THE MOST INTERESTING PEOPLE IN POLITICS AND HISTORY, VOLUME 3: 250 ANECDOTES
By David Bruce
Dedicated with Love to Reuben Saturday
Copyright 2009 by Bruce D. Bruce
SMASHWORDS EDITION
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Cover Illustration by Reuben Saturday
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The Most Interesting People in Politics and History, Volume 3: 250 Anecdotes
Chapter 1: From Activism to Evil
Activism
• In September 2008, James Meeks, a Baptist minister and state senator, organized an impressive act of activism. He led a boycott of Chicago Public Schools by nearly 1,000 students and instead bused them to two affluent North Shore schools. His purpose was to show the differences in funding and quality of education in the schools in different areas of Illinois. According to an article in the Chicago Tribune, “In a funding system fueled largely by local property taxes, New Trier Township spent nearly $17,000 per student in 2005-06 and Sunset Ridge spent about $16,000, while Chicago Public Schools spent an estimated $10,400 per pupil.” A post by Paul Tough at <Slate.com> highlighted just how good New Trier Township High School is, calling it “a public school with four orchestras, a rowing club, a course in ‘kinetic wellness,’ and AP (Advanced Placement) classes in French, Spanish, German, Japanese, Latin, and Chinese.” The students from Chicago Public Schools were mainly black, while the students in New Trier Township High School were mainly white. Mr. Meeks said, “If they can call an emergency session for capital projects, they can call an emergency session to deal with education. This is human capital. This is a 30-year problem, the system of funding education.”
• In 1963, Martin Luther King, Jr. took his nonviolent movement protesting injustice to Birmingham, Alabama, in an attempt to desegregate the city. On May 2, hundreds of black children marched in the street for their rights. Unfortunately, water hoses were turned on the children, and police arrested 959 boys and girls. Nevertheless, in the long run justice triumphed and Birmingham was desegregated. Because of such actions as this, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. has been honored in many ways, including winning the Noble Peace Prize. On January 20, 1986, the United States first observed the national holiday known as Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. Also, trees have been planted in his honor in Israel, and hospitals, bridges, and libraries have been named after him. In addition, over 100 postage stamps have paid honor to him worldwide.
• In 2008, voters in California passed Proposition 8, which banned gay marriage. (According to the new law, gay couples and lesbian couples cannot get married, but it is OK if a gay man marries a lesbian.) Inspired by a proposition that allowed a slim majority to take away a civil right of a minority, students at Princeton University decided to attempt to pass their own Proposition 8—one that forbids freshmen from using the sidewalks. According to gay pundit Andrew Sullivan, “They don’t hate freshmen—they just want to protect the sidewalks.” Proponents of Proposition 8 say that freshmen are equal, but they should be kept separate. After all, allowing freshmen to walk on sidewalks is a violation of traditional sidewalk values.
• Books were important in Jesse Jackson’s life. While he was a child, his mother worked as a maid for a white family. She used to find books and magazines in the white family’s garbage, dig them out, and take them home for young Jesse to read. As an adult, Mr. Jackson attended the University of Illinois in Urbana on a football scholarship. While at home in Greenville, South Carolina, one summer, he went to the public library to do research, but he was not allowed in the library because he was black. This angered him, and the following summer he organized a protest against the library. Television showed him and seven other students being arrested in his first protest for civil rights.
• AIDS activist Kate Barnhart once demonstrated outside a board of education, a reporter for a Catholic TV station interviewed her. The reporter asked if she used condoms, and she answered no. Hearing this, the reporter thought that this was a contradiction in Ms. Barnhart’s position, so he asked, “You mean you don’t use condoms during sex?” Ms. Barnhart explained that she doesn’t have sex. The reporter then asked, “Well, since you believe in abstinence, would you recommend that other young people do as you do?” She replied, “Sure, I would recommend that all young people spend their time out here on the streets demonstrating for AIDS education.”
• Gay rights advocate/stand-up comedian Margaret Cho spent some time in 2009 on location in Peachtree, Georgia, where she worked out at a gym whose magazine rack was filled with magazines from Focus on the Family, an organization that would be happy if the world lacked gay sex. Ms. Cho used to bring other magazines and put them in the rack to hide the Focus on the Family magazines, but soon the Focus on the Family magazines would be visible again. So to bring visibility to the gay rights cause, she started wearing pro-gay rights T-shirts, including ones that showed two women kissing and ones that advocated gay marriage.
