TODAY IN CRIME: November 30

1487 Albert IV, Duke of Bavaria, decreed the first German Beer Purity Law (Reinheitsgebot), stating beer should be brewed from only three ingredients—water, malt, and hops.

1523 Amsterdam banned assembly of heretics.

1678 In England, the Cavalier Parliament passed an act under King Charles II “for the more effectuall preserving the Kings Person and Government by disableing Papists from sitting in either House of Parlyament.”

1786 Leopold II, the Grand Duke of Tuscany, promulgated a penal reform, making Tuscany the first modern state to abolish the death penalty. November 30 is celebrated today worldwide as Cities for Life Day.

1804 The U. S. Senate began impeachment proceedings against Supreme Court Justice Samuel Chase, accusing him of political bias. He was acquitted.

1902 Police in Knoxville, Tennessee, captured Kid Curry Logan, second-in-command of Butch Cassidy's Wild Bunch gang, for killing two policemen in a shootout. The lawmen had tried to arrest him for robbery. Logan was sentenced to 20 years imprisonment with hard labor.

1953 Governor of Uganda Sir Andrew Cohen deposed Kabaka (king) of Buganda Edward Mutesa II for promoting Buganda's secession from the Uganda Protectorate and exiled him to London. Widespread discontent with this move forced Cohen to reinstate Mutesa in 1955 as a constitutional monarch. All of Uganda gained independence in 1962.

1957 Members of the Islam group Darul Islam under the leadership of mystic Sekarmadji Maridjan Kartosuwirjo initiated a grenade attack upon Indonesian president Sukarno during a visit to a school in Central Jakarta. The leader was slightly harmed; six children were killed and more than 100 wounded.

1971 The government of the Republic of Ireland stated that it would take the allegations of brutality against the security forces in Northern Ireland to the European Court of Human Rights. Ireland claimed that the "five techniques"—prolonged wall-standing, hooding, subjection to noise, deprivation of sleep, and deprivation of food and drink—used against detainees by Northern Ireland and the UK constituted torture.

1972 In Rome, an illegal fireworks factory on the eighth floor of an apartment building exploded, killing 15 and injuring 100.

1983 Police freed kidnap victim Alfred Heineken in Amsterdam. Five kidnappers held the beer magnate and his chauffeur in a Quonset hut near the harbor for 21 days before the Heineken family paid 11 million dollars— the highest amount paid for a kidnap victim at the time—for their release. The abductors were eventually captured and sent to prison.

1987 The Grand Assembly of Afghanistan under Mohammad Najibullah adopted the constitution of the Republic of Afghanistan.

1988 The United Nations General Assembly (151-2) censured the U.S. for denying the visa of Palestine Liberation Organization Chairman Yasser Arafat. Arafat was scheduled to speak during a scheduled debate on the Palestinian question at the U.N. in New York on December 1, but U.S. Jewish leaders as well as 51 U.S. senators opposed his visit.

1988 A furrier in New York City sued Mike Tyson for $92,000 for non-payment of purchase.

1989 A roadside bomb killed Deutsche Bank chairman Alfred Herrhausen. Ten kilos of explosives and a copper plate pierced the armor-plated limo of the head of Germany's biggest bank and struck him in the legs. He bled to death before assistance could arrive. No one was ever caught or prosecuted for the murder, although the far-left terrorist group Red Army Faction lead the list of suspects.

1993 Authorities in California arrested career criminal Richard Allen Davis on the Coyote Valley Indian reservation for a parole violation. He was quickly identified as the primary suspect in the abduction and murder of 12-year-old Polly Klaas of Petaluma.

1993 U.S. President Bill Clinton signed the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act. It required a federal background check and five-day waiting period for handgun purchases.

1998 Inga Vainshtein, the former manager of singer-songwriter Jewel, filed a $10 million lawsuit against the star and her mother, Lenedra Caroll, claiming she was fired after Caroll intentionally caused a rift between her and the singer. Vainshtein discovered Jewel in 1993 when she was performing in coffeehouses and living out of her car.

