We aim to please!
Richard M. Nixon was elected President of the United States in November 1968, having lost the governorship of California in a race six years earlier (to Pat Brown, father of the current governor, Jerry Brown), and the last presidential race in which he ran eight years earlier (to John F. Kennedy).
In 1970 President Richard Nixon persuaded Congressman George Bush
to run for the Senate seat held by Democrat Ralph Yarborough.
Bush agreed, and won the Republican primary handily. Yarborough, however,
was defeated in the Democratic primary by Lloyd Bentsen.
Bentsen defeated Bush in the following election, and held the Senate seat
for 23 years, not having to resign to run for VP on the 1988 Dukakis ticket,
which was defeated by…VP George Bush!
Lyndon Johnson once described the young Congressman George H.W. Bush as “the kind of guy who’d get out of the shower to piss.”
Seven baseball managers share the “honor” of managing in a World Series but never winning a World Series game: Bruce Bochy of the Padres, Clint Hurdle of the Rockies, Roger Craig of the Giants, Phil Garner of the Astros, Eddie Sawyer of the Phillies, Gabby Hartnett of the Cubs, and Donie Bush of the Pirates. All managed their teams to one World Series.
LBJ was a disgusting character.
You know he would make his secretaries, the female ones,
take dictation at the open bathroom door while he was moving
his bowels, didn’t you?
His fans said that was part of his “wonderful naturalness”,
or some such thing.
I guess even pissing in the shower is a step up from that.
(I’ve read that he liked to make his fastidious, Harvard-educated advisors stand in the doorway as he was pooping, but never heard that he made his female secretaries do that).
Noted contemporary historian Doris Kearns Goodwin, perhaps best known for her book Team of Rivals about Lincoln’s Cabinet, was a White House intern and later an aide to Lyndon B. Johnson in his final years. There have long been rumors, never substantiated, that they had a sexual relationship as well.
Politics makes not only strange bedfellows but strange rivals. In 1848 Congressman Abraham Lincoln gave a blistering anti-Mexican War speech in which he defended secession, revolution, and home rule:
During the same period Jefferson Davis, veteran of the Mexican War, argued the right of the Federal government to impose its will on local governments (particularly those who wanted to ban slavery in areas of the newly conquered territories) in the interest of Union.
After Pete Duel committed suicide, Roger Davis replaced him in the role of Hannibal Heyes in the Western series Alias Smith and Jones. Before Duel’s death, Davis had appeared in an episode of the series as a gunfighter – the only person ever killed by Ben Murphy’s Kid Curry character.
When an impoverished young Ben Franklin first arrived in Philadelphia after fleeing an indenture with his older brother in Boston, he used his last few pennies to buy two loaves of bread. His future common-law wife Deborah Read saw him wandering the streets, munching the bread, and thought he looked like a fool.
The names “Deborah” and “Melissa” mean “(honey)bee” in Hebrew and Greek, respectively.
The name given to the Mormon state that comprised what’s now Utah and parts of Arizona, Wyoming, Nevada, Idaho, and California was Deseret, which according to Joseph Smith was an ancient Hebrew word for ‘beehive’. Brigham Young’s primary home in Salt Lake City was called ‘The Beehive House’ to commemorate this and Utah is still nicknamed The Beehive State.
French TV ancor Melissa Theuriau was IMHO the world’s hottest
of the 1st decade of the millenium:
If anyone is interested google her name + topless: some enterprising
paparazzi caught her at such a moment at the beach and plastered it
all over the net.
The Grand View Topless Coffee Shop in Vassalboro, Maine was open only four months before being destroyed in a fire in April 2010, set by Raymond Bellavance of Augusta, the jealous boyfriend of one of the waitresses. The shop has since reopened in China, Maine.
Although Raymond Chandler faithfully evoked the California of his day in his writings, he fictionalized the names of many of his settings. Santa Monica was referred to as Bay City, and Idle valley is a composite of various San Fernando Valley communities.
The hook-up of Chandler and Monica on Friends occurred in London while they were there to attend Ross’s doomed second wedding at the end of Season 4.
Ross Matthews is (was?) Jay Leno’s longtime intern/correspondent.
Jay Leno has made comic use of his mandibular prognathism, a condition shared by the Habsburg family (although Leno does not have the sagging lip to go with his massive chin). He is an alumnus of Boston’s performing-arts-oriented Emerson College, whose alumni also include Jennifer Coolidge, Gina Gershon, Spalding Gray, Norman Lear, Denis Leary, Maria Menounos, and Henry Winkler.
One of the cooler personal name anagrams I have seen is “Ralph Waldo Emerson = person whom all read”.
Robert Heinlein coined the term “waldo” in a story by that name. The term was used in real life to designate and mechanical manipulator that allowed the user to move things from a distance.
The Great Waldo Pepper is a 1975 drama starring Robert Redford as barnstorming pilot in the Roaring Twenties.
