On this day, Oct. 7, in 1974, U.S. Park Police pulled over Rep. Wilbur Mills, D-Ark., and striptease dancer Fanne Foxe, who leapt from the car and jumped into the Tidal Basin.
The spectacle would lead to the downfall of Mills, considered one of the most powerful men in Congress.
Mills had been drinking, and his face was cut from a scuffle with Foxe, whose real name was Annabella Battistella, but also known as “the “Argentine Firecracker.”
Nevertheless, Mills won re-election. On Nov. 30, 1974, Mills held a news conference in Foxe’s dressing room at a burlesque house in Boston to dispel rumors he was having an affair with her.
It had the opposite effect. Mills did not seek another term.
He died in 1992 at age 82.
– Scott McCabe
