Almanac chapter 14: Politics

                                     Chapter 14

                                      POLITICS

              Here is some trivia from the world of politics:

              As  everyone knows, George Washington was the first President
         of the United States. Wrong! The first was John Hanson of Maryland
         who served for one year before George Washington.

              George Washington grew marijuana on his plantation.   In  his
         time,  pot  was  a  legal  crop.  It was not used for smoking, but
         instead the stalks of the plant were used to  make  ropes,  canvas
         and paper.
              If  you have a book in your house older than 1883, there is a
         75% chance it is made out of marijuana. So far, there has not  yet
         been  discovered  a better natural material for ropes and nautical
         material in terms of strength and weather resistance.  It can also
         be used as a good fiber in clothing.  Properly utilized, marijuana
         stalks, called hemp in this application, yield fibers up to twenty
         feet long and they could be made  into  all  sorts  of  industrial
         materials ranging from paper to two-by-fours.
              Smoking  pot did not become particularly fashionable until it
         was made illegal starting around 1938.  In 1971 it was listed as a
         narcotic that cannot even be legally prescribed by any doctor  who
         might  find  it  beneficial  to patients.  Then, smoking marijuana
         suddenly became very fashionable among young  people  who  felt  a
         need  to test the bounds of society.  Smoking pot is becoming less
         interesting even to those people today who need  to  do  something
         "naughty"  because  we  are  finding  out  that  it does have long
         lasting negative effects on our bodies.
              Some day soon, people who are hooked on pot will seem  stupid
         to everyone else.  But it will make a comeback, not as a drug, but
         as  a  cash  crop that will save the worlds old-growth forests and
         will even make a good substitute for gasoline.  In Brazil over one
         million cars and trucks are running on methanol, made  from  corn.
         Pot yields up to forty times more methanol than corn.

              President  James  Garfield  could  do  a neat trick: He could
         write Greek with one hand while at the  same  time  writing  Latin
         with his other hand.

              President  Grover  Cleveland,  before  he  was the president,
         escaped the military draft by hiring  someone  else  to  take  his
         place.

              You do not put a period after the S in Harry S Truman's name.
         This   is  because  his  middle  name  was  S,  this  was  not  an
         abbreviation.

              Eugene Debs was  a  candidate  who  ran  for  the  office  of
         President  of the United States from within jail. At least one out
         of every fifty elegible voters voted for him.

              The President of the United States gets 20,000 letters a day.
         Most of the corespondents probably expect a personal reply. If the
         President took only two minutes to answer each  letter,  he  would
         have to work 82 days to answer a single day's letters.

              In 1957, a senator, Strom Thurmond, made a speech that lasted
         24 hours, 19 minutes.

              When  Ripley's  Believe  it  or  Not  reported  that the Star
         Spangled Banner (which was  originally  called  "Defense  of  Fort
         McHenry")  was  written  to the music of a "rousing tavern ballad"
         from a popular songbook, 5  million  Americans  wrote  letters  to
         "Washington."

              Although he was not a skeleton  in  the  closet  of  America,
         David  Rice  Atchison was a president who served for only one day.
         He was leader of the Senate on  a  Sunday  when  James  Polk,  the
         President  of the United States' term ended.  There was a law that
         the new President, Vice-president Zachary  Taylor,  could  not  be
         sworn  in  on  a  Sunday, so that left Mr.  Atchison officially in
         charge of the country.  He  neglected  to  do  any  president-like
         things  that  day  because  he never knew that he was the boss. He
         didn't find out until a long time after it was over.

              One snowy night in 1967 George and Barbara  Bush  arrived  in
         Washington,  D.C.   The  moving  van arrived near midnight and the
         movers unloaded the bedding first, but were  having  trouble  with
         the  snow storm. The Bushes told the movers to take it easy - quit
         until morning - and invited them in to spend the night.

              The record for shaking hands may belong to Theodore Roosevelt
         who shook the hands of 8,513 people in one day, January 1, 1907.

              The government owns 34 percent of all the land in America.

              Until the work of Richard Nixon (who  despite  his  screw-ups
         was a great president) which opened relations with Mainland China,
         it was illegal for U.S.  citizens to collect Chinese stamps.

              Ex-U.S.   President  Gerald Ford had his name changed when he
         was younger. He was born Leslie King, Jr.

              The United States imports 22 metal ores that are  crucial  to
         self-sufficiency  such  as chrome, manganese, cobalt and platinum.
         If we were involved in a war and our supply of  these  metals  was
         cut  off,  our  increasingly high-tech industry would be unable to
         make the things we are used to ranging from televisions  to  cars.
         Scientists are working to find synthetic replacement materials.

              In  1989  President  George  Bush  shook  the hands of 25,000
         people, or about one out of every 10,000  Americans.  He  traveled
         well over one-tenth of a million miles, more than enough to circle
         the globe five times, and he spoke 3 million words to Americans.