THE MOST INTERESTING PEOPLE IN POLITICS AND HISTORY, VOLUME 2: 250 ANECDOTES

By David Bruce

Dedicated with Respect to Nick Claussen

Many thanks to Ed Venrick for the front cover.

Copyright 2008 by Bruce D. Bruce

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The Most Interesting People in Politics and History, Volume 2

Chapter 1: From Activism to Etiquette

Activism

• In early 2008, truck drivers protested $4-per-gallon diesel fuel costs by slowing down or blocking freeway traffic. For example, on the New Jersey Turnpike, trucks crawled along at 20 miles per hour. Near Chicago, they drove with three trucks side by side by side to block traffic, then they slowed down—way down. Similar slow-downs occurred elsewhere in the United States. Many of these activists were owner-operators who can’t make a profit when diesel fuel costs $4 per gallon. Some of them can’t make the payments on their trucks, which are foreclosed by the banks. Maine trucker Donald Hayden lost three trucks when Daimler-Chrysler repossessed them. To make a point, he surrendered the trucks publicly so that other people would know what is happening: He parked them in front of the statehouse in Augusta, Maine, because as he points out, “Repossession is something people don’t usually see.” The Daimler-Chrysler representative repossessing the trucks said, “I don’t see why you couldn’t make the payments.” Mr. Hayden replied, “See, I have to pay for fuel and food, and I’ve eaten too many meals in my life to give that up.” Author Barbara Ehrenreich thinks that making repossession public is a good idea, as it makes people aware of what is going on. In her blog, she writes, “Suppose homeowners were to start making their foreclosures into public events—inviting the neighbors and the press, at least getting someone to camcord the children sitting disconsolately on the steps and the furniture spread out on the lawn. Maybe, for a nice dramatic touch, have the neighbors shower the bankers, when they arrive, with dollar bills and loose change, since those bankers never can seem to get enough.”

• After becoming governor of California, movie star Arnold Schwarzenegger was very popular until he revealed himself to be a bullyboy who insulted nurses and other people who have dedicated themselves to helping others. Early in his administration, he supported big business in the form of large hospital chains by delaying a change that would lower the nurse-to-patient ratio, thus missing a chance to improve service quality and to decrease the chances of a nurse making a serious mistake through overwork. As governor Schwarzenegger addressed 10,000 women at a state convention, a few nurses protested by unfurling a banner that read, “Hands Off Patient Ratios.” He responded by saying on TV, “Pay no attention … to the special interests. I am always kicking their b*tts.” Perhaps he forgot that a nurse’s special interest is taking very good care of very ill patients. In November of 2005, governor Schwarzenegger spent over $50 million of taxpayer money as he sought to have voters pass initiatives harming teachers and unions and the political process. The nurses—and the teachers, and the firefighters, and the voters—rejected all of governor Schwarzenegger’s initiatives. When the election results were announced to the nurses, they formed a conga line and chanted, “We’re the mighty, mighty nurses.” (A few years later, governor Schwarzenegger’s popularity rose again, perhaps as a result of his pursuing a much more liberal—or at least moderate—agenda.)

• In 2008 in San Francisco, a group known as the Presidential Memorial Commission of San Francisco wanted to change the name of the Oceanside Water Pollution Control Plant. Because of President George W. Bush’s record as overseer of the country’s welfare, they wanted the sewage treatment plant’s name changed to the George W. Bush Sewage Plant. To do that, they submitted to San Francisco election officials over 10,000 signatures in order to get their initiative on the ballot. According to organizer Brian McConnell, “We think that it’s important to remember our leaders in the right historical context. In President Bush’s case, we think that we will be cleaning up a substantial mess for the next 10 or 20 years. The sewage treatment facility’s job is to clean up a mess, so we think it’s a fitting tribute.” In the opinion of this writer, Mr. McConnell is optimistic. It will take much longer than 10 to 20 years to clean up President Bush’s mess. To be fair to President Bush, he did what he set out to do—transfer much more of the nation’s wealth to the already wealthy. President Bush simply did not and does not care about non-wealthy people like the author of his book.

