This day in history: September 19

[seamusTX]

I guess I missed a few days.

1796 - President George Washington's farewell address was published.

It was an essay that Washington wrote, not an actual speech. It warned against foreign entanglements, political partisanship, and government borrowing.
It was widely read and admired at the time, and forever after disregarded.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Was ... ll_Address" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Washingto ... _Address#1" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Observe good faith and justice towards all Nations; cultivate peace and harmony with all. Religion and Morality enjoin this conduct; and can it be, that good policy does not equally enjoin it? It will be worthy of a free, enlightened, and, at no distant period, a great Nation, to give to mankind the magnanimous and too novel example of a people always guided by an exalted justice and benevolence. Who can doubt, that, in the course of time and things, the fruits of such a plan would richly repay any temporary advantages, which might be lost by a steady adherence to it ? Can it be, that Providence has not connected the permanent felicity of a Nation with its Virtue?

1881 - President James Garfield died about two months after being shot.

Probably he died of infections caused by doctors using unsterilized instruments to probe his body for the bullet. Modern physicians reviewing his autopsy say that the wound would not have been fatal or disabling.

The germ theory of disease was not widely accepted at the time. Physicians basically were quacks when it came to anything but setting simple fractures.

You learn something every day. I did not know Garfield was a real genius. He was a professor and president of a college before age 30. He also led an army unit and was promoted to major general during the War Between the States.

After he was shot, Alexander Graham Bell tried to come up with an instrument to find the bullet. He actually did invent an electrical metal detector, but it was no help to Garfield.

http://www.historybuff.com/library/refgarfield.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

1959 - Nikita Khruschchev, visiting Los Angeles, threw a tantrum because he was not allowed to visit Disneyland. Khruschchev did not have the best impulse control ever exhibited by a world leader. Scary to think he had his finger on the nuclear trigger.

- Jim

[Bart]

1959 - Nikita Khruschchev, visiting Los Angeles, threw a tantrum because he was not allowed to visit Disneyland. Khruschchev did not have the best impulse control ever exhibited by a world leader. Scary to think he had his finger on the nuclear trigger.

Did he bang his shoe on the table and accuse Mickey and Minnie Mouse of being Capitalist Rats?

[seamusTX]

Not that day. He just ran his mouth.

He had a fascinating audience of celebrities at the time—people like Bob Hope and Frank Sinatra, and politicians now largely forgotten.

http://www.snopes.com/disney/parks/nikita.asp" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

- Jim

[Wisewr]

Looking at government today...George Washington would roll over in his grave.

[seamusTX]

Washington probably was doing the living equivalent of rolling over in his grave in 1796. Adams, Hamilton, and Jefferson were ready to set on each other like starving wolves—which they did after Washington retired.

- Jim