JFK Jr.'s mother Jacquenline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis and her sister Lee Radziwill were sufficiently embarrassed and appalled at the living situtation of their aunt and cousin, both named Edie Bouvier Beale, that they paid to restore their dilapidated and condemned East Hampton mansion to inhabitabity in the early 1970s. (The sisters also felt public pressure even though they were not only not remotely responsible for the Beales horrible living conditions but in fact the Beales themselves had turned down offers for the property.) The documentary Grey Gardens was filmed there shortly after this.
General Charles Lee was court martialed during the American Revolution for refusing an order from George Washington at the Battle of Monmouth. Washington had ordered Lee to advance, but, seeing he was outnumbered, Lee retreated instead. After Washington dressed him down, Lee replied with “inappropriate language,” leading to the court martial.
Charles Lee was not related to the famous Lee family of Virginia, which included Richard Henry Lee, a delegate to the Continental Congress; decorated soldier Lighthorse Harry Lee; and, later, Confederate General Robert E. Lee. That family was light-heartedly commemorated by the song “The Lees of Old Virginia” in the musical 1776.
Lee Harvey Oswald was portrayed by Neil Patrick Harris in the Broadway run of Stephen Sondheim’s Assassins. The play premiered off-Broadway in 1990 and was supposed to open on Broadway in September 2001 but was cancelled due to 9-11 and did not premiere until 2004.
Neil Patrick Harris plays a: misogynistic, commitment-phobic skirt chaser on the hit sitcom “How I Met Your Mother”. Ironic when you consider: he’s a happily monogamous gay man.
Auntie Mame by Patrick Dennis may be unique in that it was a best selling book, a hit Broadway play, a successful Hollywood film, a smash Broadway musical, and a hit (though critically derided) Hollywood musical.
Patrick Dennis was the nom de plume of Edward Everett Tanner III, who earned and spent a fortune with Auntie Mame and his less well known works and in his later years, after his money was gone, was the butler of McDonalds founder Ray Kroc (a job he said he enjoyed more than writing).
Hey, you can see the coconut shell on his desk in that photo!
Edward Everett, former U.S. Secretary of State and Governor of Massachusetts, gave the lengthy speech that was expected of him at the November 1863 dedication of the national cemetery at Gettysburg, describing the battle in detail, just before President Lincoln’s also-expected “few appropriate remarks” from the same platform.
Reagan administration Surgeon General C. Everett Koop was one of the founders of drkoop.com, one of the biggest flops in dot com history.
Dick Fosbury invented a new method of doing the high jump. Instead of leaping over the bar with a rolling motion while facing the bar, he would jump backwards and go over the bar on his back. After he won a gold medal in the 1968 Olympics, the “Fosbury Flop” became the standard method of competing in the sport.
President Lyndon Johnson, Democrat of Texas, worn down by the Vietnam War, racial conflict at home and growing opposition within his own party, surprised the nation by announcing he would not be a candidate for reelection in 1968. His Vice President, Hubert Humphrey, Democrat of Minnesota, ended up winning the Democratic nomination that year.
On Januaey 223, 1973, CBS anchor icon Walter Cronkite was seen talking on a white telephone while on the air, getting the news of Lyndon Johnson’s death.
Cronkite’s signature sign-off was,“And that’s the way it is.”
Long but I’ll do it anyway because I loved the story:
In Walter Cronkite Remembers, a several hour series of his reminiscences, Cronkite told a story about living in London during the Blitz. He took a flat in an old mansion that had been carved into several apartments and still had an ancient butler who had been there since the building was a private house and who could be summoned with a bell cord. One morning Cronkite woke, rang the bell to ask for a cup of coffee to be brought, and then a buzz bomb landed on the same street.
There was a major blast, Cronkite’s ears were ringing, part of the roof of the house he was in collapsed, there was dust and debris everywhere and it was all so fast he was trying to figure at first what had happened. He said a few moments later the door opened, the ancient butler stepped in, he was covered in dust and debris and his face was bleeding, and he calmly looked at Cronkite as if nothing were unusual and said “You rang sir?”
General Benjamin Butler of the US Army was a politician and member of the Massachusetts Senate when he resigned to command during the Civil War. His tenure as general was colorful, mostly due to his time as governor of New Orleans, where was reviled by the locals for his granting freedom to local slaves and also for his general order #28, which declared that any woman insulting a Union soldier would be treated as a “woman of the town plying her avocation” – i.e., a prostitute.
The song The Battle of New Orleans features lyrics by school principal Jimmie Driftwood set to the fiddle tune The 8th of January – the title of which is the date on which the battle was fought.
The Battle of New Orleans, considered the greatest land victory by the U.S. in the War of 1812, was fought three weeks after the signing of the Treaty of Ghent supposedly marked the end of hostilities.
Future President Andrew Jackson was the victorious general in the Battle of New Orleans.
The elaborate carved mantel in the dining room of Jackson’s Tennessee mansion, The Hermitage, was carved by a veteran of his army who only worked on it on the anniversary of the Battle of New Orleans. The mantel is hickory in honor of Jackson’s nickname, Old Hickory.
The Hermitage is a well regarded art museum in St. Petersburg, Russia.