• In the days when Margaret Thatcher was Prime Minister of England, much protest music was written about her, but early in the 21^st century, several conservative British politicians stated that they liked (and often still like) that music. One such politician was the Cameroonian Tory MP Ed Vaizey, who strongly supported Ms. Thatcher and who thought that about everyone else did, too. He listened to a song titled “Stand Down, Margaret” by the 1980s group the Beat, and he says, “I couldn’t work out what they had against Princess Margaret.” On January 10, 2008, conservative politician David Cameron wanted to get his photograph taken in Salford, Greater Manchester, at the Salford Lads Club, known for being the site where the anti-Thatcherite group the Smiths had a photograph taken for their 1986 album The Queen is Dead. Activists discovered his plan, however, so they showed up in force with such signs as “Salford Lads not Eton snobs” and “Oi, Dave —Eton Toffs’ club is 300 miles that way.” Mr. Cameroon was unable to get the photograph he wanted.

• Activism occasionally occurs in the public schools. On Wednesday, May 21, 2008, more than 160 eighth-grade students in a South Bronx middle school—who were taking six different classes at Intermediate School 318—went on strike and refused to take another standardized test as required by President George W. Bush’s No Child Left Behind program. The students created a petition that listed their grievances, including the “constant, excessive and stressful testing” that forces them to “lose valuable instructional time with our teachers.” Actually, the students didn’t even boycott a real test—they boycotted a practice Social Studies test. How did they do that? They simply handed in blank practice exam sheets for the three-hour practice exam. Thirteen-year-old Tatiana Nelson, one of the protest leaders, complained, “We’ve had a whole bunch of these diagnostic tests all year. They don’t even count toward our grades. The school system’s just treating us like test dummies for the companies that make the exams.”

• In Birmingham, Alabama, African-American children marched for their civil rights. On May 2, 1963, nearly 1,000 children were arrested. The following day, even more children marched. This time, Birmingham police Chief Eugene “Bull” Connor ordered water hoses turned on and turned against the children. The water came out of the hoses with such force that it ripped some children’s clothes off and hurled other children against the walls of buildings. In addition, some children were bitten by police dogs and clubbed by police officers. Bull Connor enjoyed this, shouting, “I want to see the dogs work. Look at those n*ggers run!” The media gave heavy coverage to the police brutality and President John F. Kennedy said the police officers’ brutality made him “sick.” He added, “I can well understand why the Negroes of Birmingham are tired of being asked to be patient.” Eventually, the African Americans got what they were demonstrating for—the stores of downtown Birmingham were desegregated.

• The year 2007 will be remembered in part for the protests of monks against the military dictatorship in Burma. It may also be remembered for a very unusual protest by international women, who discovered that in Burmese society macho soldier types believe that they must not come in contact with female undergarments. This has led to the formation of the international women’s protest called “Panties for Peace,” which may sound satiric but is deadly serious. Women all over the world sent their panties to Burmese embassies all over the world to protest the Burmese military’s bad treatment of the Burmese monks. For example, American women sent their panties to the Burmese embassy in the United States, which is located at 2300 S Street, NW, Washington, D.C. 20008.

• During the Montgomery, Alabama, bus boycott, which lasted 381 days, blacks declined to ride in the city’s segregated buses. Instead, they walked, rode in car pools, and took taxis. African-American taxi drivers even lowered their prices to match those offered by the bus company. An African-American minister who worked in the car pool organized by the Montgomery Improvement Association asked an elderly black woman who was walking, “Sister, aren’t you getting tired?” She replied, “My soul has been tired for a long time. Now my feet are tired, and my soul is resting.” The Supreme Court ruled that the segregated buses were against the Constitution, and the boycott ended in victory for the civil rights workers.

