And one of the city's first council members (guess the party affiliation ) had more than a few screws loose and essentially attacked another council member with a sledge hammer. He got serious jail time for it.

Another incident happened - actually involving a friend of mine from high schools' dad. He donated $100K to our school to get their football stadium built. A month later he was under federal indictment from the FBI. Why? Turns out the guy was involved in a massive pyramid scheme that sold false insurance policies to senior citizens. He made like $50 million at the height of their wealth - they had the huge mansion, the fancy cars, the private jet, you name it. Got arrested, the family's assets were frozen (think Arrested Development) and he did serious jail time and left a changed man because of it.

I remember a scrap book picture but have no idea what happened to it.

In order:

Milwaukee
Sheboygan county
Howards Grove, WI (Small town in Sheboygan county)

Because the biggest thing to hit Howards Grove was the 1974 tornado, destroyed a house and a barn.
Nothing crazy happened in Howards Grove, just a boring town.

Although Wilbur Mills driving in to the Tidal Basin was pretty crazy, too.

From all of that, what stands out is meeting A.C. Swami Bhaktivedanta Prabhupada in his first storefront. My friend from high school talked me into going to get some LSD and we passed by this. I had to go in and see what all the chanting was about.

just north of Miami. The only exciting happenings were occasional hurricanes.

right in the middle of the city's campaign to get Baltimoreans to pick up litter by playing "Trashball".

Morning AM deejay's response: "And here are the Trashball scores: union 1, city 0."

I think a couple people died at the scene of the accident.

And I do mean exploded, as in a Mythbusters worthy explosion: ba-WHOOM! A bad gas valve on the heater was eventually blamed.

It was a huge sensation throughout the Los Angeles area in 1966 when a 60-foot drawing of a nude woman mysteriously appeared overnight in Malibu Canyon. The story even appears on Snopes:

http://www.snopes.com/autos/hazards/pinklady.asp

It was over the tunnel on Malibu Canyon. What a hoot, coming home from work and seeing the pink lady in all her glorious pinkness.

I can't think of any good things. Isn't that sad?

I can think of some sad things from my hometown/general area. We had:

1) Jimmy Hoffa disappeared from the Machus Red Fox Restaurant in July of 1975, and then we had "Hoffa Digs" all over the place for the rest of that summer and into the next year. Every time I turned around, there was another piece of vacant land being searched or excavated because someone had submitted a tip that "Hoffa was buried there".

2) We had the Oakland County Child Killer case in 1976 and 1977. Four children were kidnapped, held for a while, and then found murdered. I was in elementary school when it started, and it definitely shook up the community. It was in my general area, but the suburbs just a little closer to Detroit. Parents were freaking out.

3) On a more personal level, just about the same time as all of this, the father of a classmate who only lived half a mile away told the mother that he wanted to divorce her. She shot him to death and then killed herself right in front of my friend, who was about 9 at the time, and her two little sisters, who were about 6 and 4 at the time. That was also the topic of much discussion around the neighborhood and school for a few days.

4) In 1971, white supremicists blew up the school buses in Pontiac, Michigan to try to stop integration, destroying 10 and damaging many more. I vaguely remember this. The leader, who was a KKK "Grand Wizzard" or "Grand Dragon" or "Chief Moran" or whatever, came from a small town about an hour away in Livingston County. Many years later, I still heard people say to be careful if you ever went to Cochotah, Michigan because it was a hotbed of far right nutcases, Klan and Militia types. Scary, this was in the 1990s or early 2000's!!!

5) March 1976 tornado that killed one teenage girl, injured other people, and did a good job of trashing a business district and many homes about 4-5 miles from my house. I remember the actual weather event, it had been unseasonably warm for mid-March, then we had terrible storms and wind, I can remember the actual storm, it was a Saturday about 7:00 in the evening, tremendous lightning. Just a year before in March, we had a tremendous ice storm, and many people were without power for up to 2 weeks. We were lucky and didn't lose ours, my sister, her husband, two young daughters, cats, and a fish tank came to stay with us for 4-5 days until their power was restored and hole in the roof fixed.

