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Showing posts with the label John F. Kennedy

Would you vote for a man with a hole in his shoe?

  In 1952, following President Truman’s decision not to seek another term in office, there was an open seat for the presidency, and it was hotly contested.  The campaign of General Dwight Eisenhower, the Republican nominee, was doing well at defining the Democratic nominee, Illinois Governor Adlai Stevenson II.  Stevenson came from a wealthy background and had the air of an intellectual—and he was one.  Eisenhower’s allies in politics and the press exploited this, since intellectuals rarely fare well in American politics.  They dubbed him “Egghead”, taking the positive of intellect and turning it into a negative, with the added benefit of making fun of the governor’s baldness.  Eisenhower himself didn’t have much hair, either, but somehow such superficial attacks didn’t stick to the popular general. On Labor Day, with two months to go in the presidential election, Stevenson had some unexpected luck.  While preparing for a speech in Flint, Michigan, photographer Bill Gallagher, who had

John F. Kennedy, Train Robber

John F. Kennedy—known to his friends as “Jack”—is remembered for a lot of things.  There was his service on PT-109 during World War II, his popular presidency that was contemporarily referred to as “Camelot”, the Cuban Missile Crisis, a tragic and violent assassination, and a series of train robberies.  Okay, that last item comes off as a little… incongruous, I’ll admit.  Presidents don’t usually get up to criminal activity until after they’ve been in office, so where would Kennedy find the time to slip away from the Oval Office and go stick up trains? Well, there were actually two different John F. “Jack” Kennedys.  The better-known one was born in Brookline, Massachusetts, in 1917.  The train robber was born somewhere in Missouri, sometime in 1870.  (Sorry, but that’s as specific as his biographers are able to get.)  The first Jack Kennedy’s fame was eclipsed considerably by the second Jack Kennedy.  Despite identical names, the two are not known to be related.  (Having the same na

The Curse of Tecumseh

Shawnee Chief Tecumseh, who started it all.  Maybe. According to legend, presidents elected during years ending in zero will die in office.  This did happen to a long string of American presidents who were elected in zero years, so it was widely attributed to the Curse of Tecumseh.  This Curse has its roots in the Battle of Tippecanoe, which took place in Indiana in 1811.  American forces were led by General William Henry Harrison, who were victorious over the Shawnee people and their allies in the war.  The allied peoples rallied together to stop American westward expansion following a shady treaty that Harrison had negotiated with Tecumseh, the leader of the Shawnee, before the war. Following the defeat, legend has it that Tecumseh’s brother, popularly known as The Prophet, put a curse on Harrison and all other presidents elected in years ending with the same digit as he was.  This seems unlikely, since the war ended in 1811, and Harrison wasn’t elected president