TODAY IN CRIME: August 17

 

310 Roman emperor Maxentius banished Pope Eusebius to Sicily, where he promptly died, probably from a hunger strike. Eusebius believed Christians who had denied their faith during persecutions by the state should be allowed to take communion after proper penance.

1896 A few weeks after Parliament increased the speed limit for motor vehicles to 14 mph, a car traveling 4-8 mph struck and killed 44-year-old Bridget Driscoll as she crossed the grounds of the Crystal Palace in London. Driscoll was the first recorded case of a pedestrian killed in a collision with a motor car in the UK. A coroner's jury returned a verdict of "accidental death" after a six-hour inquest. Coroner Percy Morrison said he hoped "such a thing would never happen again."

1915 A mob in Cobb County, Ga., lynched Jewish businessman Leo Frank, who had been sentenced on flimsy evidence for the murder of 13-year-old Mary Phagan.

1962 On the first anniversary of Communist East Germany’s completion of the Berlin Wall, border guards shot and killed 18-year-old Peter Fechter as he attempted to cross over into the western sector, spurring riots.

1982 The U.S. Senate approved an immigration bill that granted permanent resident status to illegal aliens who had arrived in the U.S. before 1977.

1986 Forty-two people were beaten or stabbed at a Run D.M.C. concert in Long Beach, CA. Members of the rap group feared gang trouble and had requested extra security from police and auditorium management.

1987 Rudolf Hess, Adolf Hitler's second in command, committed suicide at Spandau prison. The 93-year-old had been the only inmate there for more than 20 years.

1991 Taxi driver Wade Frankum went on a rampage in the Strathfield Plaza, a shopping mall in Sydney Australia, stabbing and shooting seven people and injuring six others before turning the gun on himself. Victim Gary Read, who was shot in both feet, was awarded the Star of Courage for saving more lives during the unexplained killing spree.

1998 A grand jury questioned U.S. President Bill Clinton in the Monica Lewinsky scandal. He was the first U.S. president to testify as the subject of a grand jury investigation. Clinton admitted that he had an "improper physical relationship" with the intern and that night confessed on national television that that their relationship was "not appropriate."

2005 Terrorist set off more than 500 bombs at 300 locations in 63 out of the 64 districts of Bangladesh.

2005 Israeli security forces began the forcible removal of Jews from four settlements in the Gaza Strip.

2010 After 14 days of deliberation, a federal jury found ousted Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich guilty of lying to federal agents but could not agree on the remaining 23 corruption charges lodged against him, and the judge declared a mistrial. After a retrial, he was found guilty of 17 charges and sentenced to 14 years in prison.

TODAY IN CRIME: August 10

1776 Word of the U.S. Declaration of Independence reached London.

1792 Armed Revolutionary mobs stormed the Tuileries Palace in Paris, forced King Louis XVI and his family to take refuge in the Legislative Assembly, and massacred the Swiss Guards. The National Convention found Louis guilty of high treason in December and executed him in January 1793.

1827 Friction between the Irish-American and African-American communities in Cincinnati intensified to the point that gangs of white citizens attacked blacks and destroyed their property. City leaders failed to protect black citizens, and by the end of August 1000 had fled to Canada.

1835 A mob of 500 white men destroyed the Noyes Academy in Canaan, New Hampshire, one of the first secondary schools in the U.S. to admit free blacks. The mob hooked a team of 90 oxen to the building, ripped it from the ground, and dragged it down the street. A vote at an official town meeting that declared the academy a "nuisance" protected the mob from legal action.

1920 Mexican revolutionary general and bandit Francisco "Pancho" Villa surrendered to Mexican federal authorities. When a bottle of Cognac was produced, Villa took a swig and pronounced, "I'm ready now to embrace my worst enemies."

1959 Police in Cincinnati arrested the four male members of the Platters singing group and charged them with aiding and abetting prostitution, lewdness and assignation. Although all four were acquitted, the charges seriously damaged record sales and airplay.

1962 Judge Adie Durden of Albany, Georgia, found Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and three other civil rights leaders guilty of disorderly conduct charges for staging racial demonstrations. He fined each $200 and sentenced them to 60 days in jail but immediately suspended the sentences and placed King and his associates on probation.

1969 Members of Charles Manson's cult murdered Leno and Rosemary LaBianca in their Los Angeles home, one day after they killed actress Sharon Tate and four other people. A jury found Manson and three followers guilty on all counts of first-degree murder.

