AUGUST 20 – 1833 Happy Birthday Benjamin Harrison; 1833 Happy Birthday Lowe, inventor water gas process; 2011 Happy Anniversary Kim K/Kris Humphries
AUGUST 20
1833– Happy Birthday Benjamin Young Tippecanoe Harrison, #23.
…One of seven presidents born in Ohio, Kid Glove Harrison was born in 1833 near Cincinnati. His grandfather, William Old Tippecanoe Harrison was the 9th President of the US But died only a month into office of pneumonia.
Benjamin attended Miami University in Ohio and studied law. He married Caroline Scott in 1853 with whom he had two children, and moved his family to Indianapolis a year later. Caroline was big into parties whereas Benjamin had a more reserved style; in fact she was the first lady who put up the first Christmas tree in the White House.
When the Civil War broke out, Harrison served under the Union army, eventually rising up the ranks to Brig. General. After the war he continued his law practice and got involved with the Republican Party. In 1876 he ran for governor for Indiana but lost to the Democrats, and in 1880 was elected to represent the Senate in Indiana. He supported Native Americans, homesteaders and Civil War veterans.
In the 1888 Presidential election, Harrison defeated incumbent Grover Cleveland. Cleveland had won the popular vote, but Harrison won the Electoral vote. Harrison also signed the Sherman Anti-Trust Act “to protect trade and commerce against unlawful restraints and monopolies,” the first Federal act attempting to regulate trusts.
As president, Harrison signed several large appropriation bills to be spent on internal improvements, increasing the navy, and subsidies for steamship lines. For the first time during peacetime in American history, Congress procured a billion dollars. According to whitehouse.gov, When critics attacked “the billion-dollar Congress,” Speaker Thomas B. Reed replied, “This is a billion-dollar country.” In foreign affairs, the Harrison administration led the first the First international conference of American States, which later became the Pan-American Union, which was an attempt to grow America’s reputation in the eyes of the rest of the world. He also unsuccessfully attempted to devise a plan that would build a canal across Central America, and annex Hawaii.
Meanwhile back at home, dealing with labor strikes and tariff issues, Harrison’s popularity waned. His wife Carrie was sick with tuberculosis, and Harrison was limited in his campaigning for a second term against Grover Cleveland. Yes, he had defeated Cleveland once for the Presidency, but not the second time around, and Cleveland would be reelected President in 1892. Carrie died two months before the election.
During his tenure in Harrison’s office, the first electric lights were installed in the White House. He was the first president to attend a baseball game, was the last president to have a beard, and six states were admitted: ND, SD, Wyoming, Montana, Washington and Idaho. He nominated former slave Frederick Douglas to ambassador to Haiti. He was only 5 feet, 6 inches tall, and while Democrats called him “Little Ben”; Republicans replied that he was big enough to wear the hat of his grandfather, “Old Tippecanoe.” After he left office, Harrison returned to Indianapolis to continue his law practice, where he charged up to $25,000 for a case. He married the widowed Mrs. Mary Dimmick in 1896, and she gave birth to his third child Elizabeth.
A dignified elder statesman, he died of pneumonia in 1901. Yet, in his words: “Great lives do not go out. They go on.” Too true, too true. Happy birthday Young Tippecanoe!
1832—Happy birthday Thaddeus SC Lowe, civil war aeronaut, scientist, and inventor who came up with the water gas process in which used charcoal and water to produce large amounts of hydrogen gas. Also he founded Citizens Bank of Los angeles, the Mount Lowe Railway in the hills above Altadena currently Mount Lowe in Pasadena.
2011 – happy anniversary Kim Kardashian and Kris Humphries. They were married a whole two years before she moved on to Kanye west!