On November 7, 1983, a home-grown terrorist group detonates a bomb in the U.S. Capitol building. A little after 10:30pm, the Washington Post news desk received a recorded message; the speaker claimed to represent the Armed Resistance Movement and warned that a bomb would go off in the Capitol in retaliation for U.S. military involvement in Lebanon and Grenada. Moments later, a blast rocked the second floor of the Senate Chamber, not far from the office of Senate Minority Leader Robert Byrd. The explosion occurred about an hour after a reception broke up in that part of the building. No one was hurt, but there was significant damage to the chamber and its trappings, including the official portrait of legendary Senator Daniel Webster (it was restored). Six members of the ARM would eventually be arrested; only two were convicted. That portion of the Capitol building is no longer open to the public. On November 7, 1910, Phillip Oren Parmalee flies a Wright Brothers Model B Flyer (below) from Dayton, OH to Columbus, 65 miles away, delivering 200 pounds of silk to a department store there. It is the first time a flight is made solely for the delivery of freight, and Parmalee makes the journey in 57 minutes, a world speed record at the time. Parmalee was personally trained to fly by the Wrights to help demonstrate their planes, and was especially active in military demonstrations. He's credited with being the first pilot to drop a bomb from a plane, pilot of the first plane to drop a parachutist, and conducting the first military reconnaisance flight. He crashed and died during a demonstration in June, 1912. On November 7, 1874, Harper's Weekly publishes a drawing by its famed political cartoonist Thomas Nast, depicting the Democratic Party donkey driving other "political animals" into panic. A commentary on the party's uproar over rumors that Republican incumbent President Ulysses S. Grant would seek a third term in office, the cartoon gives birth to the elephant as symbol of the Republican Party (Nast drew his famed image of a kicking donkey now associated with the Democrats 4 years earlier, but the donkey had been used to symbolize the Democrats as far back as 1837). Nast was famed for his cynical portrayals of politics throughout his career, so much so that some think the word "nasty" is derived from his name (its origins actually go back to the 1400's).
