SANDY KOZEL

On January 4, 1965, in his State of the Union address, President Lyndon
Baines Johnson lays out for Congress a laundry list of legislation needed
to achieve his plan for a Great Society. On the heels of John F. Kennedy’s
tragic death, Americans had elected Johnson, his vice president, to the
presidency by the largest popular vote in the nation’s history. Johnson
used this mandate to push for improvements he believed would better
Americans’ quality of life.

Following Johnson’s lead, Congress enacted sweeping legislation in the
areas of civil rights, health care, education and the environment. The 1965
State of the Union address heralded the creation of Medicare/Medicaid,
Head Start, the Voting Rights Act, the Civil Rights Act, the Department of
Housing and Urban Development and the White House Conference on
Natural Beauty. Johnson also signed the National Foundation of the Arts
and Humanities Act, out of which emerged the National Endowment for
the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities.

TIM MAGUIRE

Jodie Foster in "Courtship of Eddie’s Father”, 1969.

Alicia Christian "Jodie" Foster is 57 today.

Actress, director, and producer Jodie Foster has received
two Academy Awards, three British Academy Film Awards,
two Golden Globe Awards, and the Cecil B. DeMille Award
along with a nomination for a Primetime Emmy Award for
her work as a director.

Foster began her professional career as a child model when
she was three years old, and she made her acting debut in
1968 in the television sitcom Mayberry R.F.D. In the late
1960s and early 1970s (below).

Jodie Foster in Taxi Driver (1976).

    
Jodie Foster and Anthony Hopkins in
The Silence of the Lambs (1991).

October 14, 1991

President John F. Kennedy addresses the United Nations General Assembly in New York on Sept. 20, 1963. Kennedy spoke for what
would be his last address to that body.

An optimistic and upbeat President John F. Kennedy suggests that the
Soviet Union and the United States cooperate on a mission to mount an
expedition to the moon. The proposal caught both the Soviets and many
Americans off guard.

In 1961, shortly after his election as president, John F. Kennedy announced
that he was determined to win the “space race” with the Soviets. Since 1957,
when the Soviet Union sent a small satellite–Sputnik–into orbit around the
earth, Russian and and American scientists had been competing to see who
could make the next breakthrough in space travel.

President Kennedy closed his speech by urging, “Let us do the big things together.”

TIM MAGUIRE

President Abraham Lincoln delivered his Gettysburg Address as he dedicated a national cemetery at the site of the Civil War battlefield
in Pennsylvania on this day in 1863.

On this day in 1959, Ford Motor Co. announced it was ending the production of the unpopular Edsel. Ford began selling the ill-
fated line of cars in 1957.

Alicia Christian "Jodie" Foster is 56 years young today.

Foster first gained fame for her role as a teenage prostitute in the 1976
Martin  Scorsese film Taxi Driver. She won Academy Awards for Best
Actress for her performances in The Accused (1988) and Silence of the
Lambs (1991) and also had starring roles in Contact (1985), Anna and
the King (1999), and Panic Room (2002).

Jodie Foster in Jonathan Demme’s 1991 masterpiece The Silence
of the Lambs.