In the spirit of posting Mundane & Pointless Information (which I must share)…
King County, which includes the City of Seattle, was created in 1852 and was named after William Rufus De Vane King, acting vice-president under President Millard Fillmore, who had succeeded to the presidency upon the death of President Zachary Taylor.
I’ve just heard on the morning news that King County is being ‘renamed’. It will still be King County, but a new law will declare that it is named after Dr. Martin Luther King.
Wow - so the people who run the place have nothing better to do with their time? Can we just call it ***king silly County?
To be fair, I expect ML King was more use than the William Rufus guy, although I wouldn’t really know. Was the Vice-Pres one named, in his turn, after William R4ufus of england?
That’s a bit disappointing. I thought they were going to rename it after the late lamented comedian Alan King.
I don’t know if MLK had any connection to Seattle, but I suspect he had more of a connection than William Rufus De Vane King did. Personally, I’d have renamed the county “Freedom” or “Liberty” but luckily for the people of Seattle it isn’t up to me.
“Excuse me, I need to see Draal.”
“Oh, Draal is very busy! Have had four ground quakes on other side of planet. Damage to weather control system, to great machine.”
“Zathras!”
“Yes?”
“What the hell are you doing here?”
“Zathras work here. Zathras were born here. You work up there, Zathras work down here. You dress like that, Zathras dress like this.”
“That’s not–”
“Just covering all possibilities. Zathras does not want you being confused. Bye.”
“Hey! Wait a minute! You are not supposed to be here. We left you a thousand years in the past.”
“No! We have never met before. But Zathras very pleased to be meeting you.”
“No, we have met.”
“No. Oh. No, noo. No no. You did not meet Zathras. You met Zathras.”
**Ivanova ** and Zathras, *Conflicts of Interest *, Babylon 5
King was the president pro tem of the Senate. Although this placed him first in line for the presidency at the time, should Millard have gone south, we prefer not to use the term “acting vice president” which has no foundation in American law.
Later in 1852 King was nominated and elected as bona fide Vice President on the Democratic ticket along with Franklin Pierce, even though he was dying of tuberculosis. (You can see the high regard in which the office was held at the time.)
Among King’s distinctions:
He is the only President or Vice President with Rufus in his name.
He is the only Vice President who never married, and is believed to have been gay.
He took the oath of office in a foriegn country (Cuba, where he had travelled for health reasons), never set foot in Washington as Vice President, and died at his home in Alabama six weeks later.
Since the Kingdome was named for King County before the name change, he had a baseball stadium named after him. The stadium was blown up, and now the county has been redesignated. Old Rufus is on a losing streak.
Wait. Waiwaitwait. So the county in which Seattle, Washington resides was named after a Vice President from Alabama, then was renamed - to the same word - only this time after a preacher from Georgia…and who spent most of his early preaching career in Montgomery, Alabama?
It was originally named King County (and Pierce County was named “Pierce County”) as part of the “we want to be a state” plans. Apparently, someone thought it would be more likely if we named the biggest two counties after the President and Vice President and a lot of people agreed with them.
I was going to write that this had already happened several years ago (in 1986, to be exact) but apparently, it didn’t actually happen then - (pesky formalities) and as it turns out, it might not be named after anyone.
This is a stretch of old highway 99 that runs near Canada. In 1940 some unbright citizens decided to name it after a guy who had absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with state history. Even less than the Kings.
Another great naming fiasco - One story has it that the state was named “Washington” after the delegation applying for statehood had their first suggestion shot down. They were given twenty minutes to come up with an alternative and “Washington” was the first thing that sprung to mind. (No cite I could find - I heard this story on a morning radio station, so it could be BS.)
Hey, maybe this will start a trend across the country! I live in Dallas, Texas which in turn is in Dallas county. We should rename our county to “Dallas County”, after the TV show! Wow, think of all the great press that’ll bring us!
