Jesse Helms, as chair of the Foreign Relations Committee in the Senate, held up then MA governor Bill Weld’s appointment as Ambassador to Mexico because Weld wasn’t “conservative enough” in Helm’s eyes.
The poinsettia flower, ubiquitous at Christmastime, was introduced to the US from Mexico in 1825 by Joel Roberts Poinsett, the first US ambassador to Mexico as well as a physician and botanist.
In 1825, John Quincy Adams was sworn in as the 6th President of the United States, after a disputed election against Henry Clay and Andrew Jackson. The election was thrown into the House of Representatives, and after Clay threw his support behind Adams, he was elected. Adams subsequently tabbed Clay as Secretary of State. Jackson, and his supporters, smelled a rat, refering to it as a “corrupt bargain”.
Henry Clay, who was close friends with the diehard-Whig family of Mary Todd, was described by one critic as “a mackerel by moonlight, in that he both stinks and shines.”
The exclamation “Holy mackerel!” was often used by the character Kingfish in the* Amos ‘n’ Andy* show. The character was voiced by Freeman Gosden on radio and played by Tim Moore on television.
John Cleese played Tim the Enchanter and several other roles in the 1975 comedy Monty Python and the Holy Grail.
Monty Wolley was a Yale dramatic professor who went into directing and acting on Broadway and is best known for playing the lead in the original Broadway production of The Man Who Came to Dinner. He repeated the performance for the film version.
The character of Banjo in The Man Who Came to Dinner was based on Harpo Marx, who played the role in a West Coast production of the comedy.
In a letter he wrote during the Civil War, Karl Marx praised President Abraham Lincoln and the Union war effort for striking a blow against Southern aristocracy and slavery.
Republican political consultant Karl Rove worked on the presidential campaigns of Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush.
The first meeting of the Republican Party is generally thought of as having occurred in Ripon, Wisc. John C. Fremont was the first Republican candidate for President, in 1856; Abraham Lincoln was the second, but the first to win the White House, four years later.
Outgoing President James Buchanan is reported to have told Lincoln,“If you’re as happy to assume this office as I am to leave it, you are a happy man indeed.”
The top defensive player in the NCAA’s Football Chamionship Subdivision (formerly Division 1-AA) is honored with the Buck Buchanan Award, and the top offensive player in FCS receives the Walter Payton Award. Both players starred at HBCU’s (Historically Black Colleges and Universities) that are now in the division - Buchanan at Grambling State in Louisiana, and Payton at Jackson State in Mississippi - prior to their Pro Football Hall of Fame NFL careers.
The only member of Blue Oyster Cult from its formation as “Soft White Underbelly” until the present day is Donald “Buck Dharma” Roeser. Lead singer Eric Bloom has been with the group from its first released album, but not for two unreleased earlier efforts.
In the “Bloom County” comic strip, Opus the Penguin was originally meant to be a short-term bit character, and Milo was the lead; Opus, of course, ended up being the strip’s lead, as well as moving on to Bloom County’s spinoffs.
Bloom County originated as The Academia Waltz, a strip that Berke Breathed contributed to The Daily Texan while he was a student at the University of Texas.
The University of Texas was the site of a notorious school shooting. The asassin climbed into the tower on campus, and opened fire on the quad below.
The clock tower at Tsim Sha Shui, at the foot of Salisbury Road on the southern tip of the Kowloon peninsula overlooking Victoria Harbour in Hong Kong, is the only remnant of the original site of the former Kowloon Station on the Kowloon-Canton Railway. The Hong Kong Space Museum, Hong Kong Museum of Art and Hong Kong Cultural Centre are all built on land formerly occupied by the station.
In 1809, Germany arranged an exchange of African territory with the UK, adding a thin strip of land in Southwest Africa to their colony there. The area, known as the Caprivi Strip, was chosen because it allowed access to the Zambezi River. The plan was to be able to use the river as a way to ship goods to the German colony of Tanganyika on the east coast of Africa. Someone clearly miscalculated, though, since they did not realize that to get to the sea, the Zambezi went over Victoria Falls, with a 300 foot drop. The Caprivi Strip is now part of Namibia.
In Casablanca, Rick Blaine gallantly remembers when he last saw Ilsa Lund in Paris: “The Germans wore gray; you wore blue.”