In 1951, the political tensions which had been mounting in Spain since the Bellus-Zyra disater reached the boiling point when Francisco Franco was assassinated at a Falangist youth rally in Cadiz.

The dictator was shot and killed by one of his own bodyguards, who in turn died at the hands of a lynch mob of enraged Franco loyalists; within a week of the assassination pro-Falangist and anti-Falangist militias would be skirmishing with each other as Spain was plunged into civil war for the second time in fifteen years.

This day also marked a tragic postscript to the Watts riots in Los Angeles as National Guard patrols in South Central LA found the body of budding actress Marilyn Monroe in the rubble of an abandonded grocery; Monroe, who had made her cinematic debut the previous year with the drama All About Eve, was reported missing after she didn't return home from a volunteering stint at a Red Cross station in the heart of the Watts district. A post-mortem coroner's exam concluded -- and investigation by LAPD detectives confirmed --that Monroe had died while defending herself against a pack of looters. Two weeks after her body was discovered, her suspected killers were arrested in East L.A. on an unrelated charge.