OCTOBER 20 –1853 Happy anniversary President Benjamin and First Lady Carrie Harrison; 1944 Operation Musketeers; 1914 Congress investigates reds in Holywood
OCTOBER 20
1853 — Happy Anniversary President Benjamin and First Lady Carrie Harrison.
Carrie was known as one of the best housekeepers in White House history. How’s that for chauvinistic? Caroline Levi Scott was born in Oxford OH on October 1 1832 to Presbyterian minister and science teacher John Scott and Mary Potts Neal Scott. As a child, she learned how to pain, which would become very useful later on in life when designing the White House China. I’ll get to that in a moment.
She met her husband Benjamin Kid Gloves Harrison in class at the University of Miami-Ohio and he could not resist her vivaciousness. They tied the knot on this day in 1853 as Kid Gloves started getting his law career off the ground. But Kid Gloves Harrison was also nicknamed The Human Iceberg for a reason. He was frosty and had a very wimpy handshake, which most men hate by the way. When the civil war broke out Benjamin enlisted as an officer due to his education and became promoted to brigadier general. Now he started making some money.
He also got into politics, which wasn’t that hard considering his grandfather William Henry was already president of the U.S. In 1888 Kid Gloves won the election from Grover Cleveland in a contested Electoral College result. For that Kid Gloves would earn another nickname: Grandfather’s Hat. Notwithstanding, Grandfather’s Hat Harrison’s lovely first lady would move into the White House and seriously shake things up. They only had three children, Russel Lord, Mary Scott and an unnamed stillborn. Yet the White House seemed to be full of the Harrison family.
Mary and her husband, another in-law and several grandchildren. The White House at the time was not equipped for this. First of all, would you believe it only had one bathroom? Major renovations were required. Thomas Edison and his group of scientist showed up at the White arouse and took two days to check it out and see how they could put electrical wiring. But the building was a tinderbox and could not handle the upgrade. The kitchen hadn’t been updated in over thirty years.
In the attic and cellar there was rot and rats. Carrie wanted the whole house to be demolished with a new one in place, but Congress decided on a major upgrade instead. The other thing that Carrie noticed in the attics was the fine china that belonged to some of the past presidents.
She took on the huge job of categorizing the china and then painting pictures to show what kind of china the White House should actually have; complete with the United States coat of arms bordered by corn and golden rod to symbolize America’s wealth and beauty. . You can see this promininently on display if you take a tourist visit. Although Carrie wasn’t known as a feminist, during her husband’s administration she served as fundraiser and support of Johns Hopkins Medical School, ran the Daughters of the American Revolution though she of course was much too young to be an actual daughter of a war which took place over a hundred years prior.
Tragically, Carrie developed a nasty case of tuberculosis, she became the second first lady after Lucretia Tyler to die in the White House. Happy anniversary Benjamin and Caroline
1944 – Operation Musketeers I, II and III.
…Douglas MacArthur and Chester Nimitz v Omoyuki Yamashita and Soemu Toyoda. The result: Decisive Allied victory, deposed Second Philippine Republic, and liberation of the Philippines. After the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, it invaded and overwhelmed the Philippine islands. Douglas MacArthur was the US military adviser there, and was ordered by President Franklin Roosevelt to evacuate the islands in March 1942, leaving behind 90,000 American troops that would surrender to the Japanese military.
But Macarthur swore he would return. And he kept his promise. In Mid-1944, Nimitz captured several strategic islands in the Pacific, and MacArthur, now the supreme commander of the southwest pacific theater of operations, had taken New Guinea and the Admiralty Islands and had his eyes on the Philippines. The Filipinos, who was hoping the US would return their country and independence back to them, tried their best guerilla warfare against the Japanese. Australia offered assistance, but wanted more control of military operations. MacArthur never reached a deal with the Australian cabinet; therefore Australia had minimal involvement in the campaigns.
On October 20, 1944, the US 6th army, supported by naval and air attacks, arrived at the Philippine island of Leyte. MacArthur announced on a radio broadcast: People of the Philippines, I have returned! In January 1945, MacArthur and his forces took back Luzon, the Bataan, the Corregidor, and finally in March, the Philippine capital of Manila. The Japanese would surrender on August 15, 1945. General Douglas MacArthur, everybody. Like a boss! And going from McArthur to McCarthy.
1919 Happy Birthday Tracy Hall, a chemist from Utah, who gave us the first synthetic diamond.
1947 – Congress investigates Reds in Hollywood. 300actors and writers were suspected of being communists and were blacklisted from Hollywood. This was known as the Red Scare, and studio heads and other industry professionals not on the list drawn up by the House Committee on Un-American Activities were asked if they had worked with someone named on the blacklist. Some witnesses, including director Elia KIazan, actors Gary Cooper and Robert Taylor, and studio greats Walt Disneyland Jack Warner, we’re able to release names of colleagues they suspected of being communists. Shmoop.com lists the Invasion of the Body Snatchers as a perfect example of how the Red Scare affected Hollywood in the 1950s.
It was about alien invaders secretly occupying human bodies and turning them into soulless pod people. But enough about my ex-girlfriend. In the Body Snatcher movie, the hero looks at the camera and screams Look! You fools! You’re in danger! Can’t you see? They’re after you! They’re after all of us! Our wives…our children…they’re here already! You’re next! That’s awesome. In Jacko news…
2011 – At the involuntary manslaughter trial of Dr. Conrad Murray, Dr. Steen Shafer testified that it would have been impossible for Michael Jackson to have self-administered a lethal dose of the sedative profile. He later said of Dr. Murray’s delay in calling 911: “I almost don’t know what to say. That is so completely and utterly inexcusable.”