged off the floor when the bruisers suddenly turn on the Rather. "He lifted me right off the floor and put me away. I was down, the breath knocked out of me, as the whole group blew on by me... In the CBS control room, they had switched the camera onto me just as I was slugged."



Aug 27 1979
The IRA assassinates Louis Earl Mountbatten by placing a bomb on his yacht off the coast of Ireland. Mountbatten was the Queen's cousin, a war hero, and one of the most respected people in England.

Aug 27 1990
Blues guitarist Stevie Ray Vaughan is killed when his Bell 206B helicopter crashes into a man-made ski hill near Elkhorn, Wisconsin.

This Day In History

Jul 2 1881
President James A. Garfield is shot in a train station by Charles Julius Guiteau, a lunatic trying to become ambassador either to Austria or France. Garfield lingers for three months before finally dying.

Jul 2 1937
Attempting to become the first female pilot to circumnavigate the globe in an airplane, Amelia Earhart disappears over the Pacific with her navigator, Fred Noonan.

Jul 2 1942
On page six, the New York Times reports Germany's mass extermination of 700,000 Jews, by use of poison gas.

Jul 2 1947
Mr. and Mrs. Dan Wilmot witness a "large glowing object" zoom across the sky at 400 or 500 miles per hour. The next day, Mac Brazel discovers the wreckage of a flying saucer -- not fragments of an experimental balloon composed of neoprene -- on a remote pasture outside Roswell, New Mexico.

Jul 2 1961
In the tile-covered foyer of his home in Ketchum, Idaho, novelist Ernest Hemingway commits suicide with his favorite shotgun. When the body was later found, "only his chin, mouth, and vestigial scraps of his cheeks were still connected to his body."

Jul 2 1982
UC Berkeley electrical engineering professor Diogenes Angelakos picks up an unattended package in Cory Hall. The pipe bomb hidden inside the parcel explodes, shredding the man's right hand. Coincidentally, Angelakos is present three years later, when the Unabomber claims a second victim in the computer science department, John Hauser.

Jul 2 1994
Colombian soccer star Andres Escobar is shot twelve times outside a bar in Bogota, and dies on the spot. Only ten days prior, Escobar had inadvertently scored a goal for the American team in the 1994 World Cup playoffs, resulting in a first-round elimination for Colombia.

This Day In History

Jun 6 1968
Senator Robert F. Kennedy dies at Good Samaritan Hospital in Los Angeles. The Democratic lawmaker had been campaigning for his party's Presidential nomination when he was shot three times by Sirhan Bishara Sirhan.

Jun 6 1981
An Indian passenger train traveling between Mansi and Saharsa jumps the tracks at a bridge crossing, submerging 11 compartments beneath the Bagmati river. Although the government places the official death toll at 268 plus another 300 missing, the actual figure is more like 1,000 killed.

Jun 6 1991
For robbing a Las Vegas video store five weeks earlier, a judge gives former Diff'rent Strokes child star Dana Plato a six-year suspended sentence. Plato's haul from the caper was $164, which she obtained by brandishing a pellet gun at the clerk.

Jun 6 1997
During her senior prom, New Jersey teenager Melissa Drexler gives birth to a healthy baby in a bathroom stall. She then strangles the child with a plastic bag and severs the umbilicus with the sharp edge on the tampon dispenser. After stashing the corpse in the trash, Drexler returns to prom and proceeds to eat a salad, request a Metallica song, and dance.

This Day In History

Jun 5 1968
Seconds after Senator Robert F. Kennedy is shot dead by Sirhan Sirhan in a Los Angeles hotel, witnesses wrestle the Palestinian to the ground and grab his smoking .22-caliber revolver. Sirhan later claims to have been acting unconsciously, possibly the result of hypnotic brainwashing.

Jun 5 1975
During the Wish You Were Here recording sessions, Syd Barrett just happens to wander into Abbey Road studio while Pink Floyd are mixing "Shine On You Crazy Diamond," a song written about Barrett. At first, none of Syd's former bandmates recognizes the fat, bald lunatic who is compulsively brushing his teeth.

Jun 5 1986
A 52-year old man in Auburn, Washington dies after taking an Excedrin capsule laced with cyanide. This is the first of two Excedrin deaths.

Jun 5 1998
Reuters and ABC News both erroneously report the death of Bob Hope, after Arizona congressman Bob Stump announces the comedian's demise on the floor of the U.S. Congress. This is to the great surprise of Bob Hope himself, who was eating breakfast at the time.

This Day In History

Apr 26 1865
Discovered hiding in a farmer's tobacco shed, John Wilkes Booth is shot in the neck. Dying and paralyzed from the neck down, he whispers: "Tell my mother I did it for my country." As his hands are held up to his face, Booth mutters "useless... useless..." They are his last words.

