Sunday, May 30, 2010

All The Presidents

There have been 44 presidents in the history of the our country.  Can you name them?  Before you read any more of this post get a piece of paper and a pencil and see how many you can name.  You will be surprised at how many you really know.  I could actually name 20 of them and no clue I knew more then the eight that had served in my lifetime plus a few more famous ones. 

Now here are the 44 presidents of the United States of America. 

18th Century

1. George Washington       2. John Adams

19th Century

3. Thomas Jefferson        15. James Buchanan

4. James Madison            16. Abraham Lincoln

5. James Monroe             17. Andrew Johnson

6. John Quincy Adams       18. Ulysses S. Grant

7. Andrew Jackson            19. Rutherford B. Hayes

8. Martin Van Buren           20. James Garfield

9. William Henry Harrison  21. Chester A. Arthur

10. John Tyler                   22. Grover Cleveland

11. James K. Polk             23. Benjamin Harrison

12. Zachary Taylor            24. Grover Cleveland

13. Millard Fillmore           25. William McKinley

14. Franklin Pierce         

20th Century

26. Theodore Roosevelt     35. John F. Kennedy

27. William Howard Taft    36. Lyndon B. Johnson

28. Woodrow Wilson          37. Richard M. Nixon

29. Warren G. Harding       38. Gerald R. Ford

30. Calvin Coolidge            39. James Carter

31. Herbert Hoover            40. Ronald Reagan

32. Franklin D. Roosevelt    41. George H. W. Bush

33. Harry S. Truman           42. William J. Clinton

34. Dwight D. Eisenhower

21st Century

43. George W. Bush            44. Barack Obama

 

Now that that you named all the presidents see how many states and capitals you can name.  I did way better on the states then the capitals.  I know you can do better then me.

Alabama - Montgomery
Alaska - Juneau
Arizona - Phoenix
Arkansas - Little Rock
California - Sacramento
Colorado - Denver
Connecticut - Hartford
Delaware - Dover
Florida - Tallahassee
Georgia - Atlanta
Hawaii - Honolulu
Idaho - Boise
Illinois - Springfield
Indiana - Indianapolis
Iowa - Des Moines
Kansas - Topeka
Kentucky - Frankfort
Louisiana - Baton Rouge
Maine - Augusta
Maryland - Annapolis
Massachusetts - Boston
Michigan - Lansing
Minnesota - St. Paul
Mississippi - Jackson
Missouri - Jefferson City
Montana - Helena
Nebraska - Lincoln
Nevada - Carson City
New Hampshire - Concord
New Jersey - Trenton
New Mexico - Santa Fe
New York - Albany
North Carolina - Raleigh
North Dakota - Bismarck
Ohio - Columbus
Oklahoma - Oklahoma City
Oregon - SalemPennsylvania - Harrisburg
Rhode Island - Providence
South Carolina - Columbia
South Dakota - Pierre
Tennessee - Nashville
Texas - Austin
Utah - Salt Lake City
Vermont - Montpelier
Virginia - Richmond
Washington - Olympia
West Virginia - Charleston
Wisconsin - Madison
Wyoming - Cheyenne

Wednesday, May 19, 2010

Don’t Copyright a Secret!

I find the KKK to be so despicable.  I do not understand how you can hate someone just because they have a different skin tone then you.  But there are those that do.  I however found this little bit on information to funny.  It just shows how dumb people can be.

 

Joseph Simmons, the Imperial Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, issued the following “Imperial Decree” on June 26, 1916.  From his “Aulic in the Imperial Palace in the Imperial City of Atlanta”:  “The Kloran is the book of the Invisible Empire and it is therefore a sacred book with our citizens, and its contents must be rigidly safeguarded.  The book or any part of it must not be kept or carried where any person of the ‘alien’ world may chance to become acquainted with its sacred contents as such.  In warning: A penalty sufficient will speedily be enforced for disregarding the decree in  profanation of the Kloran.”

 

Simmons decided six months later that a book as important as the Kloran should be officially recognized.  He applied to Washington for a copyright.  Like any author, he forwarded one dollar and two copies of the book to the Register of Copyrights.  From that time forward The Book of the Invisible Empire was available to anyone who asked for it at the Library of Congress.

Tuesday, May 18, 2010

A Few Facts About George Washington

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  • Washington’s family motto was “Exitus acta probat” (the end justifies the means.
  • Introduced the jackass to America.
  • Provided in his will for the emancipation of his slaves upon the death of Martha, his wife.  Washington was the only member of the Virginia dynasty to free all his slaves.
  • Washington was one of the richest men in America.  At his death his holdings were worth about half a million dollars and included: 33,000 acres of land in Virginia, , Kentucky, Maryland, New York, Pennsylvania, Washington, D.C., and the Northwest Territory; $25,000 worth of stocks; 640 sheep; 329 cows, 42 mules; and 20 workhorses.

There are many things in the country named after George Washington.  Below is  just a partial list of things I could find.

1 state

7 mountains

8 streams

9 colleges

10 lakes

33 counties

121 towns and villages

Monday, May 17, 2010

Meds in the Victorian Era!

 

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Introduced into drugstores across the country in 1898 by the Bayer pharmaceutical firm came a new medication for bad coughs.  Heroin!  Pushing hard drugs in the American market was common place.  With no government regulation,  easy accessibility, and medical ignorance, drug abuse was a major social problem. 

 

Available through the mail or at the local drugstore you could find Cocaine tablets for throat and nerves, baby syrups spiked with morphine, opium for newborns, cocaine drops for toothaches (tauted to take the pain away and make children happy.) and many more. 

 

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Alcohol was the base of most liquid medications.  Experts have  estimated that nineteenth-century Americans imbibed more spirits from patent medicine than from bottled liquor.  It  wasn’t until 1909, when the Narcotics Drug Act was enacted, that the government began to regulate the quality of  of medications.

 

Drug ads were as numerous as the products they promoted.  The pages, of Life, Harper’s, the Sears Catalog, and the New York Times were filled with a virtual onslaught of drug touting notices.  Congressman William Everett of Massachusetts told the story of one church congregation that found the advertising barrage to be especially trying.  Needing new hymnals and no money to buy them, the church contacted a patent-medicine manufacturer who agreed to defray a large percentage of the hymnal cost in return for advertising space in the new books.  On December 24th the new books arrived. Christmas Day the congregation filled the church sanctuary only to find in their hymnals:

Hark! The herald angels sing

Beechan’s pills are just the thing.

Peace on earth and mercy mild

Two for man and one for child.

Sources: Otto L. Bettmann, The Good Old Days: They were Terrible ( New York: Random House, 1974), p.152.

Edward Boykin, ed., The Wit and Wisdom of Congress ( New York: Funk & Wagnalls, 1961), p. 376.