Thread by @WestWingReport

The shot heard 'round the world: the opening salvos of the battles of Lexington and Concord - this day in 1775 - which began the American Revolutionary War

This Day, 1809:
The father of the Constitution - President James Madison - purchased a slave to work in the White House. The seller: the father of the Declaration of Independence, former President Thomas Jefferson. Even more ironic was the name of the slave: John Freeman

This Day, 1861:
President Lincoln ordered a blockade of Confederate ports. It was a tall order: There were 3,500 miles of Confederate coastline, and the navy, in 1861, had just 42 ships. But the blockade eventually weakened the South by stopping imports of supplies from Europe

The first of four presidents to be assassinated, Abraham Lincoln funeral procession heads down Pennsylvania Avenue, this day, 1865

This Day, 1933:
Trying to combat the Great Depression, President Roosevelt, by executive order, took the U.S. off the gold standard. FDR did so because Americans had lost faith in the dollar, and in “bank runs” were unloading them for gold (more)

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The run on banks during the Depression took cash out of circulation, hurting the economy. Roosevelt’s nationalizing of gold had another reason: he was planning a number of expensive social and economic programs and needed money to finance them

Surveys show the #Holocaust is fading from memory. There were so many bodies at Bergen-Belsen Germany, one of Hitler's death camps, that a British Army bulldozer was needed to push them all into a mass grave. This day, 1945

This Day, 1995:
An angry Bill Clinton vowed to find the terrorists behind the bombing of a federal office building in Oklahoma City. The attack on the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building killed 168 people, including 19 children, and wounded an estimated 680 others (more) #OKC

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Within days, Timothy McVeigh, a U.S. Army veteran, was captured. He said he was angry over what he considered the heavy hand of he federal government in dealing with a religious sect in Waco, TX—on April 19, 1993—and an Idaho family accused of possessing illegal weapons (more)

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McVeigh was convicted and, in 2001, executed. Accomplice Terry Nichols was sentenced to life, and Michael Fortier was given 12 years for knowing about the plot but failing to warn authorities. OKC was the worst terror attack on U.S. soil prior to Sept. 11, 2001

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The horror that was Oklahoma City was perhaps best reflected in this harrowing, Pulitzer Prize-winning photo of firefighter Chris Fields cradling the body of Baylee Almon - who had turned one the day before (Charles Porter/AP)

This Day, 2019
It is known now, of course, that Trump's campaign chairman Manafort cooperated closely with Konstantin Kilimnik, described (by U.S. intelligence officials) as a Russian intelligence officer