Great American Stories: Notable Anniversaries
120 years ago today, while visiting the Minnesota State Fair, that an earlier American vice president who later became president uttered perhaps his most famous line -- even if it wasn't mentioned contemporaneously in the local press. Tweet
Twenty-six years ago today, the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame opened its doors in Cleveland. On this date in 1944, a U.S. Navy torpedo bomber was shot down in the Pacific, killing the radioman and the gunner, but sparing the 20-year-old pilot, who was rescued by a Navy submarine. His name, of course, was George H.W. Bush.
Buy it on:
And it was 120 years ago today, while visiting the Minnesota State Fair, that an earlier American vice president who later became president uttered perhaps his most famous line — even if it wasn’t mentioned contemporaneously in the local press.
“A good many of you are probably acquainted with the old proverb: ‘Speak softly and carry a big stick — you will go far,'” Theodore Roosevelt said that day. “If a man continually blusters, if he lacks civility, a big stick will not save him from trouble; and neither will speaking softly avail, if back of the softness there does not lie strength, power. … So it is with the nation.”
Wise words, but not ones always followed by subsequent U.S. commanders-in-chief.
Carl M. Cannon is the Washington bureau chief for RealClearPolitics. Reach him on Twitter @CarlCannon.
Buy it on:
