“You don’t change the course of history by turning the faces of portraits to the wall.”
~Jawaharlal Nehru

79 – Yes, 79. Now this is really old news! After centuries of dormancy, Mount Vesuvius erupted in southern Italy, devastating the prosperous Roman cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum and killing thousands. The cities, buried under a thick layer of volcanic material and mud, but in the 18th century, both cities were rediscovered and excavated, providing an unprecedented archaeological record of the everyday life of an ancient civilization, startlingly preserved in sudden death.

1814 – At the White House, First Lady Dolley Madison saved an iconic symbol of American pride during the war of 1812 … or so she thought.
With Madison meeting with his generals on the battlefield, Mrs. Madison noticed British troops gathering in the distance, she decided to abandon the couple’s personal belongings and save the full-length portrait of former president and national icon George Washington from desecration by vengeful British soldiers.
Since the painting was screwed to the wall she ordered the frame to be broken and the canvas pulled out and rolled up. Two unidentified “gentlemen from New York” hustled it away for safe-keeping. (Unbeknownst to Dolley, the portrait was actually a copy of Gilbert Stuart’s original). The task complete, Mrs. Madison left the White House.
The British captured the White House that evening, eventually setting fire to it (along with the Capitol). After the repair of the White House from the fire damage, Washington’s portrait returned to the executive mansion (although James and Dolley never did). It is the only item currently on display (in the East Room) that was present when the White House opened in 1800.
Let me explain the arrow in the photo above. The original, called the “Lansdowne Portrait,” was named for the Marquise of Lansdowne, who, ironically, was the former British prime minister and the first owner of the portrait. The painting of the celebrity president was wildly popular, so Stuart painted several reproductions, one of which was bought by the U.S. government, and one of them was in the White House.
Below the table in the painting are a few books: General Orders, American Revolution, and The Constitution and Laws of the United Sates. Misspelling “the United States” was Stuart’s way of differentiating the copies of the portrait, which today hang in locations like the Old State House in Hartford, Connecticut and the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts Museum.
You can see the original Lansdowne Portrait – with a properly spelled “United States” on the book binding for the spelling-anxious – at the Smithsonian Museum’s National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C.

1873 – William Henry Jackson became the first person to photograph Colorado’s elusive Mount of the Holy Cross, providing reliable proof of its existence. Rumors had abounded for years that a natural cross of snow was hidden high in the rugged mountains of Colorado. Many claimed to have seen the cross, but others were unable to find it.
Jackson led a small party to the supposed site in north central Colorado. After thousands of years of erosion, two deep ravines had formed in the steep rocky face of a mountain peak. Intersecting at a 90-degree angle, the ravines sheltered the winter snow from the sun well after the rest of the mountain snow had melted away.
Jackson took his photos of the cross just as the first rays of the sun angled low across the crevassed face, emphasizing the lines of the cross. The resulting photo became one of Jackson’s most popular and famous images, and it ended any further doubts about the existence of the Mount of the Holy Cross.

1954 – Congress passed the Communist Control Act in response to the growing anticommunist hysteria in the United States. Although Senator Joseph McCarthy, the most famous of the “red hunters” in America, had been disgraced earlier in the summer when he tried to prove that communists were in the U.S. Army, most Americans still believed that communists were at work in their country.
The U.S. government used legislation such as the Communist Control Act to harass Communist Party members. More ominously, the government also used such acts to investigate and harass numerous other organizations that were deemed to have communist “leanings”. These included the American Civil Liberties Union, labor unions, and the NAACP. By the mid-to-late 1960s, however, the Red Scare had run its course and a more liberal Supreme Court began to chip away at the immense tangle of anticommunist legislation that had been passed during the 1940s and 1950s.
Today, the Communist Party of the United States continues to exist and regularly runs candidates for local, state, and national elections.

1956 – Elvis Presley recorded Love Me Tender. If you look closely at the record label, you’ll see the names of E. Presley and V. Matson (Vera) listed as co-writers of the song, but neither one of them wrote the words or the music.
The real songwriter was Ken Darby (Vera’s husband). Her name was listed as a co-writer because Parker thought it would “look better to have a female name on such a romantic song instead of two men.”
Parker made sure that Elvis was listed as co-writer on many of the early songs he recorded for RCA, although to his credit, Elvis never said he had co-written any of these songs. Parker’s shameful practice denied the full royalties to the songwriters who did write the songs.

1981 – John Lennon’s murderer was sentenced in New York to 20 years to life in prison. The killer’s requests for parole have all been denied and he continues to serve time at New York’s Attica State Prison.
I will never type the killer’s name. He already has too much notoriety. I won’t show the photo of John signing an album cover for him on that fateful day because the insect is in the frame. I have, instead, posted a rarely seen photo taken just seconds after John signed the cover.
It’s a photo of Lennon looking his soon-to-be killer in the eyes.

1989 – As punishment for betting on baseball, Cincinnati Reds manager Pete Rose accepted a settlement that included a lifetime ban from the game. Part of that settlement stated: Peter Edward Rose acknowledges that the Commissioner (Bart Giamatti) has a factual basis to impose the penalty provided herein, and hereby accepts the penalty imposed on him by the Commissioner.
A heated debate continues to rage as to whether Rose, who remains the game’s all-time hits leader, should be given a second chance.
For the record, I say NO. Pete signed the agreement and Lifetime means Lifetime.

1992 – Hurricane Andrew made landfall just south of Miami as a Category 5 hurricane. Several hours later, the hurricane emerged over the Gulf of Mexico at Category 4 strength, with the Gulf Coast of the United States in its projected path. After weakening slightly, Andrew moved ashore near Morgan City, Louisiana, as low-end Category 3 storm. The effects of land caused the small hurricane to rapidly lose its intensity, and it diminished to a depression by August 27 while crossing Mississippi.
The next day, Andrew merged with a frontal system over the southern Appalachian Mountains. Rainfall continued along the path of Andrew’s remnants through the Mid-Atlantic and Ohio Valley, with precipitation measured as far north as Upstate New York.
Overall, Hurricane Andrew caused $26.5 billion (in 1992 dollars) in damages and claimed 65 lives.

2007 – Hours after Atlanta Falcons quarterback Michael Vick pleaded guilty to federal charges in the Bad Newz Kennels dog fighting investigation, the NFL suspended him indefinitely without pay for violating its player conduct policy.
On December 10, Vick appeared in U.S. District Court in Richmond, VA for sentencing. Judge Henry Hudson said he was “convinced that it was not a momentary lack of judgment” on Vick’s part, and that Vick was a “full partner” in the dog fighting ring, and Vick was sentenced to serve 23 months in federal prison

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