• In the late 1980s, gay men in New York City created the organization AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power, or ACT-UP, to advocate increased AIDS research and to protest discrimination against gays. Members of ACT-UP have done such things as chain themselves to the fence surrounding the White House in an attempt to force the government to be aware of the AIDS problem and to act to solve it. The slogan of ACT-UP is “Silence Equals Death.” In other words, ignoring the problem of AIDS will lead to the deaths of millions of people.
• In the 1960s, African Americans engaged in sit-ins to protest segregated cafeterias and lunch counters. For example, the Georgia state legislature had a restaurant for white people only. Several African-Americans, including Ruby Doris Smith, went through the food line, selecting items of food, but the cashier refused to take their money. The Georgia Lieutenant-General came in, spoke to the African Americans, and asked them to leave. They didn’t leave, so they were arrested.
• In November 1969, several Native Americans, including Dennis Banks, took over Alcatraz Island in San Francisco Bay, citing a treaty allowing the Native Americans to take possession of unoccupied federal land. Alcatraz Island was once the site of a prison but was then a deserted island. The occupation of the island lasted for nineteen months, and it succeeded in drawing attention to the problems of poverty, lack of education, and poor housing afflicting many Native Americans.
• In Montgomery, Alabama, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., went to court to face charges stemming from his nonviolent resistance to unjust laws. The judge sentenced him to either pay a $10 fine or go to jail for 14 days. Dr. King wanted to go to jail, knowing that this action would give lots of publicity to his cause, but the segregationist authorities did not want that publicity. Someone paid his fine, although Dr. King protested.
• In late 1987, Augusto Pinochet, dictator of Chile, threatened to execute 77 Chilean actors, directors, and producers if they did not leave the country by the end of November. They responded bravely by wearing T-shirts that bore the design of a red bull’s-eye and the slogan “Shoot me first.” The dictator backed down and did not execute the actors, directors, and producers.
• Martin Luther King, Jr. was shot to death on April 4, 1968. Many people keep his memory alive each April 4 by doing two things. First, they register voters. Second, they participate in “heal-ins.” Every two minutes at a heal-in, a toy gun goes pop, and people in the heal-in fall to the ground in a protest against gun violence.
• French actress Catherine Deneuve is favor of legalized abortion. In 1971, she signed an important document: the Manifeste des 343 salopes (the Manifesto of 343 Bitches). In this document 343 women admitted to having obtained illegal abortions. By signing the document, they hoped to change abortion laws in France.
• At an AIDS die-in, some activists wore white lab coats which had bloody handprints on the backs. Others lay “dead” beside such signs as “DIED FROM RED TAPE” and “DIED DUE TO LACK OF HEALTH CARE.”
Advertising
• Tiger Woods signed with Nike when he turned professional in golfing. His very first Nike TV commercial featured his heritage. He is a Casiblanasian: part Caucasian, part black, part Native American, and part Asian. Unfortunately, professional golf had long been a white man’s sport, although blacks could sometimes serve as caddies. In the commercial, Mr. Woods said, “There are still at least twenty-seven private clubs in this country that would not have me as a member. Isn’t it time for a change?” In 1975, Lee Elders became the first African-American to play in the Masters tournament. When Mr. Woods won the Masters in April of 1997, he saw Mr. Elders. Mr. Woods hugged him and said, “Thanks for making this possible.”
• Before World War I, dancer Anna Pavlova saw on a London bus a huge sign bearing the legend: “ANNA PAVLOVA.” The sign made her cry—she felt that advertising was fine for a can of soup, but inappropriate for a great artist.
AIDS
• Many famous people have acquired the HIV virus or have died from AIDS. The first famous person to announce that he had AIDS was actor Rock Hudson, who died from the disease in 1985. In 1991, Los Angeles Lakers basketball star Earvin “Magic” Johnson announced that he was HIV-positive. Tennis star Arthur Ashe, who died from AIDS in 1993, contracted the HIV virus during open-heart surgery. Other celebrities who have died from AIDS include Amanda Blake (who played Miss Kitty on TV’s Gunsmoke), figure skater John Curry, pianist Liberace; Freddie Mercury (the lead singer for the rock band Queen), actor Anthony Perkins (who played Norman Bates in Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho), and Robert Reed (who played the father on TV’s Brady Bunch).
