TWT #123 –

On May 3rd, 1971, a 3-day protest against the Vietnam war came to a climax as over 10,000 federal troops were deployed to the D.C area to confront the 35,000 protesters attempting to shut down the government for a day.

So many troops came into the D.C area, that a transport plan was landing nearly every 3 minutes. These included 4,000 paratroopers, 2,000 members of the National Guard, 5,100 police officers, and a nice handful of Marines.

All to arrest these guys

But actually, the protesters weren’t exactly being “peaceful”, per se.

The demonstrators were running through the streets of D.C slashing tires and blocking roads in an attempt to stop government workers from getting to their offices (you could almost call these guerrilla tactics…which we know the army wasn’t great at countering at this point in time, right?)

By about 8am, 7,000 arrests had been made. All-in-all, the army would arrest nearly 13,000 people (not all of whom had been protesting, some were just innocent bystanders that looked like yuppies).

Here are a few videos that help show the extent of the demonstrations and arrests (ignore the overly-happy music in the first one though):

(p.s if you’re enjoying these Terrible takes on history, please subscribe to my newsletter for exclusive Terrible content! Thanks!)

Email address: Leave this field empty if you’re human: