Ten years ago: Defending his company against blistering criticism, the chief executive of Goldman Sachs, Lloyd Blankfein, told a Senate hearing that clients who’d bought subprime mortgage securities from the Wall Street powerhouse in 2006 and 2007 came looking for risk “and that’s what they got.” Former Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega was extradited from the United States to France, where he was later convicted of laundering drug money and received a seven-year sentence. Thomas Hagan, the only man to admit shooting Malcolm X, was freed on parole. University of Washington president Mark Emmert was selected as president of the NCAA.
Five years ago: Rioters plunged part of Baltimore into chaos, torching a pharmacy, setting police cars ablaze and throwing bricks at officers hours after thousands attended a funeral for Freddie Gray, who died from a severe spinal injury he’d suffered in police custody; the Baltimore Orioles’ home game against the Chicago White Sox was postponed because of safety concerns. Opening statements took place in Centennial, Colorado, at the trial of movie theater shooter James Holmes. Loretta Lynch was sworn in as the 83rd U.S. attorney general, the first African-American woman to serve as the nation’s top law enforcement official.
One year ago: A gunman opened fire inside a synagogue near San Diego as worshippers celebrated the last day of Passover, killing a woman and wounding the rabbi and two others. (John Earnest is awaiting trial on charges including hate-crime-related murder and attempted murder; he is also facing charges in a mosque fire that happened weeks earlier.) A construction crane collapsed at the new Google Seattle campus, pinning six cars underneath; two ironworkers and two people in the cars were killed. Oliver North announced that he would not serve a second term as National Rifle Associate president; he made it clear that he’d been forced out after his own failed attempt to remove the group’s longtime CEO, Wayne LaPierre.
