This Day In History

Jul 3 1971
Jim Morrison is found dead of an apparent heart attack in his Paris apartment bathtub. That's what he wants us to think, anyway.

Jul 3 1988
Mistaking it for a F-14 fighter plane, the American warship USS Vincennes shoots down Iran Air flight 655, killing all 290 people aboard. Despite his country's having recklessly downed a passenger airliner while operating inside Iran's territorial waters, Vice President George Bush declares a month later: "I will never apologize for the United States of America, ever. I don't care what the facts are."

Jul 3 1989
Television actor Jim Backus, known to millions as Thurston Howell III from Gilligan's Island, dies in Los Angeles of Parkinson's disease.

This Day In History

Sep 20 1970
A jury in Miami, Florida finds vocalist Jim Morrison guilty of profanity and indecent exposure for taking his penis out at a Doors concert in Coconut Grove the previous year.

Sep 20 1973
A Beechcraft D-18 charter plane crashes into a tree near Natchitoches, Louisiana, killing singer/songwriter Jim Croce, his lead guitarist, and the entire flight crew.

Sep 20 1986
Officials in Latvia test the structural integrity of a 40-year-old bridge by driving 14 heavy vehicles containing gravel on top of it. A 250-foot span of the bridge collapses, killing ten people.

Sep 20 1989
A jury finds Richard Ramirez ("The Night Stalker") guilty of 43 counts, including 13 murders and assorted incidents of burglary, rape, and sodomy. Ramirez terrorized Southern California during a string of murders, sexual attacks and burglaries. He would scrawl a pentacle in his victim's blood on the wall of each crime scene.

Sep 20 1992
Nine months prior to the infamous Bobbitt incident, a Los Angeleno named Aurelia Macias castrates her husband with a pair of scissors. Macias is found innocent by reason of insanity, and the case never generates much publicity. [It turns out that such deeds are not uncommon in certain third world countries, notably Thailand and the Philippines.]

This Day In History

Apr 25 1974
Jim Morrison's widow Pamela dies of a heroin overdose.