Apr 26 1986
44 seconds into a late-night experiment at the Chernobyl nuclear power station, reactor number four sustains two large explosions. A plume of dangerous radioactivity looms three kilometers high, making it the worst catastrophe in the history of nuclear power. The Soviet news agency TASS holds off reporting the incident for almost 48 hours.

'All Chaos Broke Loose,' Says Witness of Arizona Shooting

(CNN) -- It was a day and an event like so many others -- until it wasn't.

Six people were killed and 12 others wounded, including U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, when a gunman opened fire in front of a grocery store in Tucson, Arizona, Saturday morning, authorities said. The congresswoman had been hosting a meeting with constituents when the attack began.

"It was continuous shooting. There was no breaking between it. They walked up and, I'm assuming, just kept firing. It sounded like tons of pots and pans falling down on the ground right next to my ear it was so loud," said Jason Pekau, an employee of a business near the Safeway grocery store.

He heard about 15 to 20 gunshots.

Pekau said he was about 50 yards from where the shooting took place, and he described the parking lot immediately after the attack.

"I just saw people running, screaming towards where the shooting happened. Everyone screaming that it was Gabrielle Giffords," he said.

Giffords was shot in her head and was in critical condition Saturday afternoon following surgery, Dr. Peter Rhee of University Medical Center in Tucson told reporters. A 9-year-old girl and a federal judge were among the dead.

"I did see them take her away on a stretcher," Pekau said about the congresswoman. "She was moving from what I saw with my own eyes."

"From what I'm being told from people that had seen it, she was shot point-blank in the head by the shooter and then after that, basically, all chaos broke loose," he said.

Bullets flew through the window of the grocery store, he said.

Pekau said he saw several people being taken away by rescue workers on stretchers and watched as they were loaded into medical helicopters. At least two people were flat on the sidewalk in front of Safeway, he said. It was not immediately clear whether they were dead or waiting for assistance.

Video from the scene showed one of Giffords' banners still hanging in the storefront. Yellow tape was draped around the parking lot as police began their initial investigation.

Giffords won her third term in a closely contested race against a Tea Party-sponsored candidate and was one of three Democratic legislators who reported vandalism at their offices following the March vote on health care reform.

President Barack Obama spoke from Washington soon after the attack, calling it a national tragedy.

He underlined how simply the day began -- like any other.

"It's not surprising that today, Gabby was going what she was always does -- listening to the hopes and concerns of her neighbors," said Obama, referring to the congresswoman by her nickname. "That is the essence of what our democracy is all about."

Man Arrested, Accused of Threatening to Kill Obama

(CNN) -- A man accused of making threatening statements about killing President Obama has been arrested in Nevada, the Secret Service said Saturday.

Daniel James Murray was arrested Friday night in the parking lot of the Riverside Resort Hotel and Casino in Laughlin, Nevada, said Secret Service spokesman Malcolm Wiley.

Murray recently withdrew $85,000 from a bank in St. George, Utah, in two separate visits and told a teller, "We are on a mission to kill the president of the United States," according to a criminal complaint filed in federal court in Utah.

According to the complaint, Murray opened an account at Zions First National Bank on May 19 with an $85,000 check.

"With all this mess going on under President Obama with banks and the economy, I'm sure if citizens happen to lose their money, they will rise up and we could see killing and deaths," he said, according to the complaint.

On May 27, he returned to the bank and tried to withdraw $12,000, but lacked proper identification.

"Not to be disrespectful, but if I don't get this money, someone is going to die," Murray said, according to the complaint.

A bank manager was summoned and Murray was allowed to withdraw the money without proper identification.

Murray would not accept a check and demanded bills no larger than $50, the complaint says.

"We are 94 million miles from the sun, and are in-between the sun and moon, and the eagle that flies between them and it's a giant step for mankind. ... I have traveled thousands of miles to be here and know things that are going to happen. ... the banking system will fail and people will die. ... there will be chaos in the world," Murray said, according to the complaint.

He then made his threat against the president, the complaint says.

The next day, Murray returned to the bank, withdrew the rest of his money and closed the account, a bank teller told authorities.

This Day In History

Apr 23 1969
Sirhan Sirhan sentenced to death for assassinating Robert Kennedy.

Apr 23 1975
Peter Ham of Badfinger suicides at age 27, by hanging himself. Another bandmate, Tom Evans, suicides later in 1983.


Apr 23 1983
The West German magazine Stern announces a major historical find: the discovery of 60 volumes of personal diaries purported to have been handwritten by Adolf Hitler.

Apr 23 1985
The Coca-Cola Bottling Company announces that it has irrevocably changed the formula for its flagship beverage, unveiling "New Coke." The company stands firm on its decision until public pressure finally forces them to reintroduce the original drink, exactly 79 days later.

This Day In History

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.

This Day In History

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 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.