1999 Protests by anti-globalization demonstrators against a World Trade Organization meeting in Seattle, Washington, caught police unprepared and forced the cancellation of opening ceremonies. 40,000 protestors attended. Police arrested 157 individuals but released them for lack of probable cause or hard evidence; in 2004 the city paid them $250,000 in compensation.

2001 Police in Washington state arrested Gary Ridgway, the Green River Killer. DNA evidence linked semen left in four victims to a saliva swab taken by police 20 years earlier. Ridgway was convicted of 49 murders committed between 1982 and 1998 and received life in prison without parole.

2006 Same-sex marriage in South Africa became legal. With the Civil Union Act of 2006, South Africa became the fifth country in the world and the first in Africa to enact such legislation.

2017 Def Jam founder Russell Simmons stepped down from Def Jam records, his yoga lifestyle brand, CNNMoney, and other media properties after allegations of sexual misconduct. After the NYPD opened an investigation into the claims, the hip hop mogul fled to Indonesia to avoid extradition.

2018 Marriott Hotels revealed a massive data breach. In one of largest-ever company hacks, cyber-criminals accessed information on as many as 500 million guests, including names, addresses, email addresses, phone numbers, unencrypted passport numbers, credit card information, arrival and departure information, VIP status, and loyalty information for linked companies like airlines. An investigation revealed the attack went undetected for years.

2019 A gun battle between a drug cartel and security forces at the city hall in Villa Unión, Mexico, killed 19 people—four police officers, two civilians, and 14 criminals. Seeking to retake control of the northern state of Coahuila, members of the Cartel del Noreste—made up of former members of the bloody Los Zetas Cartel—sprayed town offices with bullets from heavily armed pickup trucks painted with skulls and fought Mexican police for more than 90 minutes. Police confiscated various long-range guns, thousands of rounds of ammunition, and 25 vehicles, four with high-caliber guns, in the town about 40 miles south of Eagle Pass, Texas.

TODAY IN CRIME part two: November 23

1998 The four largest tobacco companies in the U.S.— Philip Morris Inc., R. J. Reynolds, Brown & Williamson, and Lorillard—signed the biggest civil litigation settlement in the country’s history with the attorneys general of 46 states, Washington, D.C., and five U.S. territories. The $206-billion deal resolved remaining state claims for medical care for persons with tobacco-related illnesses.

1998 U.S. federal judge Leonie Brinkema rejected the efforts of Loudoun County, Virginia, to block pornography on a library computer, calling the attempt unconstitutional.

1998 Basketball star Dennis Rodman filed for an annulment from model-actress Carmen Electra. He claimed he was of "unsound mind" when they married nine days before.

1998 A California court sentenced businessman Donald Bohana, 61, to 15 years to life in prison for the drowning death of Delores "DeeDee" Jackson, the ex-wife of Tito Jackson of the Jackson 5. Jackson had been dating Bohana for only a few months when she drowned in his pool after a night of drinking. The coroner initially ruled her death an accident.

2001 Sixty-four parties signed the Convention on Cybercrime in Budapest, Hungary. It was the first international treaty seeking to address Internet and computer crime.

2003 Georgian president Eduard Shevardnadze resigned following twenty days of mass protests over disputed parliamentary elections.

2006 Retired FSB member Alexander Litvinenko died in London from radiation poisoning after making a deathbed statement blaming Russian President Vladimir Putin. Litvinenko is the first known victim of lethal polonium 210-induced acute radiation syndrome.

2009 In Maguindanao province on the island of Mindanao, Philippines, a private army hired by the powerful Ampatuan clan stopped and massacred a convoy of supporters of rival politician Esmael Mangudadatu. 58 Mangudadatu family members, journalists, and others were killed on their way to file a certificate of candidacy for Mangudadatu to run for governor against Andal Ampatuan Jr. Eventually, 28 people were convicted of 57 counts of murder and sentenced to 40 years, 15 were sentenced to 6-10 years as accessories to crime, and 55 were acquitted.

