In 1999, the NASA space probe Mars Climate Orbiter burned up in the Martian atmosphere and with it, three hundred million taxpayer dollars. Post-mortem examination revealed that NASA calculations used metric newton-seconds as a unit of measure, while prime contractor Lockheed Martin used pound-seconds. Oops.
That’s up there with the multi-billion dollar Hubble Space Telescope, needing “glasses”.
Of all the powers citizens delegate to Government, few can be as fearsome as the power of arrest, the power to take our freedom, the power to take our lives. Such awesome power must be wielded by the wisest of heads and subjected to the strictest of checks and balances, but such is not always the case.
According to the government’s own website, vault.fbi.gov:
“The FBI began COINTELPRO—short for Counterintelligence Program—in 1956 to disrupt the activities of the Communist Party of the United States. In the 1960s, it was expanded to include a number of other domestic groups, such as the Ku Klux Klan, the Socialist Workers Party, and the Black Panther Party. All COINTELPRO operations were ended in 1971. Although limited in scope (about two-tenths of one percent of the FBI’s workload over a 15-year period), COINTELPRO was later rightfully criticized by Congress and the American people for abridging first amendment rights and for other reasons”.
“Rightfully criticized”? I should say so. COINTELPRO tactics included smearing individuals and groups using forged documents and false reports, planted in the media. There were instances of harassment, wrongful imprisonment and illegal violence, up to and including assassination. Director J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI harassed witnesses, withheld evidence, and publicly humiliated or falsely charged targets, with crimes. Washington 
Post journalist Carl Rowan insists the FBI sent at least one anonymous letter to Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., urging the man to commit suicide.
The program was exposed when an activist group burgled an FBI field office in Media, Pennsylvania, stealing reams of information which were then exposed to news outlets. It was March 1971, the “fight of the century” between Joe Frazier and Muhammad Ali providing cover for the burglary. The irony is rich. Ali himself was a COINTELPRO target, based on associations with the Nation of Islam, and the anti-Vietnam war movement.
It was the perfect crime. No one was ever caught.
Decades later, long after the statute of limitations had run its course, Keith Forsyth identified himself as one of eight burglars. Knowing the office to be locked at night, one of the crooks wrote a polite note asking the door be left unlocked, and pinned it to the door.
It pays be nice I guess. The last to leave the office, courteously obliged. One burglar was so delighted, he proposed that a polite thank you note, be left on the door. Lucky for him, cooler heads prevailed.
Speaking of savvy Government personnel. On this day in 2014, the Stockholm offices of the Swedish Public Employment Service erupted in chaos, as 61,000 people showed up for a job interview. The email was supposed to go out to a thousand select individuals. Instead, tens of thousands went out to registered job seekers, demonstrating the truth of the old adage: To err is human. To Really screw up, requires a Government.
The doors to the Soviet Gulags opened after June 22, 1941, following Hitler’s surprise invasion of his Soviet “Ally”. While tens of thousands of free Poles worked their way to the assistance of France and Great Britain, these former POWs became the core of the Polish II Corps, numbering some 100,000 soldiers by 1945.
Wojtek was small in the beginning, yet to be weaned from his mother’s milk and having trouble swallowing. Soldiers fed him condensed milk from an old vodka bottle, leading to honey or syrup and marmalade and whole fruit.
My fellow children of the cold war will remember. A favorite complaint of the era was the semi-professional status of Soviet bloc athletes. Particularly those from East Germany and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.
The Soviet attack was relentless, but Craig let nothing past. Team USSR took 39 shots on goal to the Americans’ 16, but the score held.
Adults had no interest in the minuscule income, and left the newsboys (and girls) to their own devices. “Newsies” bought papers at discounted prices and peddled them on the street. Others worked saloons and houses of prostitution. They weren’t allowed to return any left unsold, and worked well into the night to sell every paper.
For all that, newsies earned about 30¢ a day. Enough for a bite to eat, to afford enough papers to do it again the following day, and maybe a 5¢ bed in the newsboy’s home.
During his last public performance given before a sell-out crowd at Madison Square Garden on May 11, 1977, the Mighty Atom wore a leather vest, emblazoned with a golden star of David.
Jean Le Maistre, whose presence as Vice-Inquisitor for Rouen was required by canon law, objected to the proceedings and refused to appear, until the English threatened his life.
The death sentence was carried out on May 30, 1431, in the old marketplace at Rouen. She was 19.
“Quick to act when the lives of the small group were endangered by two grenades which landed directly in front of them, Private First Class Lucas unhesitatingly hurled himself over his comrades upon one grenade and pulled the other one under him, absorbing the whole blasting force of the explosions in his own body in order to shield his companions from the concussion and murderous flying fragments”.
Murder charges were filed in both New York and New Jersey, but neither went to trial.
Historical Easter Eggs - Today in History 
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