flickering pictures

Born on January 8, 1935, Elvis Presley would have been 74 years old today. Other notable events on this day:

• 1835: For the only time in U.S. history, the national debt is exactly zero dollars. Today’s debt is just over $10.6 trillion, or about $35,000 for every man, woman and child in the country.
• 1867: Black men receive the right to vote in Washington, D.C., 91 years after America’s independence, but most black men elsewhere in the U.S. must wait three more years. Native Americans don’t get to vote until 1924, four years after women.
• 1959: Fidel Castro victoriously enters Havana as the Cuban Revolution draws to a close, and Charles de Gaulle becomes the first president of France’s Fifth Republic. Coincidence? Yes.
• 1964: President Lyndon Johnson launches America’s “War on Poverty,” which ends up being about as successful as Bush’s “War on Terror” and Nixon’s “War on Drugs.” Forty-five years later, 37.3 million Americans live below the poverty line, 18% of children are poor, and 45.7 million Americans have no health insurance.
• 1992: President George H. W. Bush vomits into the lap of Japanese Prime Minister Kiichi Miyazawa, who kindly “cradled his head for some minutes until Mr. Bush was strong enough to get up on his own.” After the incident, the word “bushusuru” — literally, “to do a Bush” — entered the Japanese language as a slang term for tossing your cookies.
• 2008: Lt. Col. Steven L. Jordan, the only officer charged in the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal, has his conviction dismissed, exonerating him completely and avoiding more than 16 years in prison. At the time, he told the Washington Post: “I don’t know if any officer needed to be held accountable, but I obviously don’t believe it should have been me.”

• plug this post
  
  • Digg
  • del.icio.us
  • Facebook
  • NewsVine
  • Reddit
  • StumbleUpon
  • Technorati