• Professional player Mudcat Grant did his part to get civil rights for his people. An African American, Mr. Grant thought things would be better in Reading, Pennsylvania, than in Tipton, Georgia, both of which were minor-league communities. He was wrong. Mr. Grant went to a lounge that served white baseball players, but where he was not served. To make a point, after each home game, he went to that lounge and sat all night. He never did get served. Mr. Grant says, “If I am willing to sit there all night long and not get served, they have to think about that a little bit when they go home at night, ‘Well, maybe this is not right.’ The idea is to get them to think that blacks are human beings.”

• In February of 2007, the University of Chicago came up with a new funding plan for some of its graduate students. According to an article by Deanna Isaacs, “Beginning the following fall, almost every entering grad in the humanities and social sciences divisions would receive an annual stipend of $19,000 for five years, along with free tuition, guaranteed teaching opportunities, and other benefits.” Unfortunately, that program did not apply to the university’s current graduate students working in those disciplines. These graduate students came up with a notable protest. They went to the provost’s office and deposited on the provost’s desk 150 apples, each of which bore a protest message.

• In its performance piece titled Frozen Wages, the San Francisco Mime Troupe uses juggling to show the effects of layoffs on workers. Several people begin juggling, but one by one the jugglers are laid off, leaving a smaller number of jugglers to juggle all the clubs that the large group had been juggling. The number of jugglers gets smaller and smaller, the number of clubs remains the same, the jugglers work harder and harder, and the clubs are thrown faster and faster until one too many juggler is laid off and everything collapses.

• Black dance pioneer Katherine Dunham engaged in activism to support the causes she believed in. In 1992, the United States government turned away political refugees from her beloved Haiti. In protest, Ms. Dunham—at the age of 82—started a widely publicized fast that lasted 47 days and ended only after deposed Haitian president Jean-Bertrand Aristide telephoned her and urged her to eat. The fast was successful in bringing the attention of the media to the plight of the refugees.

• Before the American War of Independence, colonists were upset at being taxed without representation. They succeeded in getting most of the taxes revoked, except for the tax on tea—so the colonists boycotted tea. Instead, they drank coffee, tea from Holland (which had to be smuggled into the American colonies), or “Liberty Tea” (which was made from American plants). Soon the British East India Company had warehouses filled with moldy tea.

• Ronald Reagan made a lot of mistakes when he was President, including saying that trees pollute more than factories do. Pollution kills, and students were upset that their President understood so little about pollution, ecology, and the environment. After saying this remark, President Reagan visited Claremont College in southern California. Around the trees on the campus, students had placed placards that read, “Stop me before I kill again.”

• During the years of World War II, 12-year-old Jim McWilliams, a newsboy in Fairfield, Alabama, became a labor leader when the Birmingham News required African-American newsboys to work much harder than white newsboys. Jim led a strike of African-American newsboys, and after two weeks the Birmingham News agreed to their terms.

Advertising

• Apple Macintosh was introduced to Americans in 1984 in a TV commercial that aired during the Super Bowl. The commercial opened with the face of Big Brother projected hugely on a TV screen, telling the zombie-like masses, “For today, we celebrate the first glorious anniversary of the Information Purification Directives. We have created, for the first time in all history, a garden of pure ideology where each worker may bloom secure from the pests of contradictory and confusing truths. Our Unification of Thought is more powerful a weapon than any fleet or army on earth.” As Big Brother speaks, a woman carrying a sledgehammer runs into the room of zombies as she is pursued by the Thought Police. She throws the sledgehammer into the TV screen, which explodes. The commercial ends with the announcer saying, “On January 24, Apple Computer will introduce Macintosh. And you’ll see why 1984 won’t be like 1984.” The commercial was almost not shown during the Super Bowl. The directors of Apple disliked the commercial, and wanted the advertising agency to sell the two Super Bowl time slots it had purchased for commercials. The agency, Chiat/Day, sold one slot, but lied and said it could not sell the other. The commercial ran in that slot, and it was wildly successful in launching Macintosh.

