Shortly after the April 1972 Massachusetts Democratic Primary election, which was won by George McGovern, conservative columnist Robert Novak penned a column in which he quote an unnamed Democratic Senator as saying that “The people don’t know McGovern is for amnesty, abortion, and legalization of pot. Once middle America—Catholic middle America, in particular—finds this out, he’s dead.” Because of the column McGovern became known as the candidate of “amnesty, abortion, and acid.”
In 2007, soon after the death of Thomas Eagleton, Novak revealed that the source of the quote was none other than Senator Eagleton.
Major George Henry Thomas was one of the highest-ranking Virginians other than Commanding General Winfield Scott to remain loyal to the Union at the outbreak of the Civil War. He never lost a battle, won the nickname “The Rock of Chickamauga” for his brave stand there, and ended the war as a major general.
The Chickamauga Dam on the Tennessee River in Chattanooga TN creates the Chickamauga Lake reservoir in south-central Tennessee. The dam was completed in 1940. They were named after the Chickamauga Cherokee who used to live in the area. The Chickamauga Cherokee separated from the greater body of the Cherokee during the Revolutionary War.
The Transylvania Colony, also referred to as the Transylvania Purchase, was a short-lived, extra-legal colony founded in early 1775 by North Carolina land speculator Richard Henderson, who formed and controlled the Transylvania Company. Henderson and his investors had reached an agreement to purchase a vast tract of Cherokee lands west of the southern and central Appalachian Mountains in what is now part of Kentucky.
The Jeep Cherokee was the name used for several generations of SUVs marketed by Jeep. The Cherokee was first introduced in 1974, as a rebadged two-door Jeep Wagoneer; the model was continuously offered by Jeep from 1974 through 2023, through five different generations of body styles.
The final version of the Cherokee, a midsized crossover vehicle, was discontinued after the 2023 model year, with the last Cherokee rolling off of the assembly line in Belvidere, Illinois on February 28th of this year.
The Jeep Grand Cherokee is a mid-sized SUV made by Jeep since 1993. To date there have been five generations of the Grand Cherokee:
1993 the ZJ
1999 the WJ
2005 the WK
2011 the WK2
2021 the WL
It debuted at the 1992 North American International Auto Show in Detroit and they were initially built in Jeep’s Jefferson North Assembly plant in Detroit. They are also manufactured in Canada, Australia, and Austria.
(Not in play: not exactly. Jeeps for the consumer market were originally made by Willys-Overland Motors, starting in 1945. Kaiser Motors merged with Willys in 1953, becoming Kaiser Jeep. AMC bought Kaiser Jeep from its parent company in 1970.)
In Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, JK Rowling revealed that Albus Dumbledore defeated the notorious Dark Wizard Grindelwald in 1945, leading to longtime fan speculation that their battle may have been connected to the fall of Nazi Germany.
Not in play: well, to add to that… The very first Jeep was known as the BRC, Bantam Reconnaissance Car made in Butler PA by Butler’s American Bantam Company. The very first prototype was delivered to the Army on 21 September 1940 for initial testing.
Walter Payton was one of the greatest running backs in NFL history. The source of his nickname, “Sweetness”, may have come from different stories. One is from when he was in college at Jackson State University in Jackson MS. While eluding a would-be tackler, he yelled out to the defender, “Your sweetness is your weakness!” Another is from his soft, high-pitched voice, and others derided him with Sweetness because of it. And yet another is from a reporter who said, “he runs so sweet that it gives me cavities just watching him.” His son, Jarrett, said, “I think it was just his nature to really help other people. When you think about the nickname ‘Sweetness,’ that’s what he was all about. That nickname fit him so well because his heart was always in the right place."
Walter Payton was the starting running back on the 1985 Chicago Bears team, which went 15-1 in the regular season and won the Super Bowl. The team, coached by Mike Ditka, was one of the best defensive teams in NFL history, allowing just 12.4 points per game and shutting out both NFC opponents in the playoffs.
Future Massachusetts Gov. and 1988 Democratic presidential candidate Mike Dukakis served in the U.S. Army in South Korea from 1955-57 as a radio operator, but did not see combat.
There were two code types used during World War II. Type one codes were formally developed based on the languages of the Comanche, Hopi, Meskwaki and Navajo peoples. They used words from their languages for each letter of the English alphabet. Messages could be encoded and decoded by using a simple substitution cipher where the ciphertext was the Native language word. Type two code was informal and directly translated from English into the Indigenous language. If there was no corresponding word in the Indigenous language for the military word, code talkers used short, descriptive phrases. For example, the Navajo did not have a word for submarine, so they translated it as “iron fish”.
The Navajo peoples, the Diné, view a solar eclipse as a rebirth. They do not work during an eclipse. For them it is a time to reflect. When I was in Monument Valley for the 14 October 2023 annular solar eclipse, the Monument Valley Tribal Park was closed for several hours that day. The annular solar eclipse passed directly over Monument Valley Tribal Park. We stayed at The View hotel there (recommended!), which is just outside the tribal park. We viewed the eclipse from the hotel grounds.
Total Eclipse of the Heart is a 1983 rock song, by Welsh singer Bonnie Tyler, which was written and produced by Jim Steinman. The song was Tyler’s biggest hit, reaching #1 in many countries, including the U.S. and UK.; the music video (directed by Russell Mulcahy) has surpassed one billion views on YouTube.
“Tippecanoe and Tyler, too!” was the 1840 presidential campaign slogan of William Henry Harrison and his running mate, John Tyler. It referenced the Battle of Tippecanoe (1811), a skirmish in the Indiana Territory between the forces of General Harrison and Tecumseh, leader of the Shawnee people.
