JANUARY 18 — 1805 Happy birthday Madison Hemmings, son of Thomas Jefferson and his slave Sally Hemmings; )2010 Johnny Collinson becomes youngest to scale 7 Summits; 2014 Chris and Marty Fagan become fastest married couple to reach South Pole; 1803 Jefferson requests funding for Lewis and Clark exp[edition; 1976 Steelers beat Cowboys in Super Bowl X
JANUARY 18
1805 – happy birthday Madison Hemings.
He’s the son of Sally hemings and Thomas Jefferson. He has five other brothers, possibly children of Long Tom’s.
The third president of our country and one of our dearest founding fathers was a human being and had his share of scars that while alive he wouldn’t dare show in public. Who would’ve guessed. The Pen of the revolution and the Apostle of the Constitution? Not him! Mrs. Jefferson had died giving birth to their third child in 1782, Thomas Jefferson would be a widow, and the first president to not have a first lady in the White House.
Not officially, anyway, though DNA has given us evidence of news we previously could only wonder.
We don’t know much about Sally; though most historians will agree she was born in 1773, which would make her about 14 when she babysat Long Tom’s 8 year old daughter Mary on his trip to France, where of course Jefferson was sent as a delegate.
After the Revolution was over, Sally had four children, Beverly, Harriet, Madison and Eston. In the 1800 election, a smear campaign was launched to incriminate Jefferson, but he would win the election against John Adams anyway. This is where history gets real fuzzy. Britni Danielle from the Washington Compost, states that Jefferson raped Sally, a statement based entirely on how the white man acted in general as a whole towards slaves, hardly proof of anything that happened in Paris.
Bill O’Reilly has been accused of falsely romanticizing the relationship between Long Tom and Sally, suggesting that those slaves were somehow lucky to be working on a prosperous project like Jefferson’s home at Monticello. Sally was light skinned, and her kids could pass for white. Madison grew up at Monticello, and was freed as a slave by Jefferson after Jefferson died. He was one of over 600 slaves that were freed.
In 1822, Beverly and Harriet quote unquote escaped from the luxurious Monticello to move to DC and blend easily into a white society with their light skin complexions. In 1834, Madison would marry another mixed-race ancestry freed slave named Mary McCoy, with whom he would several years later find an all-black community in Pike County, OH, but by then tensions about slavery were coming to a boil in the US north and south. Madison and his brother Eston would move to Wisconsin and again, easily blend into the white community, with their sons fighting for the Union army during the Civil War.
Finally in 1873, Madison Hemings came out with the truth, and explained in an Ohio newspaper interview: I was named Madison by the wife of James Madison, who was afterwards President of the United States. Mrs. Madison happened to be at Monticello at the time of my birth, and begged privilege of naming me, promising my mother a fine present for the honor. She consented, and Mrs. Madison dubbed me by the name I now acknowledge, but like many promises of white folks to the slaves she never gave my mother anything.”
The question that is debated: did Thomas Jefferson have a love affair? Or did he rape Sally repeatedly? Why didn’t he free her as a slave? Chances are, she would’ve chose to stay at the only home she’d ever known at Monticello?
There’s never been a hint that Thomas Jefferson was a rapist. The only thing that Jefferson’s illigit son Madison ever said, was that Tom was his dad.
1919 – Port-World War I peace conference begins in Paris. It only took a Serbian nationalist’s bullet to end the life of Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand to spark the beginning of World War I. Now five years later it was over. Thirty nations were involved, but Great Britain, France, Italy and the United States made up the big four.
President Woodrow Wilson used this forum to push his idea for the League of Nations, an early version of the United Nations. The Big Three minus the United States wanted to make Germany pay for the war, surrender 10% of its European territory, and take blame for the start of the war and thus accept its liability. Wilson argued against this. Even though none of the losers were invited to the conference, which would have been Germany, Austria-Hungary, Turkey and Bulgaria, and the new Bolshevik government in Russia, the Germans had no choice but to accept it. This fact caused anger and resentment in Germany, and Adolf Hitler and his Nazi party were able to capitalize on the weak state of Germany to rise to power.
2014 – Chris and Marty Fagan become the fastest married couple to travel to the South Pole.
From the Ronne Ice Shelf. Unassisted, unsupported. That’s a cold journey. They said some days it got so cold they didn’t want to stop to eat. So they kept going. Looks like it paid off. The Fagan’s left the Ronne Ice Shelf on December 2 2013, and after an incredible 48 days they covered 553 miles, averaging 11 and a half miles per day. My wife sometimes chases me around the neighborhood that probably equates to that same mileage, but that’s a different story entirely.
The Fagan’s were rewarded in the South Pole at the ANI camp where it’s heated and they had access to yummy four star meals. Congratulations!
1854 – Happy Birthday Thomas A. Watson. Hey Tom if you’re listening your boss needs you. Or wants you, whatever. Yes, although he wasn’t a great contributor to science, his name was the first words spoken in a telephone call, even though his boss, Alexander Graham Bell, was only making the phone call from the next room. You get the idea. Bell famously said, Mr. Watson, I need you. Or want you. Whatever.
2010 Johnny Collinson becomes the youngest man to ever climb the Seven Summits.
Why?
Because as he puts it, “I want to live life instead of watching it on TV.”
Most kids his age are thinking about applying for college and the junior prom. Not Collinsworth, already a national snow skiing champ who had climbed Mt. Everest, now he had his eyes set on taking on Antarctica. Johnny’s passion for climbing mountains around the world is largely fed by the cultural experience from which he benefits.
Johnny loves going to places like Alaska, Russia, Argentina, Nepal, Tanzania and other countries I can’t even pronounce because after seeing how “people grew their food and made all their shelter, how they value every aspect of their lives was eye opening.” The culture in Antarctica was much different my friends. In Antarctica, the only culture there is 24/7 sunlight and subzero temperature that can sunburn one side of your face and frostbite the other at the same time.
And Johnny managed to become the youngest to reach the peak of Vinson Massif on this day in 2010, taking him a year to climb the highest mountain on every continent. Helped that he was a good skier. Now, it’s worth noting that a similar record exists by Jordan Romero, who was 13 at the time.
However Guinness World Records do not accept applications for climbers younger than 16.
2002 – Goodwin gets called out. Author Doris Goodwin wrote some good books in her career about US presidents, including Lyndon Johnson and the American Dream, The Fitzgerald’s and the Kennedys: An American Saga, No Ordinary Time: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt The Home Front in WWII, and a few more.
They were good books except for the times she basically copied and pasted her work out of another piece. Namely the Kennedy Fitzgerald one where the Weekly Standard in 2002 pointed out that a third of that book was taken from Times to Remember by Rose Kennedy, The Lost Prince by hank Searle, and Kathleen Kennedy: Her Life and Good Times by Lynn McTaggart. It seemed that the more Goodwin tried to explain herself the dirtier she stepped into it. Because of the controversy, she eventually left her position on the PBS New Hour program.
1803 – Jefferson requests funding for Lewis and Clark expedition. At the time, President Thomas Jefferson didn’t know what to expect by their journey. For all he knew they could have been wooly mammoths, mountains of salt, or a ladder to the moon. In either case it was exciting and only cost around $2500 when Congress estimated it would cost more like $50,000. Merriweather Lewis and Williams Clarke of course would check out what would be the Louisiana Purchase and headed all the way to Oregon and back.
1976 – Steeler beat the Cowboys 21-17 in Super Bowl X. Lynn Swann was brilliant for the Steelers, who had no turnovers or penalties in the game. Swann was the MVP and racked up 161 yards and a touchdown.