• On April 1, 1996, Taco Bell announced that it had purchased the Liberty Bell in an effort to help reduce the national debt. The fast-food chain announced the news in full-page advertisements that appeared in these newspapers: Chicago Tribune, Dallas Morning News, New York Times, Philadelphia Inquirer, USA Today, and Washington Post. Of course, this was an April Fool’s Day joke, but some people believed the announcement and were outraged that such an important national, historical artifact could be purchased by a business. One person who was not fooled by the joke and went along with it was White House press secretary Mike McCurry, who told reporters that the government supported such privatization: “We’ll be doing a series of these. Ford Motor Co. is joining today in an effort to refurbish the Lincoln Memorial. It will be the Lincoln Mercury Memorial.”

• Back in the days when organizers were trying to start unions for miners, the management and owners of the coal companies didn’t believe the First Amendment applied to union organizers. To prevent organizers from speaking, mine owners refused to rent them meeting rooms in coal company towns. They also refused to let organizers rent hotel rooms to stay in. Once, when organizers were forbidden to pass out leaflets announcing a speech by union organizer Mother Jones, two union men solved the problem by going through town and speaking to each other. One man pretended to be deaf, so the other man kept shouting to him, “Mother Jones is going to have a meeting Sunday afternoon outside the town on the sawdust pile!” This form of advertising, although primitive, was effective.

Advice

• After being given a job, Zi Xia, a disciple of Confucius, went to see the master for advice about how he could do his job well. Confucius advised him, “The more you try to do, the less you are able to do. If you are blinded by petty concerns, you cannot accomplish great things.” In other words, haste makes waste; or the more haste, the less speed.

• Because aviator Amelia Earhart became a celebrity, she also influenced the fashion of her day. Her hair was often tousled, and so other women began to wear their hair tousled. A newspaper editor who disliked the “Earhart look” gave her this advice: “Comb your head, kid. Comb your head.”

Alcohol

• Carrie Nation was serious about keeping people away from what she saw as the evils of alcohol—since her first husband had drunk himself to death, she had a reason for regarding alcohol as evil. On June 6, 1900, she went into Mr. Dobson’s saloon in Kiowa, Kansas, and told his customers, “I have come to save you from a drunkard’s fate.” She then ripped the place apart, breaking every bottle of alcohol in the saloon. (Believe it. The 55-year-old Ms. Nation was nearly six feet tall, she weighed 175 pounds, and she was strong. In addition, she brought a supply of bricks with her.) After destroying Mr. Dobson’s saloon, Ms. Nation destroyed two more saloons, then ran out of bricks. Of course, the sheriff arrived, but he wasn’t sure what to do because saloons were illegal in Kansas at the time and Ms. Nation claimed that she had a right to destroy them. In fact, Ms. Nation demanded that she be arrested because she wanted to publicize her cause, but the sheriff refused to arrest her. Ms. Nation continued to destroy saloons until in January 1910 she tried to enter a saloon in Butte, Montana, that was owned by a strong woman named May Maloy. Ms. Maloy didn’t want her saloon destroyed, so she fought and convincingly beat Ms. Nation. Following that defeat, Ms. Nation retired.

• Leon Askin played German General Alfred Burkhalter in TV’s Hogan’s Heroes. In real life, just before World War II he had been interned in a French prisoner of war camp because of his Austrian citizenship—he was released as soon as his American visa came through. While in the POW camp, he, another prisoner, and a guard were sent to a nearby village, where the guard got drunk. Mr. Askin and the other prisoner brought the guard back to the camp in a wheelbarrow. This experience was used in a Hogan’s Heroes episode where Sergeant Schultz takes Corporal Patrick Newkirk to town to see the dentist. Schultz gets drunk and Newkirk brings him back to camp in a wheelbarrow.

• Izzy Einstein and Moe Smith were government liquor agents during Prohibition and closed down many, many speakeasies. Often, Moe would take a shivering Izzy into a bar and say, “Quick, give this man a drink—he’s been bit by frost.” When the bartender poured out a drink, Izzy and Moe would arrest him. Later, Izzy and Moe became famous because they were written up so often in the New York newspapers, and their mode of operation had to change. So Izzy sometimes went to a bar and told the bartender, “I’m Izzy Einstein. How about a drink?” The bartender would usually laugh, reply, “Yeah, and I’m Buffalo Bill,” then hand Izzy a drink—and Izzy would arrest him.

