JULY 14 — Happy Birthday Gerald Ford; 1993 Happy Birthday MP3; 1876 News Hits the East Coast about Little Big Horn
JULY 14
1913 – Happy birthday Junie.
…Gerald Ford, #38 had been the first Vice President chosen under the terms of the Twenty-fifth Amendment and, after the Watergate scandal, was succeeding the first President ever to resign in 1974. Gerald Ford was born in Omaha, NB with the name Leslie Lynch King Jr. July 14 1913. His father was abusive and his mother would not tolerate that, and when Leslie was just a small baby she divorced Leslie Lynch King Sr and met and married Gerald Rudolph Ford.
Fordstarred on the University of Michigan football team, then went to Yale, where he served as assistant coach while earning his law degree. History.com says he was a model who posed in his military uniform on the cover of Cosmopolitan magazine in 1942, but wasn’t officially credited. Whatever that means. Was he on the damn cover or not.
During World War II he attained the rank of lieutenant commander in the Navy. After the war he returned to Grand Rapids, where he began to practice law, and entered politics. A few weeks before his election to Congress in 1948, he married Elizabeth Bloomer, aka Betty. Legend has it during their honeymoon he took Betty to a Michigan St. Rose bowl game against Northwestern. Testate the obvious, Ford was really big into football.
Ford’s reputation for integrity and openness had made him popular during his 25 years in Congress. From 1965 to 1973, he was House Minority Leader.
So how did a House Minority Leader become President? Well, technically he didn’t. Nixon, who was getting buried by Watergate scandals, chose Ford as Vice President after the current VP, Spiro Agnew, resigned. Though as VP Ford defended Nixon to the hilt, Nixon would resign nonetheless. And the first thing Ford did when he replaced Nixon as President was pardoned Nixon, which started Ford’s presidency with controversy.
According to whitehouse.gov, Ford vetoed a number of non-military appropriations bills that would have further increased the already heavy budgetary deficit. During his first 14 months as President he vetoed 39 measures, which were usually sustained.A major goal was to help business operate more freely by reducing taxes upon it and easing the controls exercised by regulatory agencies. Again, according to whitehouse.gov.
In foreign affairs Ford was able to maintain deyh-tont détente with the Soviet Union, but near quite reached that arms agreement he wanted with them, although he did manage to get the Soviets, along with about 30 other countries to sign the Helsinki Accords, which was close enough to a détente as one could get. He got the troops out of defeated South Vietnam, and ordered the rescue of 40 American sailors being held hostage by the Cambodians. He also kept America out of war with the Middle East by providing aid to Israel and Egypt, and persuaded the two countries to accept an interim truce agreement.
President Ford won the Republican nomination for the Presidency in 1976, but lost the election to his Democratic opponent, former Governor Jimmy Carter of Georgia.On Inauguration Day, President Carter began his speech: “For myself and for our Nation, I want to thank my predecessor for all he has done to heal our land.” A grateful people concurred. Ford died in 2006 at age of 93, outliving all other presidents by the way. Gerald Ford, who only served 895 days in office, has the shortest tenure of a president who did not die in office.
1995 – MP3 is born.
..Why was it invented? Because in those days, a high-end home computer only had a 500M hard drive. A three minute song on a CD was 32M. Internet downloading speeds were limited to 56K and it would literally take all day to download a song. Who’s got time for that? The MP3 used compression to reduce the song’s size to about 2 to 3 Mpegs. Now we’re talking.
1876 — Here are today’s headlines. New Orleans Picayune: “Little Horn River Massacre,”
Chicago Times: “Indians, The Red Friends”, Daily Herald: “The Indian War: General Terry’s Official Report of the Custer Massacre”.
Although General George Armstrong Custer’s men did not survive the ambush led by Sitting Bull a couple months earlier, reports of what actually happened are still unclear. The only witnesses that lived appeared to be from the Sioux and Cheyenne tribes, though those reports are contradictory and muddied at best. One thing that appears to be certain, regardless of the quote unquote heroics of General Custer as an American hero and Indian hunter, he had no last stand. In fact, his men retreated in an unorganized rout and were defeated at the hands of Crazy Horse and his men. Although there were some who at the time criticized Custer for his ruthlessness in senseless Indian killing, most Americans applauded Custer.
In 1881 Helen Hunt Jackson wrote a book called ‘A Century of Dishonor’, which laid out the atrocities of US policy towards the indigenous North American. Again, this isn’t 1981, this was 1881. Settlers tried to destroy the American Indians main source of food and warmth by decimating the sacred buffalo. During the Civil War there were 15M buffalo roaming the Great Plains, and by the turn of the 20th century there were only a few hundred. General Custer had a flair for bravado and fame, and was one of the youngest generals ever at age 23 during the Civil War. He would often lead his men into battle, unlike most officers who fell back.
When gold was discovered in the black Hills of Dakota, the Lakota Sioux was pushed out of their reservations, with the US Army once again reneging on the deal which allowed them to stay. At Ash Creek in Montana late 1875 Sitting Bull had gathered together around 10,000 Sioux and Cheyenne to defend their new homes. Custer and his 7th Cavalry were sent into disperse the crowd, but had no idea the vast number of Indians.
The white man started yet another battle against the Indians, but this time was defeated and defeated so badly, there was no chance for a “last stand.” Though the battle took place in June, word was now finally hitting the east coast in the newspapers, and Americans were furious at the loss of the beloved Civil War general. The retribution against the Indians would be fast and brutal, from the Nez Pierce and Geronimo and the Apache struggle to the Oklahoma Sooners.
The American Indian Wars, which began in 1622 according to Wikipedia, would last until 1924.
1881 – Pat Garrett catches up to Billy the Kid. Garrett got a tip that Billy was holed up at his buddy Pete Maxwell’s place in fort Sumner NM, and garret snuck in July 14, 1881, and waited for Billy in the dark. Billy walked in, saw Garrett’s shadow, and said Quien es? And Garret shot Billy the Kid dead.