| Year | Event
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| 1751 | James Madison, widely regarded by many historians as the Founding Father, chief engineer of the Constitution, chief promoter and one of the authors of the Bill of Rights, and fourth President of the U.S., was born on this date.
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| 1802 | An Act Fixing the Military Peace Establishment of the United States established the U.S. Military Academy at West Point.
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| 1954 | Secretary of State Dulles declared that the NATO and Rio treaties empowered the president, without needing to consult Congress, to order instant retaliation in Europe and the Western Hemisphere if an ally was attacked, in spite of what the Constitution, so quaint, may say about it.
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| 1964 | President Johnson (D) announces his "War on Poverty" and calls for "total victory". [Unfortunately, he then chooses the wrong weapons].
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| 1968 | In South Vietnam, at a hamlet called My Lai, a massacre is carried out by members of US Army, Charlie Company, 11th Brigade. The soldiers are accused of killing at least 109 and possibly 567 civilians -- including babies. Such atrocities were actually common as reported by this personal account by Colonel James Hildreth.
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| 1978 | Israeli Forces Invade Lebanon.
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| 1989 | Congressional Research Service (CRS) in the report, "Reelection Rates of House Incumbents: 1790-1988", states that, "incumbents seeking reelection [in the early 1980s] were successful 98 percent of the time and over 90 percent for the rest of the 1980s. . . CRS also found that turnover almost never resulted from defeat, but from retirement, death, seeking other offices, or criminal conviction. In 1790, only slightly more than one half of all House members sought reelection; in 1988, 94 percent did so", as quoted in the book, Hill Rat, by John L. Jackley.
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