• In 2008, the twin cities of St. Paul/Minneapolis, Minnesota, hosted the Republican National Convention. The Minnesota state legislature wanted the Republican delegates, candidates, and lobbyists to enjoy themselves, so they voted to allow bars to stay open two hours later and close at 4 a.m. instead of 2 a.m. However, the St. Paul City Council voted against this extension of bar hours. Council member David Thune had a very good reason for voting against more bar hours, “I got 8,000 people who live downtown who don’t want a bunch of Republican lobbyists puking on the streets.”

• When Judge Roy Bean, the Law West of the Pecos, listened to law cases in his saloon, he would take numerous breaks so that he could put on an apron and sell drinks to the lawyers, the defendants, the plaintiffs, the lawmen—in short, to everyone. Despite being a judge, he was not honest. One lawyer paid for a 35-cent beer with a $10 gold coin, but Judge Bean kept the change. Angry, the lawyer started cursing him, so Judge Bean fined the lawyer $10 for disturbing the peace, then added, “The beer is on me.” Judge Bean also used to fine jurors if they didn’t buy a drink.

• Leif Vidø and other Danish Resistance members needed to escape to Sweden after some of them killed a hated SS policeman from the Baltic states. The Resistance members went to a ship in the harbor in Copenhagen, showed their guns to the captain, and demanded to be taken to Sweden. Actually, the guns weren’t necessary. The captain of the ship hated the Nazis, and he served the Danish Resistance members brandy as his ship took them to safety in Sweden.

• In 1933, fish in Ellicott Creek in New York floated to the surface, where they remained motionless. Game wardens investigated and discovered that the fish returned to normal when placed in fresh water. Eventually, they discovered the cause of the fish’s strange behavior—the fish were drunk. An illegal still was hidden nearby, and the still’s owner had dumped 1,000 gallons of evidence into the creek to get rid of it.

• A glass of beer made a huge difference in Lech Walesa’s life. In 1967, Mr. Walesa thought that he had time to get off a train in Gdansk and drink a glass of beer, but he was mistaken—the train pulled out of the station without him. Therefore, Mr. Walesa found work in Gdansk. His efforts with the Polish worker union Solidarity there led to his receiving the Nobel Peace Prize in 1983.

• During World War I, British army captain Alastair McIntosh got drunk, then crawled out of bed with a hangover the next morning to officiate at a funeral. All went well until a gun salute was fired right behind him. Mr. McIntosh screamed and jumped headlong into the grave and onto the coffin.

• Queen Victoria enjoyed drinking, and she opposed teetotalism—so much, in fact, that she would not give a cleric a promotion to a deanery unless he stopped advocating refraining from alcohol. According to Queen Victoria, teetotalism was “a pernicious heresy.”

• The Russian Prince Orloff discovered an interesting way of getting out of the military. He entered a drinking contest with another man, drank 112 glasses of Cointreau to his opponent’s 80, went into a seizure, and was promptly relieved of his military duty.

Animals

• In 1804-1806, the Lewis and Clark expedition explored the American West. Among other things, they studied the land scientifically and took back home plant and animal specimens. Seeing several prairie dogs, they decided to capture one, so they formed a bucket brigade and poured bucket after bucket of water into the prairie dog’s burrow. Eventually, one very wet and very angry prairie dog came out and was captured. Meriwether Lewis and William Clark took it with them and showed it to President Thomas Jefferson.

• William Randolph Hearst’s estate at San Simeon included a private zoo—at the time the world’s largest. For the dangerous animals such as tigers and bears, Mr. Hearst’s architect, Julia Morgan, designed closed-in grottoes. The less dangerous animals roamed freely because the entire estate was fenced off. Signs at the estate said, “Animals have right of way.” Once, a giraffe resting in the middle of the road held up Prime Minister of England Winston Churchill.

