Gerald Ford, Jr., the 38th president of the USA, was born Leslie Lynch King, Jr., the son of Leslie Lynch King and Dorothy Ayer Gardner King, on July 14, 1913. His parents separated two weeks after his birth and were divorced later that year. In 1916, his mother married Gerald Ford, and she began calling her son Gerald Ford, Jr. However, his name was not legally changed until December 3, 1935.
When Gerald Ford became U.S. President in 1974, he inherited an economic crisis: the U.S. was in the middle of a recession, and was also dealing with high inflation rates. In October of that year, Ford publicly announced a program titled “Whip Inflation Now”: he encouraged Americans to voluntarily reduce their personal spending, in hopes of taming inflation, and “WIN” buttons – meant to invoke American solidarity during World War II – were distributed to symbolize Americans’ commitment to the program.
The WIN program was widely despised and ridiculed by Americans, and was quietly discontinued in early 1975. It has gone down as one of the biggest political and PR blunders in American history.
It became legal again to own gold in the United States on the first day on 1975. The law banning ownership of gold, with a few exceptions, was a key plot point of the Disney movie The $1,000,000 Duck.
Per Wiki:
Executive Order 6102 is an executive order signed on April 5, 1933, by US President Franklin D. Roosevelt “forbidding the hoarding of gold coin, gold bullion, and gold certificates within the continental United States.” The executive order was made under the authority of the Trading with the Enemy Act of 1917, as amended by the Emergency Banking Relief Act in March 1933. At the time, this policy faced criticism from those who asserted it was “completely immoral” and “a flagrant violation of the solemn promises made in the Gold Standard Act of 1900” and promises made to purchasers of Liberty and Victory Loans during World War I. The critics also claimed this Executive Order would lead to an inflation of supply of credit and currency, which would cause a fraudulent economic boom which would inevitably bust and result in a depression.
Soon after private ownership of gold was banned in 1933, all of the remaining types of circulating currency (National Bank Notes, silver certificates, Federal Reserve Notes, and United States Notes) were redeemable by individuals only for silver. Eventually, even silver redemption stopped in June 1968, during a time in which all U.S. currency (both coins and paper currency) was changed to fiat currency. For the general public, there was then little to distinguish United States Notes from Federal Reserve Notes. As a result, the public circulation of United States Notes, in the form of $2 and $5 bills was discontinued in August 1966, and replaced with $5 Federal Reserve Notes and, eventually, $2 Federal Reserve Notes as well.
The purity of Silver (Ag, argentum, atomic number 47) is typically measured on a per-mille basis, or parts per thousand and often depicted with ‰. On the periodic table, silver’s two vertical neighbors are Copper (Cu, cuprum, atomic number 29) and Gold (Au, aurum, atomic number 79). All three are known as the coinage metals due to their usage in minting coins. They all occur naturally in elemental form, and they were most likely the first three elements discovered because they are stable, they occur in metallic form in nature, and no extraction metallurgy is necessary to produce them. For these reasons Silver, Copper, and Gold have been known to man since prehistoric times.
Not in play, just for fun:
Thanks go to @kenobi_65 for teaching me how to include a Youtube link that works!
“Silver and Gold” is a song written by Johnny Marks, for the soundtrack of the Rankin/Bass animated holiday special “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.” In the special, the song ws sung by Burl Ives, in the character of Snowman Sam.
The TV Christmas special Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer first aired on 06 December 1964 and has been televised in December every year either by NBC or CBS. It is the longest continuously run Christmas TV special in the US.
Robert L May created Rudolph in 1939 as an assignment for Chicago-based Montgomery Ward. The retailer had been buying and giving away booklets for Christmas every year and it was decided that creating their own book would save money. May considered naming the reindeer Rollo or Reginald before deciding upon using the name Rudolph. May chose a reindeer because of his daughter’s love of the deer at Lincoln Park Zoo in Chicago. May also said he was treated like Rudolph as a child. In its first year of publication, Montgomery Ward distributed 2.4 million copies of Rudolph’s story.
Rudolph William Louis “Rudy” Giuliani was admitted to the practice of law in New York State in 1968; he was disbarred in 2024 for “demonstrably false and misleading statements to courts, lawmakers and the public” about the 2020 Presidential election.