2011 Yemen's authoritarian President Ali Abdullah Saleh agreed to step down amid a fierce uprising to oust him after 33 years in power. He ceded the office and powers of the presidency to Vice President 'Abd al-Rabb Mansour al-Hadi in return for immunity from prosecution.

2014 Abdikadir Mohammed, an adviser to Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta, claimed the slaughter of 28 people on a bus by the Somali militant Islamist group al-Shabab was intended to create a religious war in the country. Sixty people were traveling to the capitol of Nairobi when about 100 militants forced the bus off the road and shot dead passengers who failed to recite the Koran.

2015 President Yahya Jammeh of Gambia banned female genital mutilation, claiming it is not required in Islam, and threatened practitioners with a prison sentence of up to three years. According to UNICEF, 75% of women in the mostly Muslim country were subjected to the ritual of Khatna.

2016 British Justice Sir Alan Fraser Wilkie ordered life in prison for Thomas Mair, murderer of Labour MP Jo Cox. Mair, a right-wing extremist, shot and stabbed to death the representative for Batley and Spen a week before the EU referendum vote in June. He shouted, "Britain first, this is for Britain!" as he attacked the mother of two.

2017 After a three-week standoff, Papua New Guinea Police stormed the Manus Island refugee camp, forcibly removing asylum seekers.

2017 An Italian court sentenced Brazilian football star Robinho to nine years in prison for rape. He and five other males were convicted of sexual assault in the January 2013 gang rape of a 22-year-old Albanian woman at a Milan nightclub.

TODAY IN CRIME part one: November 23

800 Charlemagne arrived in Rome to investigate the alleged crimes of Pope Leo III. After the pope swore an oath of purgation claiming he was innocent of the adultery and perjury charges, his accusers were exiled.

1227 Rivals-to-the-throne assassinated Leszek I the White, High Duke of Poland, at an assembly of Polish dukes at Gąsawa, and a struggle for succession ensued.

1499 British authorities hanged pretender to the throne Perkin Warbeck for plotting to overthrow King Henry VII. Werbeck had invaded England in 1497, claiming to be one of the “Princes in the Tower”—the lost sons of King Edward IV—but later confessed he was actually a merchant from Belgium.

1765 In defiance of the Stamp Act of 1765, twelve Maryland magistrates composed a resolution known as the Repudiation Act that allowed businesses and officials to proceed without the use of the stamped paper England required for most documents. It is considered the first official defiance of the colonies against the British government, eight years before the Boston Tea Party.

1867 Officials at New Bailey Prison in Manchester, England, hanged the Manchester Martyrs for killing a police officer while freeing two Irish Republican Brotherhood members from custody. 10,000 people witnessed the hanging.

1876 U.S. Navy frigate USS Franklin delivered corrupt Tammany Hall leader William Magear Tweed (better known as Boss Tweed) to authorities in New York City after his capture in Spain.

1921 To close a loophole in the National Prohibition Act, U.S. President Warren G. Harding signed the Willis-Campbell Act (anti-beer bill) that forbid doctors to prescribe medicinal alcohol.

1974 On the orders of dictator Mengistu Haile Mariam, the Provisional Military Government of Socialist Ethiopia executed sixty imprisoned Ethiopian politicians, aristocrats, military officers, and other persons in the Massacre of the Sixty.

1976 Memphis police arrested singer Jerry Lee Lewis outside the gates of Graceland after he showed up for the second time that night and made a scene by shouting, waving a pistol, and demanding to see Elvis Presley.

1979 The Republic of Ireland sentenced Thomas McMahon to life imprisonment for the assassination of Earl Mountbatten and three others. McMahon, a member of the Provisional Irish Republican Army, exploded a bomb on Mountbatten’s fishing boat the previous August. He was released in 1998 under the terms of the Good Friday Agreement.

