On this day in conspiracies

Residents of Burlington and Gloucester counties, New Jersey, report strange hooflike tracks in freshly fallen snow, the first incident of what becomes a week-long regional panic.

Los Angeles County autopsy surgeon Frederick Newbarr performs the post-mortem, identifying the cause of death as hemorrhage and shock from a concussion and facial lacerations, with the bisection carried out after death.

Around midday, as the ship prepares to leave the anchorage, people on deck report a bright, fast-moving object approaching the island. Almiro Barauna, a civilian photographer aboard to document the expedition, grabs his camera and, in the confusion, manages to take several frames.

Around 1:30 in the afternoon, Kabila is shot several times in his office at the Palais de Marbre in Kinshasa by Rashidi Kasereka, an 18-year-old member of his bodyguard. Other guards open fire and kill Kasereka at the scene. The president is critically wounded.

A Beirut court finds former ministers Ali Hassan Khalil and Ghazi Zeaiter liable for obstructing justice through their repeated challenges to Bitar, ordering them to pay damages. Weeks later, under a new government, Bitar resumes the investigation.