A quick Entertainments.
August 8th 1974 - I was five years old. Gmom, then, was almost 46.
It was on this day in 1974 that Richard Milhous Nixon went on national television to announce that he was resigning the office of the president. He was the first American president in history forced to resign. During Nixon's second election, a group of men wearing rubber gloves were caught breaking into the Democratic Party headquarters at the Watergate Office Building. Nixon wasn't the first U.S. president to tap phones or to use the FBI to spy on his political opponents, but Nixon was the first president to be investigated for such activities, and he tried to use his power to stop the investigation. The Washington Post as well as congressional investigators kept digging. At first, it appeared that no one could prove that Nixon knew about any of the misconduct, but then a former White House official named Alexander Butterfield mentioned that Nixon had secretly taped all of his White House conversations. The tapes were disastrous, since they showed that Nixon deliberately tried to cover up the Watergate scandal from the beginning.
Congress drafted articles of impeachment, and Senate republicans informed Nixon that if he were impeached, he would be convicted. So, on this day in 1974, Nixon went on television and announced his resignation. He said, "I have never been a quitter. To leave office before my term is completed is abhorrent to every instinct in my body. But as president I must put the interests of America first." More than thirty of the men who were closest to him went to jail for their roles in Watergate.
His policies as president had been surprisingly liberal. He began arms control agreements with the Soviet Union and eased relations with China. He established the Environmental Protection Agency, expanded Social Security and state welfare programs, and he tried to create a national health insurance system. Historians believe that if Nixon had just been more confident in his ability to beat George McGovern in the election of 1972, the Watergate scandal would never have occurred.
Here’s an interesting little tid-bit - read to the end:
On August 9th, in 1846, the Smithsonian Institution was founded. Twenty years earlier, a British scientist named James Smithson drew up his last will and testament with his nephew as beneficiary. Smithson made clear that if the nephew should die without an heir (as he did in 1835), the estate should go to the United States of America to found, in Washington, "an establishment for the increase and diffusion of knowledge." Smithson never visited the U.S., and did not correspond with anyone living there. Why he gave his estate to the U.S. is a mystery.
It was on this day in 1961 that East Germany sealed off the border between East and West Berlin. Germany had been divided since the end of World War II: East Germany was controlled by the Soviet Union and West Germany was controlled by a democratic Government. The city of Berlin lay inside East Germany, but West Germany controlled half the city. If people living in Communist countries in Eastern Europe could get to West Berlin, they could then escape to West Germany. Between 1949 and 1961, about 2.5 million people left East Germany through West Berlin. The government of East Germany built the Berlin Wall around West Berlin to stop the flight of skilled labor, which threatened its economy.
The first part of the wall was built at 2 a.m. on this day in 1961, made of cinder blocks and barbed wire. It was later replaced with a fifteen-foot concrete wall with watchtowers, guns, electric wire, and mines. It came to symbolize the Cold War's division of Eastern Europe from Western Europe. Between 1961 and 1989, almost two hundred people were killed trying to cross the wall.
When the wall finally came down in November of 1989, people rushed into West Berlin. Capitalism took over almost immediately, when entrepreneurs began collecting pieces of the wall and shipping them to the United States to be sold as souvenirs. More than twenty tons of the wall were shipped to America, just in time for the Christmas shopping season, to be sold, along with an "informative booklet and a declaration of authenticity," for $10 to $15 in gift shops and department stores.
It was on this day in 1974 that Richard Milhous Nixon went on national television to announce that he was resigning the office of the president. He was the first American president in history forced to resign. During Nixon's second election, a group of men wearing rubber gloves were caught breaking into the Democratic Party headquarters at the Watergate Office Building. Nixon wasn't the first U.S. president to tap phones or to use the FBI to spy on his political opponents, but Nixon was the first president to be investigated for such activities, and he tried to use his power to stop the investigation. The Washington Post as well as congressional investigators kept digging. At first, it appeared that no one could prove that Nixon knew about any of the misconduct, but then a former White House official named Alexander Butterfield mentioned that Nixon had secretly taped all of his White House conversations. The tapes were disastrous, since they showed that Nixon deliberately tried to cover up the Watergate scandal from the beginning.
Congress drafted articles of impeachment, and Senate republicans informed Nixon that if he were impeached, he would be convicted. So, on this day in 1974, Nixon went on television and announced his resignation. He said, "I have never been a quitter. To leave office before my term is completed is abhorrent to every instinct in my body. But as president I must put the interests of America first." More than thirty of the men who were closest to him went to jail for their roles in Watergate.
His policies as president had been surprisingly liberal. He began arms control agreements with the Soviet Union and eased relations with China. He established the Environmental Protection Agency, expanded Social Security and state welfare programs, and he tried to create a national health insurance system. Historians believe that if Nixon had just been more confident in his ability to beat George McGovern in the election of 1972, the Watergate scandal would never have occurred.
Here’s an interesting little tid-bit - read to the end:
On August 9th, in 1846, the Smithsonian Institution was founded. Twenty years earlier, a British scientist named James Smithson drew up his last will and testament with his nephew as beneficiary. Smithson made clear that if the nephew should die without an heir (as he did in 1835), the estate should go to the United States of America to found, in Washington, "an establishment for the increase and diffusion of knowledge." Smithson never visited the U.S., and did not correspond with anyone living there. Why he gave his estate to the U.S. is a mystery.
It was on this day in 1961 that East Germany sealed off the border between East and West Berlin. Germany had been divided since the end of World War II: East Germany was controlled by the Soviet Union and West Germany was controlled by a democratic Government. The city of Berlin lay inside East Germany, but West Germany controlled half the city. If people living in Communist countries in Eastern Europe could get to West Berlin, they could then escape to West Germany. Between 1949 and 1961, about 2.5 million people left East Germany through West Berlin. The government of East Germany built the Berlin Wall around West Berlin to stop the flight of skilled labor, which threatened its economy.
The first part of the wall was built at 2 a.m. on this day in 1961, made of cinder blocks and barbed wire. It was later replaced with a fifteen-foot concrete wall with watchtowers, guns, electric wire, and mines. It came to symbolize the Cold War's division of Eastern Europe from Western Europe. Between 1961 and 1989, almost two hundred people were killed trying to cross the wall.
When the wall finally came down in November of 1989, people rushed into West Berlin. Capitalism took over almost immediately, when entrepreneurs began collecting pieces of the wall and shipping them to the United States to be sold as souvenirs. More than twenty tons of the wall were shipped to America, just in time for the Christmas shopping season, to be sold, along with an "informative booklet and a declaration of authenticity," for $10 to $15 in gift shops and department stores.