What happened: The Minneapolis Tribune broke a story about an assassination attempt on the mayor of Minneapolis, Hubert H. Humphrey.

When: March 18, 1947.

The backstory: According to the story, Humphrey was returning home in southeast Minneapolis late from a dinner with the Hennepin County legislative delegation. Usually he was accompanied to the door by driver and bodyguard Vern Bartholomew, a cop who carried a .38 in case anything happened. But on the night of Feb. 6, 1947, there were other passengers in the car. Humphrey waved off the front door escort so the passengers could get home more quickly.

The streetlight by his house was out, the paper reported. As Humphrey fumbled for his keys in the dark, three shots "pinged" from the space between his home and the house next door. Hubert hustled in the house. His wife, Muriel, said she'd heard the shots, but had thought that they were backfires from a car.

It was the first attempt on his life since he took the mayor's job, but his office had received anonymous telephone threats for months from the Democratic Nationalist Party, which the newspaper described as "anti-Semitic, anti-Negro, and anti-Communist."

For the next few weeks, when Officer Bartholomew drove Humphrey home, he did a sweep of the block before walking the mayor (who went on to become vice president) to his door. No one was ever arrested.

Saved by a bark? Humphrey may have been warned by his dog about another close call. The Tribune reported that the night after the assassination attempt, Humphrey's dog Tippy growled, as if someone were outside the house. Strangely, Tippy disappeared for good two weeks later.