COMILLE BOHANNON

Film director Martin Charles Scorsese is 80 years old today.

Winning one of the closest elections in U.S. history, Republican challenger Richard Nixon defeated Vice President Hubert
Humphrey November 5, 1968. Because of the strong showing
of third-party candidate George Wallace, neither Nixon nor
Humphrey received more than 50 percent of the popular vote;
Nixon beat Humphrey by less than 500,000 votes. 

Nixon campaigned on a platform designed to reach the “silent
majority” of middle class and working class Americans. He
promised to “bring us together again,” and many Americans,
weary after years of antiwar and civil rights protests, were
happy to hear of peace returning to their streets. Foreign
policy was also a major factor in the election.

In one of the most crushing victories in the history of U.S.
presidential elections, incumbent Lyndon Baines Johnson
defeated Republican challenger Barry Goldwater, Sr.

With over 60 percent of the popular vote, Johnson turned
back the  conservative senator from Arizona to secure his
first full term in office after succeeding to the presidency
after the assassination of John F. Kennedy in November
1963.  

During the 1964 campaign, Goldwater was decidedly critical
of Johnson’s liberal domestic agenda, railing against welfare
programs and defending his own decision to vote against the
Civil Rights Act passed by Congress earlier that year.

However, some of the most dramatic differences between the
two candidates appeared over the issue of Cold War foreign
policy. 

Topps 1964 Johnson VS. Goldwater 5-Cent Display Box.

In one of the greatest upsets in presidential election history,
Democratic incumbent Harry S. Truman defeats his Republican challenger, Governor Thomas E. Dewey of New York, by just
over two million popular votes. In the days preceding the vote,
political analysts and polls were so behind Dewey that on
election night, long before all the votes were counted, the
Chicago Tribune published an early edition with the banner
headline “DEWEY DEFEATS TRUMAN (above).”

Rare Truman Defeats Dewey Newspaper.

The Statue of Liberty, a gift of friendship from the people of
France to the people of the United States,was dedicated in
New York Harbor by President Grover Cleveland (above).

Originally known as “Liberty Enlightening the World,” the
statue was proposed by the French historian Edouard de
Laboulaye to commemorate the Franco-American alliance
during the American Revolution.

Designed by French sculptor Frederic-Auguste Bartholdi,
the 151-foot statue was designed by Eugene-Emmanuel
Viollet-le-Duc and Alexandre-Gustave Eiffel, the latter
famous for his design of the Eiffel Tower in Paris.

In May 1884, the statue was completed in France, and three
months later the cornerstone for its pedestal was laid in New
York Harbor. In June 1885, the dismantled Statue of Liberty
arrived in the New World, enclosed in more than 200 packing
cases.

Stephen Grover Cleveland
(March 18, 1837 – June 24, 1908)