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During WWII, Icelandic males were outnumbered by foreign soldiers, British, American and Canadian.
In 1941, the Icelandic Minister of the Judiciary investigated "The Situation", and the police tracked 500+ women who had been having sex with the soldiers. Many were upset that the foreign troops were "taking away" women, friends, and family. During 1942 two facilities opened to house such women who had relations with the soldiers. Both closed within a year, after investigations determined that most liaisons were consensual. About 332 Icelandic women married foreign soldiers.
And these situations occurred in many places overseas with an influx of US soldiers. The old phrase about American soldiers in the UK being “oversexed and over here”. The America GI almost always was paid much more than his Allied counterpart. An attractive fact for some local women.
A turtle was found at Lexington a few days ago, it is said, bearing marks made on it in 1861 by an Illinois cavalryman.
Turtles can really get up there in age. The oldest known terrestrial animal in the world is a tortoise named Jonathan who was hatched in 1832. He resides on the Island of Saint Helena, a British overseas territory in the south Atlantic ocean. His image is on the Saint Helena five pence coin.
Morgan County Democrat (Versailles Mo) July 29, 1904 Pg2
WANTED HIM TO POISON LINCOLN
James Almon, who died in Washington last week, had long declared that he was once offered $100,000 to poison President Lincoln. Almon kept the dairy that supplied the White House with milk and cream.
The " Prison Mirror " is the longest running prison newspaper in the United States. It was co-founded by the outlaw brothers, Cole, Jim and Bob Younger on August 10, 1887 in Minnesota.
Everybody should know this, but few do, George Washington got no popular votes to his first term of office, and for his second, only 5% of Americans voted for him.
In 1974, local farmers in Lintong County, outside Xi'an, Shaanxi, China, unearthed the tomb of Qin Shi Huang, first emperor of the Huang dynasty. (259 BCE- 210 BCE) Archaeologists took over and discovered what is called the Terracotta Army, more than 8000 lifesize figures. (terracotta is clay based) There were also 130 chariots with 520 horses, and 150 cavalry horses.
These warrior figurines were designed to guard the emperor in the afterlife. Each figure was given a distinctive face of its own. They were lined up properly in ranks, with generals and other officers placed correctly.
Everybody should know this, but few do, George Washington got no popular votes to his first term of office, and for his second, only 5% of Americans voted for him.
This is not accurate.
Technically speaking, no Presidential candidates get votes. Though I believe all states now have the candidates listed on ballots, the fine print makes clear that votes are cast solely for slates of electors. That said, we can reasonably say that a vote for an elector pledged to a certain candidate is a vote for that candidate.
However, in the elections Washington won (1788/89 and 1792), as well as the two subsequent elections (1796, 1800) electors appeared on ballots as electors and were not formally pledged to any single candidate because at the time all electors got to cast two votes for President. Popular vote totals from the time usual ascribe votes for an elector who supported one of the two major candidates as votes for that candidate. This can be problematic, however. Consider the case of Maryland in 1796. It had 10 electors; 7 electoral votes were cast for John Adams and 4 were cast for Thomas Jefferson (and 9 were cast for 3 other candidates). This means that at least one elector voted for both Adams and Jefferson. In both the elections of 1788/89 and 1792, all popular votes for electors are ascribed to Washington because they all voted for him, though almost half of them also cast an electoral vote for Adams. It really wasn't a contest, because the other candidates were merely there to win the Vice Presidency (which then was won by whomever received the second-most electoral votes for President).
But there was no difference in this regard between the elections of 1788/89 and 1792. In both of those elections, there were popular votes held for electors who everyone knew were going to vote for Washington (they all did, in each case). So either Washington received no popular votes in either election, or he received them in both elections.
In 1788/89, popular votes were held in 6 of the 11 participating states. In the other 5 states, the legislature chose all of that state's electors (or, in the case of NY, were supposed to, but never got around to it, and so NY didn't participate in the election). And two states - NC, RI - had not yet ratified the Constitution and so were not yet part of the new federal structure and could not participate in the election.
By 1792 there were 15 states, but still only 6 that used the popular vote for choosing some/all electors. By 1832, South Carolina was the last state not using the popular vote for selecting electors, and would continue to do so through the election of 1860. When SC next voted, in 1868 after readmission to the Union, they began using the popular vote. The last state not to use the popular vote was Colorado in 1876, in order to make sure that the legislature's choice of Rutherford B. Hayes carried the state.
The small number of voters in the early elections was in part due to the many states that did not use the popular vote, as well as voting requirements that restricted the vote to those 21 and older (at a time when lifespans were much shorter, and so the percent of the population that was too young to vote was much larger than now), as well as limiting the vote to males (except in New Jersey, which began using the popular vote in 1804 and where women were allowed to vote until female suffrage was banned in 1807) and, in various states, voting requirements based on race, property ownership, tax-paying qualifications, and certain religious tests (despite a clear ban on this in the Constitution).
Those rules winnowed out the vast majority of the population.
Then point I was trying to condense down to less than seven paragraphs was that only 5% of the population cast a vote expressing a preference that Washington serve a second term. I should have worded it that way, but I was going for pithy simplicity.
" Town officials were told by Kansas City promoters that the event might draw 50,000. They talked of bluegrass music, crafts and a Sunday morning worship service."
Jackie Robinson did not break the color bar in American baseball. Robinson played his first professional year; 1946, with Canada's Montreal Royals. At the same time, Roy Campanella and Don Newcombe were in the US, playing for the Nashua (NH) Dodgers. Actually. Campanella first played professional organized ball in 1942-43, with the Monterrey Sultans in the Mexican League.
Moses Fleetwood Walker played major league baseball in the 1880s (Am. Assoc.) He was black and obviously the target of some bigotry. In fact, in those days, the convention was to slide head first into bases, but some players started to slide feet first in order to spike him. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moses_Fleetwood_Walker That led him to invent shinguards.
I seem to remember having read that John McGraw had a black guy on the roster of his NY Giants in the early days of the 20th century, passing him off as a Native American.
And as long as we're on the subject, The Am League Cleveland franchise was originally known as the Spiders, but when their excellent Native American pitcher "Chief" Sockalexis died in his prime of TB, a local newspaper held a contest to rename the team and they chose "Indians" in tribute to him.
Last edited by guidoLaMoto; 10-17-2019 at 09:24 AM..
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