• One of Dini von Mueffling’s best friends died of AIDS, so she became involved in educating young people about the disease. She quickly discovered that many schools wanted her to speak to students, but only if she spoke about abstinence and ignored safer sex. Once she arrived at one school that knew that she spoke about safer sex—but she was informed that she could speak only about abstinence. She declined to do so, and when she arrived at the part of her program in which she spoke about safer sex, the lights in the auditorium “mysteriously” began to flicker on and off, and she was unable to complete her program.
• As figure skater Robert McCall lay dying of AIDS, he heard on the radio that he had died and he listened as the announcer read his obituary. He called the radio station and announced, “This is Robert McCall,” then he had the pleasure of using Mark Twain’s immortal line: “Rumors of my death are greatly exaggerated.”
• Bob Rafsky suffered from AIDS, and he was an activist for AIDS research. One day, he went to a Japanese pharmaceuticals company to ask why research was being delayed on a promising new drug. To make a point, he rolled the leg of his pants up, and then showed the executives a lesion-covered leg.
Alcohol
• The Rothschilds were immensely wealthy. When Paris was besieged in the Franco-Prussian War, Chancellor Otto van Bismarck stayed at the Rothschild chateau. Bismarck asked a caretaker for some wine, but the caretaker at first said there was no wine, and then later admitted that there were 100 bottles of Bordeaux on the estate. Bismarck did not believe the caretaker, so he had the estate searched, and his troops found 17,000 bottles of wine in the Rothschild cellar.
• President Richard Nixon could be cheap. He once had waiters serve $6 a bottle wine to the guests at a White House dinner, even though he was served $30 a bottle wine—the waiters kept his bottle hidden in a napkin so the guests wouldn’t know what President Nixon was drinking.
Animals
• In 1919, the coastal steamer Ethie went aground off the coast of Newfoundland near Martin’s Point in Bonne Bay. The crew fired rockets, which alerted people on land to the ship’s plight. The people on ship needed to get a rope from the ship to land to enable people to get ashore to safety. A sailor tried to swim to shore with one end of a rope, but he drowned. Fortunately, a Newfoundland dog named Tang was on board. He was given one end of a rope, which he held in his mouth, and he swam to shore. The people on shore tied the rope securely to a stable point. The ship’s crew was then able to use the rope to rig up a system of pulleys and ropes and a “beeches buoy” to allow people to reach shore. An infant was even put in a mailbag and sent to shore safely using the lifeline. Tang received credit for saving 92 lives that day, and Lloyd’s of London gave him a medal for Meritorious Service, which Tang wore on his collar.
• Mulla Nasruddin had two lovebirds, but he worried when they did not excrete their waste for an entire week. A veterinarian paid a house call, looked in the lovebirds’ cage and asked, “Do you always line the bottom of the cage with a map of the world?” Mulla Nasruddin explained that he usually used newspaper to line the bottom of the cage, but that he hadn’t been able to find any newspaper last week when he cleaned the cage and so he had used an old map of the world. The veterinarian said, “That explains it! Lovebirds are very sensitive. They haven’t excreted their waste because they figure that the world has had all the crap it can stand!”
• So many sightings of the ape-like creature called Bigfoot have been made around Skamamia, Washington, that the citizens passed a law making it illegal to kill a Bigfoot. Apparently, people in the state of Washington are law abiding because no one has ever been convicted of killing a Bigfoot.
Art
• The artist Leonard Volk was traveling on a train going through Springfield, Illinois, when he learned that Abraham Lincoln had won the nomination for President. He visited Mr. Lincoln and asked for and was granted permission to do a plaster cast of Mr. Lincoln’s face and hands. These plaster casts were later studied by Daniel Chester French, who created the sculpture of Abraham Lincoln that is seen in the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C. The plaster casts reveal that Mr. Lincoln’s right hand is swollen, probably from shaking so many hands as people had come by to congratulate him on his Presidential nomination. They also revealed a scar at the base of Mr. Lincoln’s left thumb, the result of an accident with an axe. The scar appears in Mr. French’s sculpture of Mr. Lincoln, but it is very difficult to see.
