A list, by floor and location, of those killed in the Oklahoma City bombing on April 19, 1995: NINTH FLOOR Drug Enforcement Administration Shelly D. Bland, 25, of Tuttle Carrol June “Chip” Fields, 48, Guthrie Rona Linn Kuehner-Chafey, 35, Oklahoma City Carrie Ann Lenz, 26, Chotaw Kenneth Glenn McCullough, 36, Edmond U.S. Secret Service Cynthia L. Brown, 26, Oklahoma City Donald Ray Leonard, 50, Edmond Mickey B. Maroney, 50, Oklahoma City Linda G. McKinney, 47, Oklahoma City Kathy Lynn Seidl, 39, Bethel Alan G. Whicher, 40, Edmond EIGHTH FLOOR U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development Ted L. Allen, 48, Norman Peter R. Avillanoza, 56, Oklahoma City David Neil Burkett,…

Apr 18, 1906 At 5:13 a.m., an earthquake estimated at close to 8.0 on the Richter scale strikes San Francisco, California, killing hundreds of people as it topples numerous buildings. The quake was caused by a slip of the San Andreas Fault over a segment about 275 miles long, and shock waves could be felt from southern Oregon down to Los Angeles. San Francisco’s brick buildings and wooden Victorian structures were especially devastated. Fires immediately broke out and–because broken water mains prevented firefighters from stopping them–firestorms soon developed citywide. At 7 a.m., U.S. Army troops from Fort Mason reported to the Hall of Justice, and San Francisco Mayor E.E. Schmitz…

Theodore Dreiser, Nearly a Passenger, on the Sinking of the Titanic By Nina Martyris | Posted Friday, April 13, 2012 A sketch of American author Theodore Dreiser by Frank Harris c. 1919 Image from Wikimedia Commons Money was Theodore Dreiser’s muse—the dazzling, deforming pivot on which his novels about fallen women and venal businessmen turned. It seems almost karmic, then, that a lack of money saved him from boarding the Titanic. The great novelist was among a handful of prominent persons—including Guglielmo Marconi, Milton Hershey, J. P. Morgan, and Alfred Vanderbilt—who almost sailed on the allegedly sink-proof ship. As with the 9/11 attacks nearly nine decades later, there has been…

Apr 14, 1865 On this day in 1865, John Wilkes Booth, an actor and Confederate sympathizer, fatally shoots President Abraham Lincoln at a play at Ford’s Theater in Washington, D.C.  The attack came only five days after Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrendered his massive army at Appomattox Court House, Virginia, effectively ending the American Civil War. Booth, a Maryland native born in 1838, who remained in the North during the war despite his Confederate sympathies, initially plotted to capture President Lincoln and take him to Richmond, the Confederate capital. However, on March 20, 1865, the day of the planned kidnapping, the president failed to appear at the spot where…