Browsing: Politics

A Brief History On December 10, 1906, President Theodore “Teddy” Roosevelt became the first American to earn a Nobel Prize when he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his mediation of the Russo-Japanese War.  (Woodrow Wilson, Jimmy Carter, and Barack Obama have also won Nobel Prizes since Roosevelt.) Digging Deeper Roosevelt was no stranger to accomplishing things and is immortalized on Mount Rushmore along with Washington, Lincoln and Jefferson.  By no means a namby pamby wimpy pencil pushing politician, Roosevelt, though born into the moneyed class, was a man of the American West and rushed to serve our country…

A Brief History On December 4, 1977, Jean-Bedel Bokassa crowned himself Emperor of the Central African Empire.  Previously the President of the Central African Republic, Bokassa apparently thought many little Bokassas would follow, as he named himself Bokassa I. Digging Deeper Bokassa was a military officer in the armed forces of the Central African Republic when he seized power in a military  coup in 1966, naming himself President.  Even that was not good enough, for 7 years later he named himself President for Life, probably to make it clear he did not plan on retiring. In 1976, this egoist declared…

A Brief History On December 1, 1824, it was determined that the vote for the presidential election of 1824 did not have a winner!  Andrew Jackson of Tennessee had the most popular votes (151,271) and had won the most electoral votes (99), but a candidate needed to win 131 of the 261 available electoral votes in order to be elected president. Digging Deeper The main competition for Jackson, a war hero as well as former governor and senator, known as a man of the people (or a backwoods ruffian, depending on point of view) was a Northern elite, John Quincy…

A Brief History On November 21, 1986, Marine Corps Lt. Col. Oliver North, a member of the National Security Council of the Ronald Reagan administration, was busy shredding documents, destroying evidence of criminal activity of the Reagan administration as part of the Iran-Contra Affair. Digging Deeper North was assisted by his comely secretary, the auspiciously named Fawn Hall, who later traded immunity from prosecution for testimony against North.  Of course, Hall realized that the shredding of documents was illegal, evidenced by her statement that, “Sometimes you have to go above the law.”  This statement was exactly the sort of rationalizing…

A Brief History On November 9, 1965, 22 year old American Roger Allen LaPorte, a former Catholic seminarian, sat down calmly, poured gasoline over himself, and burned himself to death in front of the United Nations in New York in a protest of the Viet Nam War. Digging Deeper LaPorte had dropped out of the seminary, but graduated from Holy Ghost Academy (Tupper Lake, New York) in 1961 and was active in the Catholic Worker Movement.  Although fatally burned (he died the next day), LaPorte was able to talk before dying and said he performed his act of protest against…