Bob CollinsMuch has been made of the TV ad from Hillary Clinton about those 3 a.m. phone calls at the White House, signaling the start of something big. So how important is 3 a.m. in the annals of American history?
Feel free to submit your own but here are a few of the major U.S. news stories of the last several decades and the time a phone call might’ve been made to the presidential bedroom:
6/5/67 – The six-day war begins – 7:15 p.m.
4/11/70 – “Houston, we have a problem.” – 2:13 p.m.
8/27/78 – The Soviet Union invades Afghanistan – 9:15 a.m.
11/4/79 – Iran militants takeover the U.S. embassy in Tehran. – 12 a.m.
4/18/82 – U.S. Marine compound in Beirut bombed. – 10:20 p.m.
12/20/89 – U.S. invades Panama – 1 a.m.
4/19/95 – Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City bombed – 10:01 a.m.
8/7/98 – U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania bombed. – 3:45 a.m.
10/12/2000 — Attack on the U.S.S. Cole in Yemen – 2:22 a.m.
9/11/2001 – Attack on World Trade Center – 8:46 a.m.
3/20/03 – War in Iraq begins. – 9:45 p.m.
8/29/2005 – Hurricane Katrina makes landfall. – 5:10 a.m.
