I work right down the street from a university in one direction and an all-girls high school in another, plus there is a grade school attached to the parish where I work, so I have been surrounded by all types of graduates for the past couple of weeks.

One thing all of these students will experience – they will move on to another unknown situation, which will require growth, maturity, and an understanding that life never goes in reverse – just straight ahead – whether you are ready or not.

This weekend, my family had a graduation party for my niece and nephew, who graduated from high school last week, which doesn’t seem possible, but it is. Now they will spend the precious few weeks of summer celebrating – before freshman orientation begins in the Fall.

Mary and Timmy are fraternal twins who are absolutely top-notch kids.1 I’m extremely proud to be their uncle. I have played absolutely no role in how well they are growing up. My brother and sister-in-law deserve all the credit in the world. Mary and Timmy are kind, smart, hardworking young people – and I can’t wait to see how they continue their educational journey.

Since this is the last of the Dake family high school graduations and we are approaching the country’s 250th anniversary, I thought it would be interesting to see how the high school graduating class of 2026 compares to the one that graduated 50 years ago, when the bicentennial was celebrated.

Since both grads are going to state schools in Virginia (considered an excellent state for higher education), I took a look at three big categories when it comes to the college experience:

Cost:

In 1976, the average college tuition in a Virginia state school was around $525, and when you added room and board, the total came to just over $2,100.2 Timmy and Mary will spend just over $16,000 a year on tuition alone. If they want to live and eat while at school, the costs climb to $40,000 – and thank goodness they are in-state residents. Someone who gets into the University of Virginia but doesn’t live in the Commonwealth and still chooses to attend will end up paying over $56,000.3

One interesting note about the rising cost: Virginia used to cover 70% of in-state college costs. It now covers 58%. The state has generously made up the difference by allowing residents to continue living in Virginia.

Technology:

Once the kids hit the back-to-school sales and unload their stuff into their dorms, both will be armed with high-powered laptops, cell phones, and, more importantly, artificial intelligence. Virginia is among the top states for AI adoption among 18-24-year-olds, alongside New York, New Jersey, and California.4

The kids who graduated in the summer of 1976 entered the fall with typewriters and whiteout. They called their parents on pay phones, and if they sought intelligence, it was usually at the library, looking up card catalogs to find books with important information.

It goes without saying that Timmy and Mary’s classmates know a thing or two about the power of instant action and results. But then again, it’s hard to say you misplaced a term paper when your professor knows you can just find it in a cloud.

Demographics:

The way college campuses look when America celebrates 250 years is wildly different from how they looked in 1976, when campuses like UVA were made up of 30% women.

Where college campuses were overwhelmingly white 50 years ago, today they are made up of more nonwhite students.

Spare a thought for the UVA student working in the alumni office trying to plan a 50-year homecoming reunion: there aren’t many 70-something women to invite, because the school had only just gotten around to letting them in.5

So college is more expensive, has more powerful technology, and has more diversity than it did when I entered the world, and when 18-year-olds in Virginia went off to college. Lots can change in 50 years – imagine what college will be like for my brother’s grandchildren.

Okay, let’s get to what else happened this week. As a reminder, these events mark anniversaries ending in 5 or 0.

1. The NFL and AFL announced they would merge on June 8, 1966. By the mid-1950s, the National Football League had a strong grip on the sport’s growing popularity, thanks to television and rising viewership and attendance. The league wasn’t interested in expanding and increasing that wealth – so owners who were rejected from purchasing an NFL franchise formed their own league, the American Football League, in 1959. Picking cities that didn’t have NFL teams proved wise, and so the leagues were competing so much against each other - that when the NFL went out and signed a kicker from an AFL team, all hell broke out, and they merged. Now there are two conferences – the NFC, which features original NFL teams, and the AFC, which is made up of mostly AFL teams. They smashed the leagues together officially in 1970, even though the first Championship game with teams from different leagues was played in 1967.6 The league’s combined net worth is over $227 billion. I don’t think either Mary or Timmy will be studying business in school, but if they are smart – perhaps pre-law in antitrust would be a strong move.

2. The Committee of Five was appointed on June 11, 1776. Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Roger Sherman, and Robert Livingston were appointed by the Second Continental Congress to draft a declaration of independence. Jefferson then lost a game of “Not It!” and had to write the entire thing himself. He did so well, we now capitalize the “D” and “I”. Two other committees were also formed that day- don’t get the impression the rest of Congress did nothing while Tommy J did all the heavy literary lifting. Mary seems more like the committee type of the two, but Timmy was the MVP of his lacrosse team this year - so it shows he is a team player.