• Leonardo da Vinci’s The Last Supper is a fresco—a work of art created by painting on wet plaster. Unfortunately, this justly famous work of art started deteriorating even before he had finished painting it. In fact, fifty years after he finished the fresco, it was described as a “dazzling stain.” Nevertheless, it has survived two world wars with the help of people who love it. The building housing the fresco was bombed during World War II, and all of the walls of the building were destroyed—except the wall on which the fresco was painted. Fortunately, the monks had carefully protected that wall. The fresco can be seen today at the Convent of Santa Maria delle Grazie (Refectory), Milan, Italy.
• In western culture, people think of masks as things to be worn over the face—during Halloween, for example. However, in other cultures, such as in parts of Africa, a mask may also be worn on a hip, as a buckle, or over the chest. By the way, most of the wooden African masks studied by artists and scientists today are no more than 100 years old. Why? Quite simply, wooden masks don’t last much more than 100 years in the tropical areas of Africa.
• Among the many, many great men and women that Yousuf Karsh photographed was the gifted actress Audrey Hepburn, who was of course beautiful. Later, Mr. Karsh wanted the opportunity to photograph Chairman Leonid Brezhnev, but the Chairman would agree to sit with him, Mr. Karsh remembers, “only if I made him as beautiful as Audrey Hepburn.”
• American Impressionist Mary Cassatt did not want to accept prizes for her paintings, believing as she did in “no jury, no medals, no awards.” Her 1902 painting The Caress was given a prize by the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, but she declined to accept it.
Children
• Members of the Western Mono Native American tribe still sometimes use baskets to serve as baby cradles. To protect the baby’s eyes, the cradle has a hood that shades the top of the cradle. Cradles made for boys have different designs from cradles made for girls. Cradles made for boys have either straight lines or a V pattern because hunters must shoot straight to be successful. Cradles made for girls have a “busy” zigzag or diamond pattern because mothers must stay busy to take care of their families. In the old days, once the baby had outgrown its first cradle, the Western Mono used to leave the baby’s cradle hanging in a young pine tree. According to tradition, this helped the baby to grow quickly like the young pine tree. Unfortunately, when non-Native American peoples moved to the Western Mono lands, they collected the baskets left hanging in the pine trees, and so the Western Mono don’t follow that tradition any longer.
• To combat boredom in church one Sunday, a young Sam Clemens and a friend brought cards and played a game of euchre in the vestry. Narrowly escaping getting caught, they hid the cards in the sleeves of the preacher’s baptismal robes. Shortly afterward, the preacher performed a baptismal service that involved complete immersion in water, and young Sam was delighted to see three aces floating on the surface of the baptismal water. Later, Sam adopted the name Mark Twain.
• Alexander the Great, who grew up to conquer much of the ancient world, was born on the same day that an important temple devoted to the Greek goddess Artemis burned down in Ephesus in Asia Minor. Later, people joked that ordinarily Artemis would have put out the fire, but she was too busy assisting at the delivery of the baby Alexander!
• Sickissuogs are soft-shelled clams along the coast of New England that spray seawater when they are removed from the sand in which they live. When 12-year-old Steven Peters, a member of the Native American tribe known as the Wampanoag, harvested some sickissuogs in preparation for a clambake, they sprayed seawater onto his face.
• George W. Bush was a mischievous boy. In the 4th grade, he got into trouble when he drew Elvis Presley-style sideburns on his face for a music class. The students were amused, but the teacher wasn’t, so she ordered him to report to the principal’s office. George was still cocky, so the principal paddled him.
Computers
• Human ingenuity is astonishing. For example, computers have grown steadily smaller since their invention. In 1951, Remington Rand unveiled its new computer: the UNIVAC. It took up about 14 by 7 by 9 feet, which is the size of a small bedroom. Nevertheless, it was much smaller than previous computers, which were ten times as big as the UNIVAC! Today, an IBM, IBM-compatible, or Macintosh laptop computer can be carried around with ease.
