There was a major Dakota Sioux uprising in Minnesota during the Civil War. Although Army tribunals condemned hundreds of Indians to death in the aftermath, President Abraham Lincoln personally reviewed the records and pardoned or commuted the sentences of most of the convicted. Still, 38 Dakota were hanged for murder and rape on December 26, 1862, in the largest one-day execution in American history. Lincoln was criticized for not executing more Indians and was warned that it would hurt Republican prospects in the state, but reportedly replied, “I could not afford to hang men for votes.”
The Dakota is a coop apartment in New York City, first opened in 1884. The story is that it took its name from its remote location (at the time – it’s on 72nd Street), though it may also be due to the builder’s liking for the American West. Its most famous tenant was probably John Lennon, who was killed just outside, though many other celebrities have lived there.
The military cargo/transport version of the legendary DC-3 airliner was called the C-47 Skytrain by the USAAF (nicknamed “Gooneybird”), and the Dakota by the Royal Air Force. The British name was chosen to be a near-acronym for “Douglas Aircraft Company Transport Aircraft”. The company was actually located in Santa Monica, CA, not the Great Plains.
The pier in Santa Monica, Ca marked the end of historic U.S. Route 66, which ran southwest from Lake Shore Drive in Chicago.
Irish actress Roma Downey is most famous for playing Monica on Touched By an Angel but her other roles have included Jackie Kennedy Onassis in a TV miniseries and Annie Sullivan in a sequel to The Miracle Worker. She is married to Mark Burnett, the producer of reality hits Survivor and The Apprentice.
The California city of Downey was the site of the first Taco Bell, and also features the oldest operating McDonald’s (which still features the original architecture and illuminated sign).
Robert Downey became a hot film director with the surprise hit film Putney Swope, a satirical look at advertising and race in the US. He also dubbed in all the lines for lead actor Arnold Johnson. Alas, Downey was never able to follow up on the hit (some say that a penchant for drugs was the problem). His son works in Hollywood as an actor.
Robert Downey Jr. has played roles as diverse as Charlie Chaplin, a journalist, a drug addict, an architect, a billionaire inventor, an Australian actor willing to do anything for a role, and many others. After long struggling with substance abuse, he is now an A-list Hollywood actor.
Charlie Chaplin left the U.S. for what was supposed to be a brief trip to England (his home country) in 1952, only to have Herbert Hoover work with the INS to revoke Chaplin’s re-entry permit to the U.S. (Chaplin had been accused of un-American activities for several years). As a result, Chaplin did not return to the U.S. for 20 years.
I think that was J. Edgar Hoover, the FBI Director, and not Herbert Hoover, the former President?
Herbert Hoover was a noted mining engineer and organized important humanitarian relief efforts in post-World War I Europe before serving as U.S. Secretary of Commerce. He was elected President in 1928. After he was in office just nine months, the Great Depression began.
Choo Choo Charlie was an engineer,
Choo Choo Charlie had a train we hear,
He had an engine and it sure was fun,
He used Good n Plenty candy to make the train run.
There was a star known for womanizing who, when he was middle aged and been married and divorced more than once and had had many, many affairs, fell in love with the teenaged daughter of a famous person. The girl’s family was aghasted and very disapproving and it was a media scandal, but the couple had a long happy marriage and even had children.
The man was Charlie Chaplin and the wife was Oona O’Neil, daughter od author Eugene.
And you thought Woofy & Soon-Yi were the first!
After he died, Chaplin was interred in Corsier-Sur-Vevey Cemetery, Vaud, Switzerland. On March 1, 1978, his corpse was stolen by a small group of Swiss mechanics in an attempt to extort money from his family. The plot failed; the robbers were captured, and the corpse was recovered eleven weeks later near Lake Geneva. His body was reburied under six feet of concrete to prevent further attempts.
The Geneva Bible was considered the standard English translation of the Bible prior to the preparation of the King James version. The first mass-published Bible directly available to the public, it was also the first to use guides, cross-references, and illustrations, and is therefore considered the first Study Bible. It was written in Geneva by a group of English Puritan dissenters, led by John Calvin, who were in exile from their home during the Catholic reign of Mary I.
Calvin Coolidge came to national prominence as governor of Massachusetts when he sent a group of State Guard into Boston to keep ordering during a police strike. The police had gone on strike for the right to form a union, and were opposed by the police commissioner and Coolidge. His actions helped break the strike.
Dwight Morrow was Calvin Coolidge’s classmate at Amherst, and was later named by then-President Coolidge as ambassador to Mexico. In 1927, he invited Charles Lindbergh to that Latin American country for a goodwill tour. Lindbergh was introduced to Morrow’s daughter, Anne, who eventually married the aviator.
Charles Lindbergh was not the first person to cross the Atlantic non-stop. He was the first to do so while solo-flying an airplane – itself no mean feat.
[del]Dorothy Parker claimed (probably not accurately) that she was once bet $10 to make Coolidge say more than two words. Per the story she sat next to him and leveled with him: “Mr. President, I have a bet that I can make you say more than two words to me”, to which “Silent Cal” replied “You lose”. More reliable is her response upon learning in 1933 that Coolidge was dead: “How can they tell?”[/del]
In addition to the six children he had with Anne Morrow, it was discovered by outsiders long after his death that Lindbergh had three children- Dyrk, Astrid, and David- by a German mistress, Brigitte Hesshaimer, with whom he was involved for the last 17 years of his life.
Charles Augustus Lindbergh, Jr., 20 months old, was abducted from his family home in East Amwell, New Jersey, near the town of Hopewell, on the evening of March 1, 1932. Over two months later his body was discovered a short distance from home. The crime spurred Congress to pass the Federal Kidnapping Act, commonly called the “Lindbergh Law”, which made transporting a kidnapping victim across state lines a federal crime.
The lead investigator for the Lindbergh-baby kidnapping case was Herbert Norman Schwarzkopf, the superintendent of the New Jersy State Police. His son is General H Norman Schwarzkopf, commander of the Coalition Forces in the Persian Gulf War of 1991.