The high school was bombed by angry segregationists. Mrs. V. remembers the National Guard patrolling the streets.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clinton,_Tennessee#The_Clinton_High_School_desegregation_controversy

She had been having an incestuous relationship with her adult brother (she was 14 or 15, he was 19-21) since he was in HS and she was 11. She tried to end it and he ended up coercing her for a few more months; she confronted him, told him she'd told a teacher and was going to tell their parents as soon as they came back from a few days trip out of town if he didn't turn himself in. He murdered her, stuck her in the trunk of his car planning to dispose of the body; the school called their parents over her truancy and what she'd reported to the teacher and they came home earlier than expected...and she was still in the trunk of the car. He was questioned about the sexual-assault allegations but as there was nothing to hold him on, he was released...but the cops kept an eye on him 24/7, involved him in the search in the hopes he might give himself away...and she's still in the trunk of the car. After about a week, biology gave him away when an officer from the State Police smelled her coming from the car, got the brother to give him a ride which allowed him to get into the car looking for other evidence which was used to obtain a warrant and they found her in the trunk.

I don't know what happened to him after that. It was a DP state at the time and I'm surprised they didn't seek a capital sentence.

Other than that, the next biggest things to happen there were the parents of the HS basketball coach committing suicide and the teen who lived one farm up the road from us killed himself because he was wanted for a string of B&Es...He was 16 so he was looking at a few years in juvie, nothing serious; my mother was the one that found him because she heard the shot and knew it was too close for hunters and too big of a gun, so she went running towards the shot while the other neighbor called 911.

If you expand it to the area I grew up in, one of the most-notorious murders nationally in the past decade occurred two towns over from me to the family of a friend of my parents.

Maybe some guy ran a red light somewhere, I don't remember.

Birmingham, Alabama in the 60s.

called Barney by us kids at the time. Spooked a dog while doing rounds checking back doors of town businesses, and wound up shooting the poor thing!

Craziness. Saw so many bumper stickers "Fry Michael Ross." Out of respect for family members, I won't tell details about someone very close to me that knew one of his victims.

I lived about 3 miles away where they found her.

I grew up in the Farmington Valley, 1/2-way between Hartford and New Haven.

Now living in GA due to my husband's job, but cannot wait to move back to New England.

proceeded to deposit them all over town, much to the delight of us kids everywhere. I remember finding these huge, intact firecrackers in the street gutters.

and did we turn them back in???

Um, no. We had some fun.

till he was 16 years old about 3 miles south of the town I grew up in. But on a lighter note John Havlicek of the Boston Celtics and MLB pitchers Phil and Joe Niekro grew up in my hometown went to the same High School as I did.

It had been a stick in the craw of the town patricians & fundie nuts for years, but they were never able to close it down - at least not permanently. Then, it went up in flames one night. The volunteer fire company 2.5 miles down the road took 45 minutes to respond. Nobody was charged, the place was never rebuilt and it never reopened. The fire was ruled an accident.

Of course, there were all those rumors....

was also the same city where Lady Ga Ga's mother and grandparents are from. Her grandparents are frequent customers at The Olive Garden where my Niece is their waitress a few times. Also from Glendale, WV. is country artist Brad Paisley. He use to sing and perform at The Ash Ave. Church of God where my ex-wife went to Church. Her Niece grew up and went to school with him. She said he wasn't very sociable, nice guy but kept to himself.

Mother, Grandparents, Charles Manson and Brad Paisley walking the same neighborhood stteets; same school. Even though in a different era ,going to the same stores, bars that have been there for over 50 years still fascinates me. I almost forgot my Father went to school with Dean Martin in Wheeling, WV in the early 1930' they where 16 years old. They were on the same track team for 1 year till Dean moved to Steubenville, Ohio.

Living in Whittier, CA, at the time, this was huge as this was where both he and Pat Nixon grew up (her mother still lived in El Cerrito).

The killer left a garage remote with the button taped down in a stolen car and parked in a restaurant parking lot near the on-ramp. When the car entered the highway it went kaboom. Left a burn mark on the pavement. My mom thought I slammed the garage door again.

Edit to add: I didn't realize the murder was solved via snitch.

and the Mickleberry explosion

http://www.extraalarm.org/broadcast/chicago/Mickelberry/Mickelberry.htm

of the hubby messing around and blew his head off, in front of their kids. No one ever lived in the house again. Became quite the hang out.

Also, our volunteer fire station burned down. Not our town's finest moment.