1970 The trial of Doors lead singer Jim Morrison for Lewd and Lascivious Behavior (a felony), Indecent Exposure, Open Profanity, and Public Drunkenness began in Miami, FL. Morrison allegedly exposed himself on stage during a show in Miami in 1969.  He was eventually found guilty of indecent exposure and open profanity, sentenced to six months in jail, fined $500, and released on bond. He flew to Paris, where he died in 1971. The Florida Clemency Board issued a pardon years later.

1972 Police in Sweden arrested Paul and Linda McCartney for drug possession backstage after a concert in Gothenburg. An unnamed employee in their office had mailed the couple six ounces of marijuana to enjoy on the road. Paul was fined $1,000 and Linda $200.

1977 In Yonkers, NY, police arrested and charged 24-year-old postal employee David Berkowitz with being the "Son of Sam," the serial killer who terrorized New York City for more than a year. Berkowitz confessed, pled guilty, and was sentenced to 365 years in prison for killing six people and wounding seven more.

1981 Investigators found the severed head of missing six-year-old Adam Walsh in a drainage ditch in rural Indian County, Florida, about 130 miles from where he disappeared two weeks before. Ottis Toole, a convicted serial killer, confessed to Adam's murder but was never charged for it due to a botched investigation. Adam's father John Walsh became an advocate for victims of violent crime.

1993 A freighter collided with two barges at the mouth of Tampa Bay, Fla., spilling 330,000 gallons of fuel oil and another 32,000 gallons of jet fuel, diesel fuel, and gasoline into the water. No one was killed but a five-mile-long slick developed and a thirteen-mile stretch of beach was fouled by the oil. “In 1999, the federal and state trustees reached an $8 million settlement with the vessel owners to resolve government claims, including cleanup and damage assessment costs, and restore natural resources” (www.baysoundings.com).

1994 U.S. President Clinton filed a motion to dismiss a sexual harassment lawsuit filed by Paula Corbin Jones on the grounds of presidential immunity. After years of legal wrangling, in 1998 Clinton paid Jones $850,000 in an out-of-court settlement with no acknowledgement of wrong-doing.

1995 A U.S. federal court indicted domestic terrorists Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols for the Oklahoma City bombing that killed 168 people and injured more than 680. Michael Fortier plead guilty in a plea-bargain for his testimony.

1999 An Indian fighter jet shot down a Pakistani naval aircraft for crossing into Indian air space. Sixteen people were killed. Pakistan claimed the plane was on a routine exercise and lodged a compensation claim with the International Court of Justice, but the Court dismissed the case.

1999 White supremacist Buford O. Furrow, Jr. walked into the Los Angeles Jewish Community Center and opened fire with a submachine gun, wounding two adults and three boys. He fled the scene, carjacked a Toyota at gunpoint, killed a postal worker because he was Asian, and took a 275-mile taxi ride to Las Vegas, where he walked into an FBI office and confessed.

2006 Scotland Yard foiled a major terrorist plot to detonate liquid explosives smuggled in hand luggage on ten aircraft travelling from the UK to the U.S. and Canada.

2009 The Handlová mine blast in Trencin Region, Slovakia, killed 20 people and injured nine. The deadly explosion occurred after mine rescuers had earlier been deployed to extinguish a fire in the Eastern shaft of the mine. Three mining company employees were eventually charged with negligence.

2018 A jury in California awarded $289 million to former groundskeeper Dewayne Johnson in the Monsanto "Roundup" case. Johnson contracted terminal cancer after using the popular weed killer.

TODAY IN CRIME: August 3

435 Roman Emperor Theodosius II exiled deposed Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople Nestorius, considered the originator of Nestorianism, to a monastery in Egypt.

1907 U.S. federal judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis fined Standard Oil of Indiana a record $29.4 million for illegal rebating to freight carriers; the conviction and fine were later reversed on appeal.

1921 More from Kenesaw Mountain Landis: As Major League Baseball Commissioner, he confirmed the ban of the eight Chicago Black Sox, the day after a Chicago court found them not guilty of conspiracy to defraud the public concerning the 1919 World Series.

1948 Whittaker Chambers, a former Communist, publicly accused former U.S. State Department official Alger Hiss of having been part of a Communist underground and a spy for the Soviet Union, charges Hiss denied.

1959 Portugal's state police force PIDE fired into a crowd of striking Pidjiguiti dockworkers seeking higher pay in Bissau, Portuguese Guinea, killing at least 25 people and wounding many more. After the government arrested members of PAIGC, a peaceful group campaigning for independence from Portugal, PAIGC determined nonviolent resistance would not achieve its goals. An armed struggle lasted from 1963-1974, when Portugal finally granted independence to all of Portuguese Africa.