Art

• The most famous pharaoh of ancient Egypt is King Tutankhamen, who died at age eighteen after ruling for nine years. On November 4, 1922, British archaeologist Howard Carter and his team of excavators discovered a tomb in Egypt’s Valley of the Kings. They began excavating it, and on November 26, Mr. Carter looked through a small hole in the tomb’s door. When his eyes became accustomed to the dark, he saw, “strange animals [works of art], statues, and gold—everywhere the glint of gold.” The man financing the archaeological dig, the Earl of Carnarvon, asked, “Can you see anything?” Mr. Carter replied, “Yes, wonderful things.” Of the many tombs of the pharaohs, this tomb is the only one to be found virtually intact. Inside was the mummy of King Tutankhamen and over 2,000 other objects, including statues, a throne, a cedarwood chest, and an alabaster vase. King Tutankhamen’s mummy was encased in several cases and coffins. The innermost coffin weighed 242 pounds, and it was made of solid gold and decorated with colored stones and enamel inlays. Although most Egyptologists regard Tutankhamen as a minor pharaoh, the dazzling discovery of his tomb ensures his lasting fame.

• Artemisia Gentileschi was a Renaissance artist. Another artist by the name of Agostina Tassi decided to marry her. Unfortunately, his method of proposing to her was horrific—he raped her, thinking that she would marry him to save her reputation (something that was regarded as valuable and even a necessity for women in Renaissance Italy). However, instead of marrying him, she took him to court, where he was found guilty of rape, although in the process her reputation was dirtied—his defense was that she was a whore and a slut, anyway. How did being raped affect her painting? She became very fond of painting a certain scene: Judith cutting off the head of Holofernes. She did at least six paintings of this scene.

Children

• Eva Castellanoz is a master of making coronas, which consist in part of flowers made from tissue paper and dipped in wax. She remembers her time as a child as very happy because of her parents, both of whom had Native American blood. She was born in Mexico, her father was Fidel Silva, of Azteca blood, and her mother was Conchita, of Otomi blood. Her father could go into the pumpkin patch and make flutes out of big leaves. At the river, he would ask his children about a rock, “What is the rock? Do you think it’s a boy, or do you think it’s a girl?” Hold it. Touch it. What is it?” Her mother sewed clothes for the children and made little chicks out of cotton and small pieces of wood. To make the chicks yellow, she would paint them with egg yolk. Her father and the children could go out and gather wood, and he would find food in the woods. To Eva, this was magical. She would think, “Wow! How wonderful! We don’t bring anything, yet we’re eating!” And whenever the children were curious about something their parents were doing, their parents would say, “Oh, we’re doing this. Would you like to try? Would you like to watch?” Eva says, “My childhood was magical to me.”

• Esther Nisenthal Krinitz lived in the village of Mniszek in Poland. For the first year of occupation by the Nazis during the Holocaust, things were not nearly as bad as they got later. In July 1940, Esther got a very bad toothache. Knowing that the German soldiers had a dentist at their camp, she decided to go there for treatment. Of course, even then, when things were relatively good, she knew that the German dentist would not treat a Jewish girl, so she took a friend with her and on the way to the dentist she taught the friend how to say in German, “My sister has a toothache.” The German dentist pulled her tooth and gave her a bar of chocolate. Later, when Esther told her mother what she had done, her mother was shocked. Much later, after the Holocaust, when Esther told her children what she had done, Esther was also shocked by her courage when she was a young girl.

• When Daryl’s parents got divorced, he moved in with and was raised by his maternal grandparents. His grandmother signs all of his report cards with “GRANDMOTHER AT LARGE … AND IN CHARGE.” He doesn’t see his father much. At a ball game, a man with a mustache came up to him and asked, “Do you know who I am?” Daryl replied, “No,” and the man said, “I’m your father.” Daryl is perfectly happy staying with his grandparents.

• Growing up in a single-parent household can mean that the child worries excessively about the one parent. Eight-year-old Jessica worried about losing her mother, and her babysitter was unable to stop her crying when her mother was late arriving home one day. Jessica says, “Maybe if I had a dad, I wouldn’t have been so scared. At least then there would be somebody left to take care of me.”