1979 Police in Oslo, Norway, arrested singer Marianne Faithful at Oslo Airport for possession of marijuana.

1985 U.S. Marshals arrested Larry Wu-tai Chin, a retired CIA analyst, for spying for China. Facing two life terms in prison and fines totaling $3.3 million, Chin committed suicide in prison a year after his conviction for multiple charges of espionage and tax violations.

1985 Gunmen of the terrorist organization Abu Nidal hijacked EgyptAir Flight 648 en route from Athens to Cairo. When the plane landed in Malta, Egyptian commandos stormed the aircraft and 58 people died in the raid.

1989 The U.S. flew Lucia Barrera de Cerna, survivor of the massacre at Jose Simeon Canas University in El Salvador on November 16, to Miami for protective custody. de Cerna worked as a housekeeper for the six Jesuit priests killed by Salvadoran Army soldiers November 16; her coworker and her coworker’s teenaged daughter were also killed in the raid.

1994 Police in Nagpur, India, created a panic and triggered a stampede that killed 114 people after they charged a crowd of protesters with their batons. The crowd of 50,000 Gowari people were demanding tribal status. The victims, mostly women and children, were crushed to death. The Maharashtra Minister of Tribal Development accepted responsibility for the tragedy and resigned, although the Maharashtra state government found no one responsible.

TODAY IN CRIME: November 16

1491 Spanish civil authorities publicly executed nine people accused by the Spanish Inquisition of killing a little boy. The three Jews and six conversos (Jews converted to Catholicism) were burned at the stake in the Brasero de la Dehesa outside of Ávila. Despite there being no evidence of any boy being killed, and disputed evidence that such a child even existed, locals still celebrate the cult of the Holy Infant. Jews were often accused of killing Christian children and using their blood in their religious rituals.

1581 After Tsar Ivan the Terrible of Russia assaulted his pregnant daughter-in-law and caused her to miscarry, his son Ivan Ivanovich rushed in to confront his father. The enraged tsar struck him on the head with his scepter but immediately regretted it. Despite his father's prayers, Ivan died three days later.

1793 Considering the guillotine too slow a death for those suspected of activities counter to the French Revolution, Committee for Public Safety member Jean-Baptiste Carrier ordered the drowning of ninety dissident Roman Catholic priests in the Loire River at Nantes. Carrier continued the mass drownings through February.

1849 A Russian court sentenced writer Fyodor Dostoyevsky to death for anti-government activities linked to a radical intellectual group. Facing a firing squad, Dostoyevsky received a last-minute reprieve from the Tsar and spent four years in a labor camp.

1885 Canada executed rebel leader of the Métis and "Father of Manitoba" Louis Riel for high treason. Riel's work to preserve the rights, culture, and even lands of native peoples lead to armed confrontation with the newly formed confederation government. The Royal North-West Mounted Police put down the rebellion and captured Riel, and he was tried, convicted, and hanged. Riel’s execution permanently alienated Francophones and is controversial to this day.

1940 "Mad Bomber" George Metesky left his first bomb on a window sill at the Consolidated Edison power plant at 170 West 64th Street in Manhattan. He went on to plant at least 32 more bombs in New York City over the next 16 years.

1966 An Ohio jury acquitted Dr. Samuel H. Sheppard in his second trial on charges of bludgeoning to death his pregnant wife, Marilyn Reese Sheppard, in 1954. Noting the "carnival atmosphere" and a biased judge of his first trial, the U.S. Supreme Court had struck down the original 1954 conviction and allowed the retrial.

1976 Scottish homemaker Renee MacRae and her son Andrew disappeared from Inverness, Scotland. Their bodies have never been found; the disappearance is currently Britain's longest-running missing persons case. The Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service charged MacRae’s lover, William MacDowell, with their murders in 2019.

