Although the 22nd Amendment prevented Eisenhower from running for President in 1960, the rule did not apply to Harry Truman, despite that he had already served for almost eight years.
Truman was ridiculed as “the Senator from Pendergast” when he first entered the Senate, but is now regarded as a man of virtue and integrity. For example, Truman fired Attorney General J. Howard McGrath when that man interfered with prosecutions of corrupt tax officials.
President Harry S Truman was prone to seasickness but nevertheless enjoyed cruises on the presidential yacht USS Williamsburg, including an impromptu one to Bermuda in the late summer of 1946.
The presidential yacht *Sequoia *was used from the administrations of Herbert Hoover until Jimmy Carter, who had it sold. Nixon used her more than any other. She is now in storage during an ownership dispute. *Sequoia *was purchased in 1931 by the United States Department of Commerce, for Prohibition patrol and decoy duties. Bootleggers would see what they thought was a rich-man’s yacht and boat over to offer to sell illegal liquor, and then undercover police would arrest them.
Folk singer Tom Paxton could hardly avoid writing and singing “Talking Watergate” about the whole Nixon scandal. The song is about the man who helped break into the Watergate building, and ends:
I said it made me feel so proud,
Just to hang around with this great crowd,
With John and Bob and Mitch and all the rest.
And even though no jail was fun,
I knew that justice would be done.
And they laughed so hard the tears rolled down their chest.
Oh, ain’t it great what friends can do,
They say I’ll be out in a year or two
And they’ll get me a real nice job that pays real well.
Yeah, they taught some useful things to me
And now that I’m going on TV,
They taught me how to smile and lie like hell.
Tom Paxton wrote the song “The Marvelous Toy” (it went Zip! when it moved, Pop! when it stopped, Whirr! when it stood still) during a typing class at Fort Dix, NJ, when the US Army was training him to be a clerk-typist. Students who could already type still had to sit through the class, but could kill time with their own writing. The Chad Mitchell Trio made the song a hit.
John Paul Mitchell Systems is a privately-held company, specializing in haircare products and services. The company was founded in 1980, by stylist Paul Mitchell and entrepreneur John Paul DeJoria. It’s best known for the Paul Mitchell line of haircare products and tools, and the Paul Mitchell Schools for cosmetology.
John Mitchell, who served as Nixon’s Attorney General, served 19 months in prison for conspiracy, obstruction of justice, and perjury related to the Watergate cover-up. In the days immediately after the Watergate break-in of June 17, 1972, Mitchell enlisted former FBI agent Steve King to prevent his wife Martha from learning about the break-in or contacting reporters. While she was on a phone call with journalist Helen Thomas about the break-in, King pulled the phone cord from the wall. Mrs. Mitchell was held against her will in a California hotel room and forcefully sedated by a psychiatrist after a physical struggle with five men that left her needing stitches. Nixon aides, in an effort to discredit her, told the press that she had a “drinking problem”.
John Mitchell is heard in a phone call with Bob Woodward (Robert Redford), but not seen, in the 1976 Watergate film All the President’s Men.
The Doolittle Raid of April 1942 consisted of 16 B-25B medium bombers taking off from the USS Hornet (CV-8) from 650 miles east of Tokyo. The Mitchell bombers bombed Japan only four months after Pearl Harbor to give Americans a needed morale boost and to plant seeds of doubt among the Japanese military and civilian personnel. Of the 80 crewmen, 77 initially survived the mission.
Lt Col. Richard E. Cole, Doolittle’s copilot in the lead aircraft was the last surviving Doolittle Raider. Cole died one month ago in San Antonio TX, on 9 April 2019, at the age of 103.
Hugh Lofting, an Englishman who served in the Irish Guards during World War I, wrote illustrated letters to his children back in England during the war. As telling his children about the war would be, in his words, either “too horrible or too dull,” his letters were stories about a character, Doctor Dolittle, who could speak with animals. After the war, Lofting wrote an extremely popular series of novels about the character and his adventures.
Hugh le Despenser was chief advisor to England’s King Edward II. Both the King and Hugh’s son, also named Hugh, were allegedly sodomites. Both of the Hughs, and Edward were eventually killed at the orders of Isabella the She-Wolf (daughter of King Philip IV of France and wife of King Edward II) and Isabella’s lover Roger Mortimer.
While King Edward II was killed secretly, in a gruesome way intended to leave no marks of violence, Hugh the Younger was executed quite openly, with his penis first severed and burned.
The Playboy Hugh Hefner was a descendant of Plymouth governor William Bradford. While enrolled at Northwestern University as a graduate student, Hefner submitted a graduate paper titled, “Sex Behavior and the US Law”. In it he concluded that almost every American would be in jail if all the laws against various sex acts were enforced.
Playboy Motor Car Corporation was a Buffalo, New York-based automobile company, established in 1947. The company only made 99 cars including 1 prototype, 97 finished serial numbered production cars, as well as 1 unfinished car numbered 98 which has survived with zero miles on the odometer (99 cars total) before going bankrupt in 1951. The prototype is owned and has been restored by company founder Lou Horowitz’s grandson David Kaplan.
The American bison, commonly referred to as a buffalo, is only distantly ‘related’ to the buffalo species. The American bison is more closely related to cows and goats.
Members of the buffalo species include the African buffalo and the water buffalo.
The Buffalo Bills have the distinction of being the only team to advance to four consecutive Super Bowls, but also has the dubious distinction of losing all four of them.
The Buffalo Bills are the only team in the NFL located in the State of New York. The New York Jets and New York Giants, despite their names, are located in New Jersey.
At various times, Donald Trump, Jon Bon Jovi and Edward Rogers (a Toronto media magnate) have expressed interest in buying the Bills. Rogers hoped to buy them and relocate them to Toronto.
Trump owned the New Jersey Generals of the long-defunct USFL.
Comment: for years and years he tried to break into one of the most exclusive clubs ever, that of the NFL owners.
The military rank “General” actually started as an adjective, as it began as “Captain General,” meaning, more or less, “the captain who is in charge of a large group of troops.” The “general” was similar to the term “in-chief.” Eventually, “general” by itself came to mean a very senior officer, and morphed into the various kinds of generals that armies have today.
Writer William Safire explained the Shakespeare line “caviar to the general” in 1985, in his long-running New York Times column, “On Language”:
“Most people don’t know that [Shakespeare] allusion; most who do think it means ‘‘that expensive food appreciated by big shots,’’ but they are wrong. The phrase was coined in ‘‘Hamlet,’’ as he told the players that '‘the play . . . pleas’d not the million, ‘twas caviary to the general.’’ The ‘‘general’’ was not some gourmet leader of troops, but the general public, which thought caviar was a mess of foul-smelling fish eggs and did not appreciate the delicacy. The phrase has been twisted into meaning ‘‘a delicacy appreciated by the General.’’”