1969 Carl Wilson of the Beach Boys was indicted for failure to report for civilian duty as a hospital orderly in lieu of serving two years in the army. He’d already been arrested twice for draft evasion, starting in 1967, and offered his musical services as an alternative. Wilson's draft board finally accepted his proposal in 1971.

1987 The Iran-Contra congressional hearings ended. None of the 29 witnesses tied President Ronald Reagan directly to the diversion of arms-sales profits to Nicaraguan rebels.

1988 The Soviet Union released German pilot Mathias Rust, 19, after 14 months in custody. He’d landed a plane in Moscow's Red Square to create “an imaginary bridge” to the East during the Cold War.

1995 Jordanian authorities extradited Eyad Ismoil to the U.S. to face charges that he had driven the van that blew up in the underground parking garage of the World Trade Center in Manhattan in 1993. The explosion killed six people, injured more than 1,000, and caused $500 million in damages to the WTC complex. Ismoil was found guilty of conspiracy, sentenced to 240 years in prison, fined $250,000, and ordered to pay $10 million in restitution.

2005 The Military Council for Justice and Democracy staged a coup d’état in Mauritania, ousting long-time President Maaouya Ould Sid'Ahmed Taya while he was out of the country attending the funeral of King Fahd in Saudi Arabia. The military leaders kept their promise to hold a presidential election within two years, but the next president was also deposed in a military coup d'état a year after taking office.

2007 Chilean authorities captured former Deputy Director of the Chilean secret police Raúl Iturriaga Neumann, one of the best-known convicted human rights abusers from the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet. Iturriaga was in charge of a secret torture center, was wanted on murder and attempted murder charges in at least three countries, and was sentenced on a kidnapping charge in June 2007 before going into hiding.

2009 Bolivia became the first South American country to declare the right of indigenous people to govern themselves.

2010 Widespread rioting erupted in Karachi, Pakistan, after the assassination of Parliament member Raza Haider of the Muttahida Qaumi Movement political party. Four gunmen shot down him and a bodyguard in a gangland-style hit as they attended a funeral at a mosque. At least 85 were killed in the riots that caused 17 billion Pakistani rupees (US$200 million) in damages over the several days.

2011 Former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak denied all charges against him as he went on trial for alleged corruption and complicity in the deaths of protesters who'd helped drive him from power.

2018 Two burka-clad men killed 29 people and injured more than 80 in a suicide attack on a Shia mosque in eastern Afghanistan. Security forces shot one of the men dead and the other assailant made his way into a hall where people were hiding and blew himself up. No group claimed responsibility for the attack.

2019 Police in Moscow arrested 600 protesters, including opposition leader Lyubov Sobol, in an election protest attended by as many as 20,000.

2019 Racist gunman Patrick Crusius killed 23 people and injured 23 more in a shooting in a Walmart store in El Paso, Texas. He faces multiple federal and state charges.

TODAY IN CRIME: July 27

1245 A council at Lyons deposed Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II after it found him guilty of sacrilege.

1794 The National Convention overthrew French revolutionary and “Reign of Terror” leader Maximilien Robespierre and placed him under arrest; he was executed the following day.

1919 The Chicago Race Riot erupted after a racial incident occurred on a South Side beach. Over the next five days 15 blacks and 23 whites were killed, and 537 injured.

1929 Fifty-three nations signed the Geneva Convention of 1929, dealing with the treatment of prisoners-of-war.

1932 An Assize Court in Paris sentenced to death Paul Gorgulov, who assassinated French president Paul Doumer on May 6. Gorgulov approached Doumer at a book fair at the Hôtel Salomon de Rothschild in Paris and opened fire. Gorgulov, a Russian émigré, believed that France had failed to support the White Movement in Russia against Bolshevism.

1962 Police in Albany, Georgia, put Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in jail for violating a state circuit court injunction against protests. After two weeks in jail he agreed to stop demonstrations there.

1974 The U.S. House of Representatives Judiciary Committee voted to recommend the first article of impeachment (for obstruction of justice) against President Richard Nixon.

1975 Masked men of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam shot dead the mayor of Jaffna and former MP Alfred Duraiappah on his way to temple. Tamil militants considered him a traitor and government collaborator and already attempted to assassinate him by throwing a hand grenade on his car in 1971.