1988 A Los Angeles Superior Court judge sentenced Stephen Love, former Beach Boys manager and the brother of lead singer Mike Love, to 5 years’ probation and ordered him to pay $86,000 restitution for embezzling more than $900,000 from the band.

1989 In San Salvador, El Salvadoran army troops dragged six Jesuit priests and two others in residence at the Universidad Centroamericana José Simeón Cañas from their beds and shot them in the head. The Jesuits advocated a negotiated settlement between the Salvadoran government and the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN), a coalition of left-wing groups that had battled the government for a decade.

1997 The People’s Republic of China released pro-democracy dissident Wei Jingsheng for medical reasons. He had been incarcerated for nearly 18 years. Wei settled in the United States, where he remains active in the democratization of China.

1998 In Wright v. Universal Maritime Service Corp. et al., the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that union members could file discrimination lawsuits against employers even when labor contracts require arbitration.

1999 A hitman hired by NFL wide receiver Rae Carruth shot Carruth’s pregnant girlfriend, Cherica Adams, four times in her car. Adams managed to call 911 and rescuers were able to save her baby. Adams died after a month in the hospital. A North Carolina jury convicted Carruth of conspiracy to commit murder but acquitted him of first-degree murder; he served 18 years in prison. Prosecutors believed Carruth arranged the hit so he wouldn’t have to pay child support to another girlfriend.

2001 In the midst of the anthrax scare, hazardous materials experts sifting through 280 barrels of mail addressed to the U.S. Capitol found a letter addressed to Senator Tom Leahy (D-Vt.) laced with the deadly bacterium. Investigators sent the suspicious mail through a sensor machine that could detect the presence of biological agents. The FBI concluded microbiologist Bruce Ivins was responsible for the attacks that killed five people.

2010 The U.S. House Ethics Committee found 80-year-old Representative Charles Rangel (D-NY) guilty of 11 of 13 charges related to financial misconduct: for improperly fundraising for a community center in his name, failing to disclose more than $500,000 in assets on financial disclosure forms, and failing to disclose financial arrangements for a villa at a yacht club in the Dominican Republic. Although his fellow congressmen censured him, Rangel stayed in office until 2017.

TODAY IN CRIME: November 9

 

694 Believing all Jews were conspiring with Muslims to extinguish Christianity, Visigoth king Egica, ruler of Hispania and Septimania in southwestern Europe, ordered all Jews into slavery. The crown would confiscate their property and remove any children over the age of seven from their homes to be raised as Christians.

1456 Agents of László, son of Hungarian governor János Hunyadi, assassinated Ulrich II, Count of Celje. Because Ulrich was captain general and de facto regent of Hungary, governor of Slavonia, Croatia and Dalmatia, feudal lord of vast lands across central Europe, and claimant to the Bosnian throne, his death plunged Hungary into civil unrest.

1520 In an attempt to secure his control of the Swedish throne, Danish king Christian II ordered 82 nobles executed for heresy in the Stockholm Bloodbath, but the massacre only caused Sweden to secede from the Kolmar Union of Norway, Sweden, and Denmark. Hostility between Sweden and Denmark as they clashed for control of Scandinavia and northern Germany continued for almost 300 years.

1720 In Jerusalem, Arab creditors broke into the synagogue of Judah HeHasid and burned it down, leading to the expulsion of the Ashkenazim from Jerusalem.

1799 Napoleon Bonaparte lead the Coup de 18 Brumaire, ending the Directory government of the French Revolution and replacing it with the French Consulate.

1851 Marshals from Kentucky abducted abolitionist minister Calvin Fairbank from Jeffersonville, Indiana, and took him back to Kentucky to stand trial for aiding a slave named Tamar escape to Indiana. Fairbank served 19 years in the Kentucky State Penitentiary for his work on the Underground Railroad.