• Steve Jobs, co-founder of Apple Computer, is a computer genius, but even he has had failures. The first Graphical User Interface computer that Apple rolled out was called the Lisa, but it cost $10,000 and was reviled for being s-l-o-w. A popular joke was this: “Knock, knock.” “Who’s there?” Wait 15 seconds, then say, “Lisa.”
Death
• In the days before such things as Welfare and Social Security, people in this and other countries grew desperate because of poverty. A young mother—a struggling opera singer—who had been deserted by her husband grew desperate because her children were cold and hungry and she could not afford to give them what they needed. Therefore, she decided to kill her children and herself. She took them to a railroad track, planning to throw her children and herself in front of an oncoming train. Fortunately, her daughter, Lotta, screamed, “Mamma! Mamma! I love you, I love you! Take me home!” The young opera singer took her children home, never thought of suicide again, and after more years of struggle, became rich and famous. Her name was Ernestine Schumann-Heink.
• Dr. Thierry de Martel was the greatest surgeon in France at the beginning of World War II, and he was the head of the American hospital in Paris. When the Germans overran France, they removed the French wounded from the hospital and replaced them with German wounded. Then they asked Dr. Martel to continue working as a surgeon. Dr. Martel asked for a half hour to think it over, and he disappeared into his office. The Germans waited 30 minutes, then gave him another 15 minutes. When they finally walked into his office, Dr. Martel was dead—he had committed suicide rather than help the Nazi murderers.
• In 1665, the Black Death, aka the bubonic plague, struck London, killing approximately 100,000 people—perhaps one-fifth of its inhabitants. Infected fleas spread the plague, although the Londoners did not know it. The Londoners attempted to stop the plague by quarantining people in their houses. People painted a red cross and the words “Lord have mercy on us” on the door of a house in quarantine. Often, everyone in a house with the plague died. Unfortunately, the quarantining did not work because flea-carrying rats were able to move freely from one house to another.
• The Tlingit, Native Americans of Alaska and other parts of North America, build totem poles. The images on the totem poles recount the family history of the clan of the people who made them or the history of an important person. In the past, the totem poles often included repositories of the ashes of deceased family members who had been cremated. Unfortunately, the Christian missionaries who came to the Tlingit thought the totem poles involved the worship of the dead, so they forced the Tlingit to destroy many totem poles and to put the ashes of their dead in a cemetery.
• In 1769, a Franciscan priest named Junípero Serra arrived in the southern coast region of what is now the state of California. His purpose was to start missions, but many people thought that at 56 he was too old for the harsh living conditions of the California wilderness. In fact, Father Serra became so ill that some soldiers traveling with him urged him to leave California and go home again. However, the priest replied, “I shall not turn back. They can bury me wherever they wish.” He recovered, and he founded nine missions before dying in 1784.
• A friend of world-famous Barney’s window-dresser Simon Doonan died of AIDS. Mundo was proud of his Tarahumara Indian heritage. As he lay dying, he looked at what seemed to Simon to be nothing, then said, “There are crowds of people waiting for me. They are Indians. They are weaving a banner.” Simon asked, “What kind of banner?” Mundo replied, “It’s a welcome banner. As soon as the banner is finished, I am going to join them.” Soon, he slipped into a coma and died.
• When Cesar Chavez decided to set up a union for farm workers, money was tight. He and others recruited members for the union, but occasionally it got expensive. In one case, Manuel Chavez, Cesar’s cousin, recruited a new union member and collected $3.50 in union dues. Three days later, he called the union office and discovered that they already knew about the new member. The new member’s wife had died, and the union had had to pay him $500 because of its death benefit.
• John Wilkes Booth shot President Abraham Lincoln on Friday, April 14, 1865. Although physicians tried all night to save the President’s life, he died at 7:22 a.m. After President Lincoln died, Secretary of War Edwin Stanton stated, “Now he belongs to the ages.” When President Lincoln’s son Tad learned of the assassination, he shouted, “They killed my pa! They killed my pa!”
• On Friday, July 20, 1923, Pancho Villa and four of his bodyguards were assassinated while they were riding in Mr. Villa’s Dodge sedan. A street vendor shouted, “Viva Villa!” This was a signal for the assassins to start shooting. Mr. Villa died with seven bullets in his body. In 1926, his grave was opened and his head was stolen. The head was never recovered.