1976 Japanese authorities arrested former Japanese prime minister Kakuei Tanaka on suspicion of violating foreign exchange and foreign trade laws in connection with the Lockheed bribery scandals.

1976 Bruce Springsteen sued his manager Mike Appel in Manhattan’s U.S. District Court for fraud and breach of contract. The suit was eventually settled out of court.

1983 At the Welikada high security prison in Colombo, Sri Lanka, Sinhalese inmates overpowered the guards, armed themselves with axes and firewood, and attacked and massacred fifteen Tamil political prisoners. It was the second such massacre in two days. The assailants claimed the guards forced them to attack. To this day no one has been punished for these crimes or any victims’ families compensated.

1989 While attempting to land at Tripoli International Airport in Libya, Korean Air Flight 803 crashed just short of the runway. Seventy-five of the 199 passengers and crew and four people on the ground were killed. A Libyan court determined it was crew error; it found the captain and first officer guilty of neglect and sentenced them to two years and eighteen months respectively, with the first officer's sentence eventually suspended.

1990 Zsa Zsa Gabor began a 3-day jail sentence for slapping a police officer in Beverly Hills.

1996 A homemade pipe bomb exploded at Centennial Olympic Park in Atlanta, Georgia, during the 1996 Summer Olympics, killing one person and injuring 111 others. Police originally suspected security guard Richard Jewell but ultimately arrested Eric Rudolph, an anti-abortion and anti-gay activist. Rudolph confessed to the bombings of Olympic Park, two abortion clinics, and a gay nightclub and was sentenced to multiple terms of life in prison.

2002 A Sukhoi Su-27 fighter crashed during an air show at Lviv, Ukraine, killing 77 and injuring more than 100 others, making it the deadliest air show disaster in history. The president of the Ukraine blamed the military and fired the head of the air force. A military court found Pilot Volodymyr Toponar and co-pilot Yuriy Yegorov and three other military officials guilty of failing to follow orders, negligence, and violating flight rules. The pilot and co-pilot, who had not received adequate training or briefing, received 14 and 8 years in prison, respectively.

2005 A U.S. federal court sentenced Ahmed Ressam, an Algerian who'd plotted to bomb LAX airport on the eve of the millennium, to 22 years in prison. An appellate court found this sentence too lenient, and he was re-sentenced to 37 years in 2012.

2015 The U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration fined Fiat Chrysler a record $105 million for mishandling safety recalls on millions of vehicles.

TODAY IN CRIME: July 20

AD 70 In Jerusalem, the Zealots waged a street fight against the Roman army when Titus, son of Roman emperor Vespasian, stormed the Fortress of Antonia north of the Temple Mount.

1881 Sioux Indian leader Sitting Bull, a fugitive since the Battle of the Little Big Horn, surrendered to federal troops.

1934 “Bloody Friday”: During the Minneapolis Teamsters Strike of 1934, police in Minneapolis fired upon striking truck drivers, killing two and wounding sixty-seven. Under pressure from President Roosevelt’s administration, local industrialists finally agreed to a plan that established uniform pay rates for trucking workers and called for strikers to be rehired, and the strike ended on August 22.

1938 The U.S. Department of Justice filed suit in New York City against the motion picture industry, charging that studio ownership of theaters and film distribution violated the Sherman Antitrust Act. The case was eventually settled with a consent decree but the studios did not fully comply. The United States v. Paramount Pictures, Inc. Supreme Court ruling in 1948 forced the studios to divest themselves of their theater chains. Separating the production of films from their exhibition, along with the advent of television, put an end to the old Hollywood system.

1944 Adolf Hitler was only slightly wounded when a bomb planted by would-be assassins exploded at the Fuhrer’s field headquarters near Rastenburg. The Gestapo arrested 7,000 people who had the remotest connection to the plot and executed nearly 5,000.

1950 Laboratory chemist Harry Gold pled guilty to spying for the Soviet Union by passing secrets from atomic scientist Klaus Fuchs. He was convicted and sentenced to 30 years' imprisonment but was paroled in 1965.

1951 Palestinian nationalist Mustafa Shukri Ashu assassinated King Abdullah I of Jordan as he attended Friday prayers in Jerusalem.

1954 Otto John, head of West Germany's secret service, turned up in East Germany after disappearing for three days. In December 1955 he defected back to West Germany, claiming he’d been abducted by KGB agents. The West Germans did not believe him and charged him with treason.

1974 Forces from Turkey invaded Cyprus after a coup d'état, organized by the dictator of Greece, against president Makarios.

