Dwight Eisenhower’s grandson David, for whom Camp David is named, is married to Richard Nixon’s daughter Julie. The two met at the Republican National Convention in 1956, when the elder Eisenhower was running for President (with Richard Nixon as the VP).

The couple has three children in their late teens/early 20′s. (Another legacy presidential candidate in the future? I sure hope so.)

David Eisenhower also has another claim to fame- he’s the Senator’s Son in the CCR Song Fortunate Son.

There was a rumor that Al Gore was the infamous senator’s son, but John Fogerty himself confirms he had Eisenhower in mind when he wrote the lyrics. I will note that both Al Gore and David Eisenhower enlisted and served in the Armed Forces during Vietnam. Gore in the Army, and Eisenhower in the Naval Reserve.

Fogerty himself was drafted and served stateside in an reserve unit.

Source: Snopes

President Bush is spending his last Thanksgiving as President quietly at Camp David. I must have heard the name “Camp David” several hundred times in my life, but I never knew what it really was. So here’s the scoop:

Camp David is the official retreat for Presidents of the United States. It’s a government facility, and it comes with all the bells and whistles you’d expect from an official facility for the President. It is believed to be one of the most secure locations in the world.

The US Navy runs Camp David and operations are overseen by a Naval Commander. Security is provided by the Marines.

The camp was built during the Great Depression and is a product of the WPA (Works Progress Administration). It was originally planned as a camp for use by federal employees. FDR was the first President to use it as an official getaway, and it has been used by every President since then.

FDR originally named the camp Shangri-La, but Dwight Eisenhower renamed it Camp David to honor his grandson.

The camp is located about 60 miles north of Washington, in a National Park in Maryland.

Source: wiki and this poorly written article

As Macy’s makes sure to point out in advertisements every year, the Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade is a time honored American tradition. But before the department store co-opted and commercialized the annual parade, New Yorkers were used to a different type of parade on Thanksgiving- The Ragamuffin Parade.

In a Ragamuffin parade, local youths dress up as ragamuffins, meaning they dress in oversized ratty clothes and dirty their faces. (Sometimes they would dress up in elaborate costumes instead.) They would then proceed to either march, parade style, through the town, or they would go door to door and beg for apples or other treats chanting “Anything for Thanksgiving?”

It’s possible that the actual Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade grew from one of these Ragamuffin Parades.

Some towns (like Hoboken New Jersey) still hold Ragamuffin Parades, but they’ve mostly been replaced by Halloween trick-or-treating and/or other parades. A Google search for Ragamuffin Parade returns over 25,000 results.

Source: History Channel, but you can read more here, here, and here, though the third link is mind-numbingly boring.

Thanksgiving is now always the fourth Thursday in November. Congress made it so in 1941.

They felt the need to standardize after FDR tried to move the holiday (at the urging of the business lobby) back a week to make the Christmas shopping season longer. The citizens overwhelmingly rejected the idea, but the states were split. The 40′s equivalent of Blue States moved the holiday as FDR suggested, but the Red States used the issue as another example of FDR’s tyranny (like his scheme to change the number of justices on the Supreme Court) and kept the holiday where it had traditionally been.

Having two Thanksgivings was obviously contradictory to the spirit of the holiday, and eventually FDR gave in. So we’ve been rocking the 4th Thursday in November ever since.

So why was it the 4th Thursday anyway?

No reason, really. Mostly just because it always had been. The idea of a holiday to give thanks goes back a long way in the US. The Episcopal church traditionally picked a Thursday in November for their declarations, and early Governors kind of went with this or another day close by.

George Washington declared the last Thursday in November the first national Thanksgiving Day after we became a country, but the Continental Congress actually declared the first national holiday about 7 years earlier. GW issued only 2 Thanksgiving proclamations, and John Adams issued 2. Jefferson didn’t issue any. It didn’t become an annual event until after Lincoln.

So, there’s no real reason except for tradition. But don’t you dare try to move it, you tyrant!

Source: This article and wiki

Somebody else owns the gmail trademark in Germany. And he’s not selling. So they offer GoogleMail.com as a German alternative.

Source: This article while searching for more about that baby name thing.

You can’t name your baby HuckleBerry either. Or Adolf. Or Matti. Or Calotta. Legolas and Nemo are OK.

All baby names in Germany are required to be approved by The Standesamt (Office of Vital Statistics). The names must clearly identify the gender of the child, and not endanger the kid’s well-being.

If the government rules your name illegal, you can appeal. But it costs money. So choose carefully.

Although the small-government conservative/libertarian (with a small ‘L’) in me would typically bristle at this type of government intervention, I am fully in support of a similar system in the US. Something needs to be done to stop the epidemic of bad baby names. I mean, I just met 5 year old Neo. Something must be done.

Source: History Channel (show on Judas) and This site

Being the son of a lifetime postal worker, no story about postal service inefficiency or lack of business sense could surprise me.

I’m never surprised when the price of a stamp goes up. They waste more money in a day than most of us will ever see in a lifetime.

But this fun fact was interesting: In the 1800′s the Postal Service tried to get congress to ban Christmas Cards. There were just too many, and they didn’t want to deliver them all.

On a semi-related note, the cashier at Wal-Mart the other day said that this year in lieu of cards he’s just going to stick $1 in each envelope with a note explaining that it’s his own little economic stimulus package. I like the spirit!

Source: History Channel

A new Country Glazed Ham store opened in our neighborhood, so The Wife^® and I headed over there for lunch the other day.

Judging by the triage center the Ham Store had set up, and the constant flow of people in and out during our half-hour stay, I am surmising that a good percentage of the population has Ham for Thanksgiving.

That, or they were using the coupon and just planned to freeze the Ham until Christmas. But that’s not the vibe I got. And yes, even though the store also sells turkey, the people were leaving with armloads of ham.

Ham for Thanksgiving? That’s downright Un-American.

Damn Yankees was a Rock “Super Group” in the early 90′s.

It featured Ted Nugent, Tommy Shaw from Styx, and Jack Blades from Night Ranger (Sister Christian, oh the time has come…).

Their one big hit was High Enough, where they are imploring you to take them high enough to fly over yesterday, for some reason. How a band that featured that enormous amount of talent could produce only one major hit is beyond me, but alas, that’s usually the fate of the Super Group (see Temple of the Dog for more proof).

Anyway, as you may or may not know, Ted Nugent loves guns and hates hippies and drug use (my kind of guy).

During the 90′s when he toured with Damn Yankees (which also coincided with Desert Storm), part of the act included him shooting a flaming arrow at an effigy of Saddam Hussein. Sure he was arrested a few times for the stunt, but the crowds loved it.

Read a first hand account here.

If, like me, you tend to keep a bazillion tabs open at once, and you frequently find yourself accidentally closing the tab that you need, then you’ll be interested in the Recently Closed Tabs function.

It’s under the History menu. It shows the last few tabs that you closed, so that you can quickly reopen the one you just cursed about closing.

Source: Accidental discovery while trying to make the link for the last post.