1923 In Munich, German troops loyal to the democratic government crushed the Beer Hall Putsch in Bavaria. Sixteen Nazis and four Bavarian State Police officers died in a gunfight between the Nazis and the police. The evening before, Adolf Hitler had taken control of a beer hall full of Bavarian government leaders at gunpoint in an attempted coup against the Weimar Republic. The future chancellor went to prison for eight months for high treason.

1938 Nazi German diplomat Ernst vom Rath died from gunshot wounds inflicted Nov. 7 by Herschel Grynszpan, a Jewish teenager bent on avenging atrocities already committed against the Jewish people. The night of Nov. 9, the Nazis used the shooting as an excuse to instigate Kristallnacht: SA paramilitary forces and Nazi sympathizers burned and looted Jewish-owned stores and houses throughout Germany, Austria, and the Sudenland.

1953 The U.S. Supreme Court upheld a 1922 ruling that major league baseball is outside the scope of federal antitrust laws. The 1922 Court that found that baseball, as an exhibition, is not subject to the Constitution’s Commerce Clause (Federal Baseball Club v. National League).

1965 Catholic Worker Movement member Roger Allen LaPorte set himself on fire in front of the United Nations building in New York to protest U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War. He died the next day.

1970 Citing lack of jurisdiction, the U.S. Supreme Court voted 6–3 against hearing a case testing the legality of the Vietnam War. Massachusetts passed a state law granting residents the right to refuse military service in an undeclared war, and the state attorney general asked the Supreme Court to consider the case.

1976 The United Nations General Assembly approved 10 resolutions condemning apartheid in South Africa.

1998 In the largest civil settlement in American history, a federal judge in New York ordered 37 U.S. brokerage houses to pay $1.03 billion to investors who were overcharged for NASDAQ-listed stocks from 1989-1994. The federal government issued a consent decree in 1996 forcing permanent changes in NASDAQ's operation to prevent future price-rigging.

1998 The United Kingdom abolished capital punishment—already abolished for murder—for all remaining capital offences.

1998 Michael Jackson settled a lawsuit over stories and pictures in the London Daily Mirror that reported his face had been disfigured by cosmetic surgery.

2005 Suicide bombers attacked the U.S.-based Grand Hyatt, Days Inn, and Radisson SAS hotels in Amman, Jordan, killing at least 60 people and wounding hundreds. Two bombers strapped devices to their bodies and the third used a car bomb. The government of Jordan, unused to terror attacks in its country, instituted new anti-terror measures.

2007 The German Bundestag passed a controversial data retention bill that mandated storing citizens' telecommunications traffic data for six months without probable cause. In 2010 the German Constitutional Court ruled the bill violated Article 10 of the German Basic Law protecting the privacy of correspondence, posts, and telecommunications.

2011 Penn State University fired longtime head football coach Joe Paterno and university president Graham Spanier over their handling of child sex abuse allegations against former assistant coach Jerry Sandusky. Paterno was never charged with any wrongdoing and Spanier's conviction of child endangerment was overturned, but Sandusky was ultimately sentenced to 30-60 years in state prison after his conviction on 45 counts of abuse involving ten boys, including attacks that occurred on campus property.

TODAY IN CRIME: November 2

619 Emperor Gaozu, founder of the Tang dynasty of China, allowed an envoy of the Eastern Turk Khaganate to assassinate a qaghan (emperor) of the Western Turkic Khaganate after a banquet in Gaozu's palace. When everyone was replete with food and drink, Gaozu lured the emperor to an empty office where he was set upon by assassins. The powerful Eastern Turks made better friends than enemies, and this way Gaozu could repay them for their help during his march on Chang'an.

1859 A Charles Town, Virginia, jury sentenced abolitionist John Brown to death by hanging. On October 31 the jury had found him guilty of murder, conspiring slaves to revolt, and treason against the Commonwealth of Virginia for his raid at Harper's Ferry October 16-18.