Clothing

• In 2008, Deborah Lawson, a senior at Peabody Veterans Memorial High School in Massachusetts, invited a friend to go with her to the prom because her boyfriend was out of town. However, the friend was a cross-dressing gay guy, so the school principal said no to the prom date. Ms. Lawson called Fox News, Fox News called the school superintendent (the school principal’s boss), and the school superintendent decided to allow the cross-dressing gay guy to attend the prom with Ms. Lawson. The school superintendent reasoned that since the cross-dressing gay guy would be wearing a dress, and since the school handbook stated that “everyone must wear appropriate dress,” and since a dress truly is appropriate for the prom, why not let the cross-dressing gay guy attend the prom? Ms. Lawson says, “I think what I’ve learned is that if you scream loudly enough, you’ll get what you want.”

• Famed photographer Yousuf Karsh took a portrait of Senator John F. Kennedy during his Presidential campaign. Senator Kennedy had not realized that Mr. Karsh would take color photographs in addition to his usual black-and-white photographs. Thinking that his tie was an unsuitable color for his portrait, Senator Kennedy requested of Mr. Karsh, “Let me have yours.” When the color photographs were taken, Senator Kennedy was wearing Mr. Karsh’s tie.

• The caddies at the Royal and Ancient Golf Club at St. Andrews in Scotland sometimes grew close to the golfers, and often the golfers passed on clothing they didn’t want anymore to their caddies. Once, a caddy boasted that he knew former Prime Minister Mr. Balfour very well. Other people disbelieved this, so the caddy said, “I should know him well, and I do—I’m wearing a pair of his breeks [trousers].”

• In the early 1930s, Mahatma Gandhi had tea with King George V of England. Mr. Gandhi wore his regular skimpy clothing made from handwoven cotton, shocking a reporter who asked if he had been wearing enough clothing. Smiling, Mr. Gandhi replied, “The King was wearing enough for both of us.”

Crime

• Frederick the Great once visited a prison where prisoner after prisoner insisted that he was innocent and that a great miscarriage of justice had occurred at his trial. However, one prisoner kept quiet. Noticing this, Frederick the Great asked, “I suppose you’re innocent, too?” “No, Your Majesty,” replied the prisoner. “I’m guilty and I deserve my punishment.” Hearing this, Frederick the Great shouted for the jailor, then ordered, “Release this man before he corrupts all these fine innocent people in here.”

• In 1928, gangster Titanic Thompson cheated fellow gangster Arnold Rothstein in a rigged card game in New York. After the game was over, Mr. Rothstein owed Mr. Thompson $300,000. Mr. Rothstein knew that he had been cheated, so he refused to pay up. The predictable result was that Mr. Rothstein got shot. The police talked to Mr. Rothstein while he was on his deathbed, but he refused to tell them who had shot him, telling them instead, “My Mudder did it.”

• The FBI watched Madeline Gilford, the wife of actor Jack Gilford, during the blacklist years of the Joe McCarthy era. Walking in the park, and very pregnant, she saw Alger Hiss, who had just been released from prison. To give the FBI agents a shock, she walked up to Mr. Hiss and gave him a kiss. Years later, Mr. Hiss said that the very nicest thing that had happened to him on the day he was released from prison was that a pregnant woman had given him a kiss.

• After John Hinckley attempted to assassinate President Ronald Reagan in an insane attempt to impress actress Jodie Foster, a friend of filmmaker John Waters put this bumper sticker on his car: “I Did It for Jodie.” Within a week, he received three speeding tickets. After receiving the third ticket, he protested his innocence, but the police officer told him, “With that bumper sticker, you’re always speeding in my book.”

• The creators behind the controversial video game Grand Theft Auto 4 have a sly sense of humor. In the game, the player can run around beating up and murdering police officers and prostitutes, but if the player chooses to drink and drive, a screen pops up advising the player not to do that and to take a taxi instead. If the player chooses to drive drunk anyway, immediately they are pulled over by the police.