1990 A federal appeals court set aside Oliver North's convictions in the Iran-Contra scandal.

1993 U.S. Park Police found Clinton White House deputy counsel Vince Foster shot to death in Fort Marcy park outside Washington, D.C., in an apparent suicide.

1999 The Chinese Communist Party began a persecution campaign against the religious movement Falun Gong, arresting thousands nationwide.

2005 The Civil Marriage Act legalized same-sex marriage in Canada.

2012 Gunman James Holmes opened fire at a movie theater in Aurora, Colorado, killing 12 and injuring 70 others.

2017 A Nevada parole board granted O. J. Simpson parole to be released from prison after serving nine years of a 33-year sentence. He was convicted of armed robbery in Las Vegas in 2008.

TODAY IN CRIME: July 13

1793 Royalist sympathizer Charlotte Corday stabbed to death French revolutionary Jean Paul Marat in his bath. She was executed four days later.

1863 The Draft Riots protesting unfair conscription into the Union Army to fight the Civil War erupted in New York City. About 1,000 people died over three days.

1942 The SS and Ukrainian police liquidated the remaining 5,000 Jews living in the Rovno ghetto in western Ukraine. They herded them into freight cars, transported them to the forest near Kostopol, and shot them to death. Einsatzgruppe C and their Ukrainian collaborators massacred 21,000 Jews the previous November. Reichskommissar Eric Koch declared the ghetto judenrein ("clean of Jews") at the end of July.

1955 The last execution of a woman in Britain took place when nightclub owner Ruth Ellis was hanged at HM Prison Holloway in London. On Easter Sunday, 1955, she shot and killed her abusive lover, David Blakely, in what many considered a crime passionel.

1976 The court martial began in the USSR for Valery Sablin, captain of the Soviet destroyer Storozhevoy, who led a failed mutiny in the hope of replacing the Stalinist bureaucracy with a Leninist soviet democracy. He and 26 others were shot for treason. The case inspired Tom Clancy’s thriller The Hunt for Red October.

1977 A 25-hour blackout hit New York City after lightning struck upstate power lines. Widespread rioting and looting followed.

1978 A Soviet court sentenced political dissidents Alexander Ginzburg, Viktoras Piatkus, and Sjtsjaranki to work camps. Ginzburg received an eight-year sentence, but the next year U.S. President Carter negotiated an exchange of two Soviet spies for five Soviet political dissidents and Ginzburg came to America.

1983 The Transvaal Attorney General announced that Eugène Terre'Blanche, leader of the far-right Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging (AWB), and three associates would face terrorism charges in South Africa for attempting or planning to overthrow the South African government by violent means. Terre’Blanche and Petrus Johannes Rudolph were granted amnesty by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in 1999.

1994 An Oregon judge sentenced Jeff Gillooly to two years in prison for his attack on figure skater Nancy Kerrigan, the rival of his ex-wife Tanya Harding. He was released after six months and changed his name.

2000 South Carolina Electric & Gas Co. worker Russell Eubanks accused soul singer James Brown of assault and kidnapping. Eubanks was responding to a report of a power outage at Brown's home July 3 when the "Godfather of Soul" allegedly attacked him with a steak knife and held him against his will. Police did not have enough evidence to file charges.

2000 In Japan, Yoko Ono filed a lawsuit against Teito Rapid Transit Authority for copyright infringement, claiming the TRTA had no authority to use the likeness of John Lennon on a ticket.

2013 A Florida jury found George Zimmerman not guilty of second-degree murder and manslaughter in the shooting death of Trayvon Martin.

2018 A Missouri jury ordered Johnson & Johnson to pay a record $4.7 billion in damages to more than 20 women in the baby powder cancer case. The company was aware for years that its talc contained cancer-causing asbestos. J&J still faced almost 20,000 lawsuits filed by other victims.

2018 The U.S. Department of Justice charged twelve Russian intelligence officers with cyber-attacks against Democratic officials during the 2016 U.S. election. The hackers were accused of using spear phishing emails and malicious software; they also stole data on half a million voters from a state election board website. The Kremlin denied all accusations against the GRU agents.

TODAY IN CRIME: July 6

photo credit: Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

1415 The Catholic Church burned Czech theologian and church reformer Jan Hus at the stake as a heretic. He sang Psalms as the flames engulfed him.

