Congress passed the legislation proclaiming the first Sunday
after Labor Day as National Grandparents’ Day in the U.S.
and, on August 3, 1978, then-President Jimmy Carter (below)
signed the proclamation.
The flower of the U.S. National Grandparents Day
is the forget-me-not which blooms in the spring.
The seasonal flowers are given in appreciation to
grandparents on this day.
In a controversial executive action, President Gerald Ford
pardoned his disgraced predecessor Richard M. Nixon for
any crimes he may have committed or participated in while
in office. Ford later defended this action before the House
Judiciary Committee, explaining that he wanted to end the
national divisions created by the Watergate scandal.
Richard Milhous Nixon (January 9, 1913 – April 22, 1994)
On September 6, 1901, President William McKinley was shaking
hands at the Pan-American Exhibition in Buffalo, New York,
when a 28-year-old anarchist named Leon Czolgosz approached
him and fired two shots into his chest. The president rose slightly
on his toes before collapsing forward, saying “be careful how you
tell my wife.”
Czolgosz moved over the president with the intent of firing a third
shot, but was wrestled to the ground by McKinley’s bodyguards. McKinley, still conscious, told the guards not to hurt his assailant.
Other presidential attendants rushed McKinley to the hospital
where they found two bullet wounds: one bullet had superficially punctured his sternum and the other had dangerously entered
his abdomen. He was rushed into surgery and seemed to be on
the mend by September 12.
Later that day, however, the president’s condition worsened
rapidly and, on September 14, McKinley died from gangrene
that had gone undetected in the internal wound. Vice President
Theodore Roosevelt was immediately sworn in as president.
Czologz was executed in the electric chair (a fairly new means
of execution at the time) at New York’s Auburn Prison on Oct.
29th, 1901, just 54 days after he shot the president.
Mug Shot of President William McKinley’s assassin,
Leon Czologz.
Theodore Roosevelt Jr. (October 27, 1858 – January 6, 1919)
ROSS SIMPSON
On September 3, 1939, in response to Hitler’s invasion of Poland,
Britain and France, both allies of the overrun nation declare war
on Germany.
The first casualty of that declaration was not German—but the
British ocean liner Athenia, which was sunk by a German U-30
submarine that had assumed the liner was armed and belligerent.
There were more than 1,100 passengers on board, 112 of whom
lost their lives. Of those, 28 were Americans, but President
Roosevelt was unfazed by the tragedy, declaring that no one
was to “thoughtlessly or falsely talk of America sending its
armies to European fields.” The United States would remain
neutral.
Franklin Delano Roosevelt
(January 30, 1882 – April 12, 1945)
British ocean liner SS Athenia was sunk when a torpedo
from the German submarine U-30 sank her in the Western Approaches.
