Thanks to Steve Ellis for this idea! Should we blame farmers? What about school bus drivers? No. For Daylight Savings Time, we must blame World War I. Making optimal use of daylight was an idea that was used even in ancient times. The Romans adjusted their water clocks for every month. In 1895, a New…
Category: Presidents
The year was 1948
Lyndon Johnson was a born wheeler-dealer. While still in his 20s, Lyndon won election to the U.S. House of Representatives from Texas in 1938 and again in 1940. But it quickly became apparent to him that the senate was where the power was. Lyndon was in luck – in April of 1941, Morris Sheppard, after…
The year was 1968
Richard Nixon knew campaigning. Running for president in 1963, even though he was just out of the hospital (his knee, slammed in a car door, had become infected), Nixon pushed himself to campaign almost up to the moment he would appear on TV for the first-ever televised presidential debate. Nixon refused to be made-up for…
The year was 1920
The Republican Party needed a candidate. Someone who looked “presidential” – Ohio senator, Warren G. Harding. Harding had a formidable secret weapon – his wife Florence, five years his senior. If Florence could not be president, she could be married to one. They hired a public relations guru, Albert Lasker. He emphasized Harding’s president-ability. But…
The year was 1955
It was 1 a.m., September 15th. On Lexington Avenue in Manhattan, Billy Wilder was trying to shoot a street scene for his movie, The Seven Year Itch. In an instant, a huge crowd materialized, yelling and cheering. What did they see? Emphasizing the movie’s theme that she was so hot that she had to keep…
The Year was 1963
“Good eating, Mr. President,” said the sign around the 1963 Thanksgiving turkey’s neck. “We’ll let this one live,” John F. Kennedy said, in essence pardoning the turkey. The turkey lived, but Kennedy himself did not. He was assassinated four days later, six days before Thanksgiving. Where did the tradition of pardoning a Thanksgiving turkey come…
The year was 1948
Nov. 2, 1948 was Election Day. The war was over, the Allies had been triumphant, defeating Germany and Japan on their own turf. The Great Depression was rapidly becoming a distant memory as GIs, returning for the war, were going to school on the GI Bill, getting married, having babies, building houses. The county was…
The year was 1949
Who knew what when? Did Ronald Reagan, 38, know about the evils of cigarettes? Or cigarette marketing? Maybe he wouldn’t have been so eager to send Chesterfields to all his friends for Christmas – no matter how much they paid him – if he had known about Edward Bernays, the Father of Public Relations. Bernays…
The year was 1916
Charles Evans Hughes was an important man. He knew it. He felt like it. He acted like it. And why not? He had just resigned from the Supreme Court to run for president of the United States. He was the Republican nominee, running against the sitting president, Democrat Woodrow Wilson. Wilson was running for reelection…