Rudolph Valentino was an Italian who emigrated to America at age 18, and who became an international sex symbol in the early 1920s, thanks to his performances in a number of silent films, particularly The Sheik (1921) and Blood and Sand (1922).
Valentino died suddenly at age 31, in 1926, due to complications from a perforated stomach ulcer. His death and funerals (one held in New York, and one in Beverly Hills) led to an outpouring of grief and hysteria among his fans.
Ne’er mind.
Elmer Valentine was a former Chicago police officer who served in WWII before moving to LA in the early 1960s. After running a successful nightclub called PJ’s, he co-founded three iconic nightspots in West Hollywood, CA: The Whisky a-Go Go, the Roxy Theater and the Rainbow Bar and Grill. In the 1990s he sold his interest in The Whisky to Lou Adler, but retained ownership in the other two clubs until his death in 2008.
John Adler is a famous, local neurosurgeon who invented two cancer surgery treatment robotic systems that perform a technique called SRS, or stereotactic radiosurgery: the CK, or Cyberknife system, initially approved for human use by the US FDA in 1999, and the Zap-X system, initially approved for human use by the US FDA in 2017.
SRS is a robotic surgical technique that focuses pinpoint laser beams from outside the body to typically treat cancer tumors in a noninvasive manner. Instead of a surgeon using a scalpel to physically cut into the human body to remove a tumor, in SRS many low dose laser beams are aimed from outside the human body at the ‘target’, which is the word we use in the industry when we really mean the cancer tumor inside the body (‘target’ sounds a bit more sterile, doesn’t it?). Because there is almost always healthy tissue in front of and behind the target, a high dose laser beam would damage that tissue. Instead, SRS aims many low dose laser beams at the target from many different angles such that the dose accumulates at the target, effectively frying the tumor while minimizing damage done to the surrounding healthy tissue.
SRS is frequently an outpatient surgical procedure. The patient typically can walk home within an hour after this surgery is performed without feeling any ill effects. Or, the patient can drive themself home.
Searching for medical devices approved for use in the USA by the FDA can be done here ➜ Medical Device Databases | FDA ■
∘ in 1999, the Cyberknife’s first US FDA approval certification, 510(K) # K984563, is here ➜ 510(k) Premarket Notification ■
∘ in 2017, the Zap-X’s first US FDA approval certification, 510(K) # K171804, is here ➜ 510(k) Premarket Notification ■
John Adler founded two companies for these SRS systems: Accuray in Sunnyvale CA, and Zap Surgical Systems in San Carlos CA.
Comment only. Not in play: this is the field that my career was in, computer systems for cancer treatments. I am fortunate to have worked for John Adler towards the end of my career, when I worked for him at Zap Surgical (this was after my military service; I am now fully retired). I had a rewarding career and worked with and for many brilliant people, and I’m proud to be able to call John a friend.
On a personal note I have a small, benign, meningioma in my brain that my neurologist recommends be removed. It is small, and in the last 2-3 years has grown slightly, so my neurologist recommends that it be removed using a Cyberknife, which we have locally here near San Francisco. But since I worked for Zap Surgical, for strictly sentimental reasons I’m inclined to travel to a Zap-X machine to have it done there. When I last talked with John he recommended I go to the Zap-X machine in Denver. We shall see. I may post about it here, when I have that done. There is no rush to have this treatment but sometime this year I should arrange to have it zapped. That treatment should be later this year, or next year.
Max Adler was a violinist and businessman, who became an executive with Sears Roebuck & Co. in the early 20th century. After his retirement from Sears in 1928, Adler became a philanthropist, and funded the Adler Planetarium on Chicago’s lakefront, the first planetarium to be built in the Western Hemisphere.
J.C. Higgins was a sports brand for Sears Roebuck for many years. It was inspired by John Higgins, who was a company vice president. The brand was eventually replaced by the Ted Williams brand. I still have my J.C. Higgins .22 rifle, which is probably a collector piece now.
Jonathan Higgins from Magnum PI has a Ph.D in Mathematics from the University of Cambridge.
Tom Selleck’s contract commitment to the Magnum, P.I. series famously cost him the role of Indiana Jones in Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), which went to Harrison Ford. Selleck was unable to take the part of Jones as Magnum was due to start filming in March 1980. Owing to the 1980 AFTRA/Screen Actors Guild strike, production of Magnum was delayed until December 1980, which would have allowed Selleck to play Jones.