1959 Twenty-One game show contestant Charles Van Doren admitted to the U.S. Congress that he had been given questions and answers in advance.

1960 In London, a jury of nine men and three women found Penguin Books not guilty of obscenity by publishing the novel Lady Chatterley's Lover.

1963 Army of the Republic of Vietnam Majors Nguyễn Văn Nhung and Dương Hiếu Nghĩa assassinated South Vietnamese president Ngô Đình Diệm and his brother, political advisor Ngô Đình Nhu, on the orders of RVN General Dương Văn Minh in a coup d'état. With the brothers tied up in the back of an armored personnel carrier, Nhung lunged at Nhu with a bayonet and stabbed him 15-20 times, shot Diem in the head with a semi-automatic, then turned and shot Nhu. No one was ever charged in the killings but Nhung was later executed. His cohort Nghĩa survived the Fall of Saigon. Junta leader Minh was himself deposed in a bloodless coup three months later.

1964 Saudi Arabia formally deposed King Saud and replaced him with his half-brother Faisal.

1965 Norman Morrison, a 31-year-old Quaker, doused himself with kerosene and set himself on fire outside the Pentagon office of Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara to protest U.S. involvement in the Vietnam war.

1966 The Cuban Adjustment Act took effect, allowing Cuban refugees the opportunity to apply for permanent residence in the U.S.

1979 Black militant Assata Olugbala Shakur escaped from Clinton Correctional Facility for Women in New Jersey, where she'd been serving a life sentence for the 1973 murder of New Jersey State Trooper Werner Foerster. She fled to Pittsburgh; eventually Cuba granted her political asylum. In 2013 she became the first woman added to the FBI Most Wanted Terrorists list; there is a two-million-dollar reward for her return.

1984 Convicted murderer Velma Margie Barfield became the first woman to be executed since the reinstatement of capital punishment in 1976. No woman had been executed in the U.S. since 1962. Barfield confessed to killing at least five people, although she was tried and executed for only one homicide—poisoning boyfriend Rowland Stuart Taylor with arsenic.

1985 The South African government imposed strict rules of censorship on all media coverage of unrest by both local and foreign journalists. The press of South Africa is still considered only partly free.

1986 Shiite Muslims released American kidnap victim David Jacobsen after holding him in Lebanon for 17 months.

1988 Cornell graduate student Robert Morris launched the Morris worm, the first highly publicized Internet-distributed computer worm, from the computer systems at MIT. In 1990, Morris was the first person convicted under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act for penetrating and crippling 6,000 "federal interest" computers nationwide. The U.S. District Court of NDNY sentenced him to three years' probation, 400 hours of community service, a $10,050 fine, and costs of his supervision.

1993 The U.S. Senate voted 94-6 to demand full disclosure of Senator Bob Packwood's diaries in a sexual harassment probe. Packwood resigned from the Senate the previous month under threat of expulsion after 19 women came forward alleging sexual harassment, abuse, and assaults. His diaries confirmed the allegations.

1995 Eleven former senior military officers, including former South African defense minister General Magnus Malan, were arrested and charged with the murders of 13 people in the KwaMakhutha apartheid massacre in 1987. All were eventually acquitted.

1995 The U.S. banned Daiwa Bank Ltd. from operating in the United States for allegedly covering up $1.1 billion in trading losses incurred by New York bond trader Toshihide Iguchi over a 12-year period. Daiwa paid a record $340-million fine to settle the fraud case and Iguchi spent four years in prison.

1999 In the worst mass murder in the history of Hawaii, Xerox service technician Byran Koju Uyesugi shot eight people with a Glock 17 handgun at the Xerox building in Honolulu, killing his supervisor and six coworkers. Uyesugi was facing dismissal for refusing to take training on new machines and "decided to give them a reason to fire me."

2010 California voters rejected a statewide ballot measure that would have made the Golden State the first to legalize marijuana for recreational use. The Adult Use of Marijuana Act did succeed in 2016.