AUGUST 4 – 1961 Happy Birthday Barack Obama; 11861 Jesse Reno patents the escalator; 2006 Talladega Nights premieres
AUGUST 4
1961—Happy Birthday Barack H. Obama, #44.
…Barack Obama was born in Honolulu, depending of course on who you ask. His mom, Ann Dunham, is from Wichita Kansas. Her dad fought under General George Patton’s army in WWII. Obama’s father, Barack grew up herding goats in Kenya, Africa, and won a scholarship to attend the University of Hawaii, which is where he met Ann. The two fell in love, got married in February 1961, and six months later Barack Hussein was born on August 4. Unfortunately Barack senior did not stick around and he and Ann were divorced in 1964.
As a small boy, he moved with Ann to Indonesia but that did not turn out to be a good environment for young Barack, so she sent him back to Hawaii to live with her parents. Obama senior rarely saw his son, and tragically died in a car accident when Barack Jr. was 21 years old. Two years later, Obama got a degree in politic from Columbia university, then moved to Chicago to begin his community organizing career. Working with some churches, he was able to help rebuild communities taken down by the closing of local steel plants.
According to whitehouse.gov, he was the first African-American president of the Harvard Law Review. Upon graduation, he returned to Chicago to help lead a voter registration drive, teach constitutional law at the University of Chicago, and remain active in his community. In 2004 he was elected senator of Illinois.
Defeating Republican John McCain, Obama was elected the 44th President of the United States on November 4, 2008, During his first term, he signed an economic stimulus into law for the American Recovery and Reinstatement Act in 2009. In 2010, he signed the Tax Relief, Unemployment Insurance Reauthorization and Job Creation Act. He signed the Affordable care Act, aka Obamacare, as well as the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, and repealed Don’t Ask Don’t Tell in the military. However, his domestic policies led to a Democratic defeat in the 2010 midterm election, losing a whopping 63 seats to Republicans in the House of Representatives.
In foreign affairs, ended the Iraq War, and moved troops to Afghanistan and Libya. Obama was reelected President in 2012. During his second term, he wrote legislation to support gun control rights as well as the LGBT community, specifically breaking down the Defense of Marriage Act to allow same-sex marriage. He sent troops back to Iraq to fight ISIS, actively participated in the Paris Agreement of 2015 on global climate change, and worked to ease tensions with Iran and Cuba.
He and his wife, Michelle, are the proud parents of two daughters, Malia and Sasha.
1936 – The Buckeye Bullet wins the long jump in Berlin.
…Jesse Owens, born September 12, 1913 in Oakville Alabama, was an Olympic track and field athlete who won four gold medals in Berlin on August 4, 1936, with a record jump that stood for 25 years. Adolf Hitler was furious. Hitler already couldn’t believe that the Americans would actually send a black man to participate in the event. In fact, the Americans won 11 golds, six of them by black men. This was shocking because after all, African Americans were considered to be non-human, or sub-human, and therefore shouldn’t even be in this sport to begin with. Until Owens proved 110,000 spectators wrong wrong wrong.
Owens won the 100 meters, leaped his historic 26.5 foot jump, the next day won the 200 meters and on the 9th helped his team beat the world record in the 4 x100 meter relay. Not bad for a non-human, and so much for Aryan superiority. Hitler stomped his feet and left, and because it was the 1930’s Owens did not get a welcome home victory party. He wasn’t surprised about America’s hypocrisy, in fact he stated “When I came back to my native country, after all the stories about Hitler, I couldn’t ride in front of a bus. I had to go to the back door. I couldn’t live where I wanted. I wasn’t invited to shake hands with Hitler, but I wasn’t invited to the White House to shake hands with the President either. ” In fact, Jesse Owens, the Buckeye Bullet, wouldn’t get his proper recognition until President Gerald Ford gave him the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1976. Jesse Owens, every body, like a boss!
1861 — — Jesse W. Reno patents the escalator.
The escalator just wasn’t made to get folks from point A to point B it was actually constructed for the purposes of entertainment at Coney Island. It took you up one story. It was seven feet long. But it was automatic and got you up to the next level.
Jesse W. Reno, the son of legendary Civil War Union Maj. Gen. Jesse Lee Reno. But Jesse Senior, known as a soldier’s soldier, died in battle in 1862, and Jesse W. didn’t know him Most of Reno’s inventions were rejected by the City of New York.
He initially had an idea to build a double decked underground subway system that would feature his escalators, or inclining elevators, or inclining transportation systems. New York rejected it all. But Coney Island liked his idea of a small inclining elevator. Aside from the design itself, it also featured two brilliant other designs; one was the rubber handrail which was there so you wouldn’t have to mangle your hand on the chain, and another one were teeth at the end of each machine.
These teeth, which resembles a comb of projecting fingers to keep objects from getting stuck in the motion of the conveyor when exiting floor level. For the record, the escalator, known to its original inventor Nathan Ames as revolving stairs, was patented on March 9, 1859, but never built.
2006 – Shake N Bake everybody…Talladega Nights is released. NASCAR has never looked so funny.
AUGUST 4 – 1961 Happy Birthday Barack Obama; 1939 Jessse Owens wins long jump in Berlin; 2006 Talladega Nights premieres