3. The U.S. Census Bureau got a big computer on June 14, 1951. The Universal Automatic Computer (UNIVAC) was engineered by two really smart guys from the University of Pennsylvania, and it was the first commercially available computer to begin the laborious work of counting people and sorting them into categories. It also predicted President Eisenhower’s landslide victory in the 1952 presidential election – when polls had it close.7 The UNIVAC is the great-grandfather of the AI boom, which can now help the twins add up the tip on their DoorDash app when ordering a late-night pizza.

Saturday was a fun party – all of us are the age where all we want to do is just catch up with other family members we haven’t seen in a while. A few cousins who live out in Virginia joined as well, and while it hasn’t sunk in yet that the twins are off to college, I still can’t get over how incredibly tall they are. Also, I’m grateful I didn’t end up eating both styles of graduation cake. These are the observations you have when you turn 50.

It was also nice spending a few days with my older sister, who came to town on Thursday, and showing her around the neighborhood. She has the cutest dog, little Brownie:

She’s a shih tzu poodle, and I’ll let you come up with the new name for the combined dog. Just the sweetest dog ever, who is now charged with taking care of my sibling. Can’t wait to see her again!8

Okay, thanks everyone for your support of Okay History. I hope you have a great week.

Okay,

Chris

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But first, there is a little bit of bad news - our oven broke. This meant we needed the Oven Guy to come over and give us his diagnosis. We had a two-hour window for his arrival, which made the morning a little bit hectic. You can’t effectively plan and execute when you don’t know when Oven Guy is going to show up.

Fortunately, I didn’t even need the oven, because I’ve been wanting to grill a whole chicken since it’s now “grilling whole chicken” season. Longtime subscribers will remember our epic turkey roast from 2023, back when the oven was functional. But this time, I tried my hand at spatchcocking a chicken and then throwing it on the grill with some potatoes.

The first step was understanding the word “spatchcock.” It didn’t take me too long, but there is still a part of me that wondered why we can’t just say “butterflied.” Who decides what words mean, anyway?

Next, I pulled out an old recipe featuring Mediterranean seasoning, and what was cool about this project was that it required a brick to press down the chicken once it had been spatchcocked.

Now that we have the bird split in two, here’s how it looked on the grill with a brick that I pulled from my embarrassingly small front yard, cleaned off, and wrapped in foil.

Blue was my assistant, but when Oven Guy eventually made it to the house, he was more focused on what was going on inside than on what was going on outside.

Even though I was a bit rushed, I do believe the bird turned out quite well:

With the accomplishment of grilling, it was on to celebrate SPORTS! We had excellent seats for the Nats and the visiting San Diego Padres. My buddy and I did our best with our 50-plus dad vibes and kept score throughout the game, and were rewarded with a very engaging, if complicated, scoring exercise. We were a bit rusty, so thank goodness for the ESPN app, which let us keep the scorebook without errors.

I even brought a little bit of my grilled chicken to the game.

The game went a bit longer than we had hoped, but after the home team secured the win, we trekked the short distance from Nats Park to Audi Field and took in the Washington Spirit match. We met up with Anonymous, who was overjoyed to learn from Oven Guy that we need to purchase a new oven.

Despite missing the first half, we were fortunate to witness another DC win.

All in all, a great Saturday. It was a day of learning new words, the constant vigilance required to watch a grill with a spatchcocked chicken and a brick on top, and how expensive appliances can easily break.

Okay, let’s get to what else happened this week. As a reminder, these events mark anniversaries ending in 5 or 0.

1. Uncle Tom’s Cabin Begins Serialization on June 5, 1851. The National Era was a weekly abolitionist newspaper. Harriet Beecher Stowe, a Christian abolitionist from Connecticut, was also an author who began to pen stories depicting the horrors of slavery. Beginning this week, Stowe would publish a story centered on a main character, Uncle Tom, an enslaved person who experienced the cruelty of being sold repeatedly.

The story became so wildly popular that the National Era and Stowe agreed to keep it running. A publisher convinced Stowe to turn it into a book, and in March 1852, the hardcover volume was published and sold over 10,000 copies in its first week. Uncle Tom’s Cabin is widely regarded as the most influential protest novel of the pre-Civil War Era. It became the second best-selling book in the United States during the 19^th century. Only the Bible sold more copies – but it also had a fifty-year head start.