Critics

• Winston Churchill was a Tory, but on occasion, he put down even a fellow Tory. When Sir William Joynson-Hicks was speaking to the Commons in the 1920s, he noticed Mr. Churchill vigorously shaking his head. Sir William said, “I see that my right honourable friend is shaking his head. I wish to remind him that I am only expressing my own opinion.” Mr. Churchill replied, “And I wish to remind the speaker that I am only shaking my own head.”

• Modern dance pioneer Martha Graham came in for her share of criticism during her career. One critic called her dancers “Graham Crackers,” and another critic, noting that she often created dances that stressed linear and geometric shapes, suggested that if she ever got pregnant, she would give birth to a cube.

Death

• Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas is the Supreme Court ruling that struck down segregation by establishing that “separate” is inherently unequal. If not for this ruling, segregation would most likely still be legal in the U.S. Although the ruling was unanimous in striking down segregation, it possibly could have gone the other way. United States Supreme Court Chief Justice Fred M. Vinson was a conservative Kentuckian whom civil rights lawyer Thurgood Marshall blamed for holding up action on the case. Mr. Marshall worried about Chief Justice Vinson, feeling that he would uphold segregation and convince the other justices to vote against integrating public schools. However, fortunately for civil rights, Chief Justice Vinson told his wife that he had a stomachache, then a short time afterward he died of a heart attack. This allowed Earl Warren to become Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, and he turned out to be an effective advocate for civil rights. The Supreme Court upheld the right of seven-year-old Linda Brown, an African American, to go to a White school a few blocks from her house instead of being forced to travel by bus to a school for African-American children.

• British fantasy author Terry Pratchett started out as a journalist, but realized quickly that he wanted to move on from that occupation, although it is good training for writers. He says, “I was sick of asking: ‘How did you feel, Mrs. Smith, when your son was knifed to death by muggers?’” He jokes, “What is she going to say? ‘Oh, I never liked him much?’” One day when he was a trainee reporter he wrote an article about a collision between a car and a minibus. Six children had been killed, and he was thinking, “This is a great story. It’s going on page one.” However, another trainee reporter came to work late because he had been consoling his mother after their sister had not returned home. Mr. Pratchett looked at his notebook, and he saw the name of the sister—she was one of the six children who had died in the collision. He says, “I ringed the name and handed my notebook to the news editor and went to the toilet. I went into a cubicle and locked the door. And then I laughed—I laughed, but I wanted to scream. There was a lot of that sort of thing, and ultimately I didn’t want to do it.”

• Sometimes, the rescuers of Jews in the Holocaust had to kill Nazi sympathizers. Marion Pritchard, a Dutch student, was determined to resist the Nazis by hiding and helping Jews. She helped a Jewish father and his three small children find a house to hide in. In times of danger, these Jews would hide in a secret compartment under the floor. One day, four Germans and a Dutch policeman who supported the Nazis searched the house but found nothing; however, from experience they knew that if they would pretend to leave but quickly come back they would often find Jews who had come out of hiding. This time, the Dutch policeman came back alone and found the children. Ms. Pritchard had a small revolver, and she used it. She disposed of the body of the Dutch policeman with the help of the undertaker, who placed the body in a coffin with another, legitimate body of a local man. Ms. Pritchard says, “I hope that the dead man’s family would have approved.”

• Being an investigative photographer can lead to mental anguish that is severe enough to make the photographer commit suicide. Kevin Carter was one of the members of the Bang Bang Club of South African photojournalists, and he and the other members did much to expose apartheid and its brutality, as well as other evils. In Sudan, he took a photograph of a girl who looked as if she were about to starve to death. The photograph won a Pulitzer Prize, but Mr. Carter felt guilty because he had not helped the girl. People kept asking him what had happened to the girl, and he did not know what had happened to the girl. Eventually, he committed suicide. Of course, as an investigative journalist, he had seen many bad things. His suicide note said in part, “I am haunted by the vivid memories of killings and corpses and anger and pain, of starving or wounded children, of trigger-happy madmen, often police, of killer executioners....”