19481776 Club

The candy drops go official: Tunner authorizes Operation Little Vittles

A lieutenant's unsanctioned handkerchief parachutes become Air Force policy over Berlin.

For three weeks, Lieutenant Gail Halvorsen had been breaking regulations, dropping candy on handkerchief parachutes to children waiting at the Tempelhof fence, wiggling his wings so they'd know his plane. Word reached his superiors. On September 22, 1948, Lieutenant General William H. Tunner, commander of the Berlin Airlift, authorized the drops as an official effort: Operation Little Vittles. Tunner's authorization made it an Air Force program…

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Lincoln warns the South: free the slaves by New Year's or the Union will do it for you

The order comes five days after Antietam, tying freedom to a battlefield victory.

1776

Hale is hanged at the Park of Artillery; the British deny him a Bible and a clergyman

A Yale diploma in his pocket gave him away, one day after fire had gutted a quarter of the city.

1979

A US spy satellite catches a double flash near Antarctica; no one will say what caused it

Vela 6911's sensors record the exact signature built to catch an atmospheric nuclear blast.

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A temporary act keeps the mail moving under the new Constitution, and gives the president say over who runs it.

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The Times begins printing the Pentagon Papers; four presidents, the documents show, misled the country on Vietnam

A 7,000-page classified Defense Department study reveals the Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Johnson administrations each obscured the true scope of U.S. involvement in Southeast Asia.

1961

Twelve nations' Antarctic pact takes force; military operations and nuclear tests are now banned on the continent

The agreement, signed in 1959 after Argentine marines fired on British researchers, designates everything south of 60°S as a scientific preserve open to all signatories.

1972

Nixon signs 37 words into law; no federal program may turn away a student on the basis of sex

Senator Birch Bayh's passage, buried in the Education Amendments of 1972, draws almost no public attention at the signing.

1972

Nixon tells Haldeman to use the CIA to block the FBI's Watergate inquiry

Six days after the break-in at Democratic headquarters, the Oval Office recording system captures the President invoking national security to shut down investigators.

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