• After his wife died in the 1918 influenza epidemic, Italian baritone Giuseppe De Luca had built in Rome for her body a white mausoleum that included room for himself after he died. On his deathbed, concerning this mausoleum he spoke some of his last words to his doctor: “I think you send me to my little white house in Rome.”
• When a friend of Fred Rogers, aka Mister Rogers, was dying, she asked him, “Do you ever pray for people, Fred?” Of course, he does, and he said a prayer right then and there: “Dear God, encircle us with Thy love wherever we may be.” His friend, Helen Ross, then said, “That’s what it is, isn’t it?—it’s love. That’s what it’s all about.”
• Plague hit Milan, Italy, hard during the summer of 1484. So many people died that the living had to pile up corpses in the town square until they could dispose of them. Artist Leonardo da Vinci, who was 32 years old, was present, and he invented a perfume in an attempt to cover up the stench of the decaying corpses.
• When Abraham Lincoln was a child, his mother died of “milk sickness”—an illness caused by drinking the milk of cows that had eaten poisonous plants. Before dying, Mrs. Lincoln called Abraham and Sarah, his sister, to her and told them that they should be both kind and good.
• The Roman emperor Nero thought that he was a fine singer, but members of his audience disagreed. According to the Roman historian Suetonius, during Nero’s recitals, some members of the audience would pretend to die so that their friends could carry them away from the recital.
• Artist Marc Chagall took the death of his first wife, Bella, hard. He wrote, “A loud clap of thunder and a burst of rain broke out at six o’clock in the evening on the 2nd of September, 1944, when Bella left this world. Everything went dark before my eyes.”
• In the old days, a woman went into a store in Lebanon, PA, to buy a pair of men’s underwear. The salesclerk asked, “How do you want them to button? Front or side?” The woman replied, “It doesn’t matter. These are for a corpse.”
• Little Joe Monoghan, who stood only five feet tall, was an Old West personality with a fast draw and a secret. After Little Joe died of natural causes, the undertaker discovered that Little Joe was actually a woman.
• Phoolan Devi deserves to be world famous. She was gang raped by a group of men; in response, she formed her own gang—and she and her gang killed each man who had participated in the gang rape.
• When Rabbi Israel Salanter died on Feb. 2, 1883, he left little behind to his descendants: a pair of tefillin and a worn-out Talith.
• When Mahatma Gandhi was assassinated on January 30, 1948, his last words were “Hey Rama!”—a phrase that means, “O God.”
Doctors
• When Maria Montessori decided to become a medical doctor in Italy in the late 19th century, it was unusual for a woman to try to achieve such a career. Ms. Montessori talked to Dr. Guido Baccelli, head of the medical faculty at the University of Rome, to ask his advice. He listened to her, then told her that no medical school would ever accept a woman as a student. She replied, “I know I shall become a doctor of medicine.” Ms. Montessori took pre-medical classes at the University of Rome, and she became the University of Rome’s first female medical student. Despite Dr. Baccelli’s nay-saying, on July 10, 1886, she became Italy’s first doctor who was also a woman. When she was a child, Ms. Montessori was very studious. She once took a book to the theater so she could read it as the actors performed on stage.
• In 1968, Pop artist Andy Warhol was shot by Valerie Solanas of SCUM (the Society for Cutting Up Men). An ambulance took him to the Columbus Hospital—Cabrini Medical Center emergency room, where doctors thought his case hopeless and pronounced him dead. Fortunately, art critic Mario Amaya, who was grazed by a bullet shot by Ms. Solanas, told the doctors, “It’s Andy Warhol. He’s famous. And he’s rich—do something!” The doctors saved Mr. Warhol’s life by opening his chest and massaging his heart, and he lived for an additional 19 years.
Education
• In Charlotte, North Carolina, feelings ran high when the schools desegregated. Parents worried about their children, but desegregation proceeded smoothly after Judge James B. McMillan ordered that children be bused to integrate the schools. Actually, the children themselves eased the fears of the parents. The children of black parents came home from school happy, and the children of white parents ate their breakfasts early because they wanted to be at school on time. Two white parents learned that their child had made a new friend at school, but not until the school year was half over did they learn that their child’s friend was black. Then they realized that their child didn’t see any difference between the white and the black students.