1535 Sir Thomas More was beheaded for treason—he refused to join Henry VIII's Church of England.

1699 Colonial authorities captured pirate Captain William Kidd in Boston, MA, and deported him back to England.

1892 Three thousand eight hundred striking steelworkers fought a day-long battle with Pinkerton agents hired by Carnegie Steel during the Homestead Strike in Homestead, Pennsylvania. About 700 members of the Amalgamated Association of Iron and Steel Workers, the nation’s strongest trade union, objected to production demands not in their contract and the remaining workers joined them. State militia troops helped Carnegie restore order. Nine strikers and seven Pinkertons were killed and dozens were left wounded during the confrontation. The strike lost momentum over the next few months and the union lost power, allowing Carnegie to institute longer hours and lower wages.

1905 Officials in Europe and the U.S. exchanged fingerprints for the first time, in the case of John Walker.

1918 Members of Cheka, a Soviet secret police organization, assassinated German ambassador Wilhelm von Mirbach in Moscow, sparking the Left Socialist Revolutionaries uprising in Russia.

1944 Future baseball legend Jackie Robinson, a second lieutenant in the U.S. Army, refused to move to the back of a bus in Camp Hood, Texas, leading to a general court-martial on charges of insubordination and disrespect under the Articles of War. He was fully acquitted.

1944 A carelessly tossed cigarette started a blaze in the big top tent of the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus in Hartford, Conn. 167 people died trying to escape. The circus paid out almost $5,000,000 to 600 victims and families over the next 10 years.

1981 An Argentine federal court freed former President of Argentina Isabel Peron after five years of house arrest.

1983 The U.S. Supreme Court ruled (Arizona Governing Comm. v. Norris) that retirement plans could not pay women smaller monthly payments solely because of their gender.

1988 In one of the worst offshore oil disasters, an explosion and resulting gas and oil fires destroyed Piper Alpha, an oil platform in the North Sea off the coast of Scotland. 167 men were killed; 61 escaped and survived. The insured loss came to almost two billion dollars, making it one of the costliest man-made catastrophes in history. A Public Inquiry in Scotland found Occidental Petroleum, Piper Alpha's operator, guilty of sustaining inadequate maintenance and safety procedures, but no criminal charges were ever brought against the company.

1989 Abd al-Hadi Rafa Ghanim of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad seized the steering wheel of commuter bus 405 en route from Tel-Aviv to Jerusalem and drove it over a cliff, killing 16 passengers. (Yehuda Meshi Zahav, one of the students from a nearby yeshiva who ran to help, later founded ZAKA, an Israeli volunteer rescue service organization.) Ghanim survived and received sixteen life sentences for murder, hijacking, and terrorism.

1997 In Cambodia, co-premier Hun Sen ousted co-premier Norodom Ranariddh. Hun Sen is still prime minister as of 2020.

2000 A Missouri jury awarded former NHL player Tony Twist $24 million for the unauthorized use of his name in the comic book Spawn and the HBO cartoon series. Co-defendant HBO settled with Twist out of court for an undisclosed amount.

2005 A federal judge jailed New York Times reporter Judith Miller after she refused to testify before a grand jury investigating the leak of an undercover CIA operative's name (Valerie Plame).

2010 A California court sentenced actor Lindsay Lohan to 90 days in jail for violating her probation and 90 days in a residential substance-abuse. She served 14 days behind bars.

2013 Boko Harem gunmen attacked a government-run boarding school in Yobe State, Nigeria, killing at least 42 people, mostly students. Yobe governor Ibrahim Geidam closed all secondary schools for the rest of the year and claimed the attack could have been prevented if there had not been a cell phone outage that kept citizens from reporting suspicious persons.

2013 An unattended 74-car freight train loaded with crude oil running at 65 mph derailed near the downtown area of Lac-Mégantic, Quebec. Multiple tank cars erupted in flames. 47 people were killed and the center of town half-destroyed. Most victims had to be identified from DNA samples and dental records.

The Transportation Safety Board of Canada found 18 factors that contributed to the disaster, including unresolved mechanical problems, negligent brakemen, insufficient training of employees, a lax safety culture within the train company, and inadequate oversight by Transport Canada.

Jurors acquitted the locomotive engineer, rail traffic controller, and operations manager, each charged with 47 counts of criminal negligence causing death.

2013 A Boeing 777 operating as Asiana Airlines Flight 214 from Korea crashed on its descent to San Francisco International Airport, killing three and injuring 181 of the 307 people on board. An investigation by the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board concluded that the flight crew mismanaged the airplane's final approach. Seventy-two passengers reached an undisclosed settlement with Asiana Airlines and Boeing in 2015 but as many as 100 more lawsuits filed in China, South Korea, and the U.S. remain unsettled.