2. The Basketball Association of America was founded on June 6, 1946. A bunch of hockey owners got anxious that their arenas sat empty during the winters when their teams were away, so they decided to create a basketball league for the growing sport to fill in the nights and make more money.

Eleven teams took the hardcourt that season for the BAA, with the Philadelphia Warriors winning the first title the following Spring. Three years later, the league would merge with the National Basketball League, which was founded in 1937.

This new super basketball league would now be known as the National Basketball Association (NBA).

Six teams from the original BAA are still in existence – The Atlanta Hawks, Detroit Pistons, Boston Celtics, Los Angeles Lakers, Golden State Warriors, and Philadelphia 76ers. One team from the NBL that did not survive the test of time- the Akron Firestone No-Skids. I’m not kidding. “No-Skids” is a reference to the team’s owners, the Firestone Tire Company, founded by Harvey Firestone, who died in 1938. The NBA Finals get underway this week, and the local team, the Washington Wizards, has the first pick in the 2026 NBA Draft in a couple of weeks. Their nickname really needs to be “Nothing But Skids.”

3. The Lee Resolution was passed on June 7, 1776. Richard Henry Lee of Virginia introduced a resolution in the Second Continental Congress calling for America’s independence from Britain. It had three parts: breaking from the British Crown, engaging with foreign countries and developing formal diplomatic relations, and establishing a confederation of the Thirteen Colonies to govern properly.

On July 2, 12 of the 13 colonies voted to pass the resolution – only New York abstained, because the guys sent there hadn’t been given instructions on what to do, much like when Anonymous sends me to the grocery store.

Two days later, Thomas Jefferson presented the final draft of the Declaration of Independence, and a group of guys adopted it and began to rally the idea of the nation - the United States of America.

The Nats game reminded me of what a group of guys can accomplish when they all get together to show unity and inspire confidence. During the game, a small yet rambunctious group of young men began to assemble in the empty upper deck of right field. It was here that they began to rally the fans – mostly by taking their shirts off and yelling.

Over the course of a few innings, the crowd had doubled. Just rows and rows of shirtless guys whipping their clothes above their heads in the sweltering heat. I imagine the gentlemen in Philadelphia 250 years ago did the same thing – rallying the votes.

Does anyone doubt that John Adams, a fierce proponent of Independence, took off his wig, multiple wool shirts, and just started whipping his clothes over his head while screaming as the votes came in? I mean, come on, of course he did.

Hope your first week of June is just as fantastic. Thank you for your support of Okay History and I will eventually at some point get back to ranking the Vice Presidents.

Okay, Chris

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In 1971, Congress made the last Monday in May the official day we set aside to remember and honor our service members who died protecting our freedoms. The day used to be on every May 30^th – but it was sorta annoying having it on a random Wednesday.

Why? Well, because no one is out doing things on a random Wednesday, no BBQ planned, or trips to take. So Congress decided 55 years ago to move to the last Monday in May. This decision was motivated by a desire to consume as much stuff – from beer to brats to beds. I hope you are staring down inflation and higher prices right in the face and still forking over money to purchase all the stuff!

Anonymous, Blue, and I did our part, and we are already $50 in on gas while driving to West Virginia. It’s been quite a trip – it took us five hours on Friday afternoon to get here from Washington, DC, thanks to the weather and Maryland drivers. I’m not kidding when I say – I spent most of the time driving at 40 miles per hour through mountains, fog, and rain. It was so much fun!

We finally made it to Coopers Rock State Park, just east of Morgantown, West Virginia.

It’s a beautiful place, and we rented one of the new cabins they have built to encourage tourism in the area.

What is Coopers Rock? It’s an almost 13,000-acre state forest, known for its beautiful hiking trails, campsites, and a scenic overlook. Unfortunately for us, it rained most of the time, but it was still worth coming out here for a few days.

There are a few competing stories about how Coopers Rock got its name, but the one I like is that a fugitive hid out in the woods, made barrels (presumably for outlawed alcohol), and sold them to people in the surrounding communities. Either way, if I were going to hide from the law, this is an excellent place to do it.

The cabins themselves have all the new features a small family needs. I highly recommend a trip out here if you can. On Sunday, Anonymous and I joined friends for what seemed like a 500-mile uphill hike. I’m not great with pictures, but this stream gives a glimpse of what we experienced:

We grabbed a picture of the overlook on our way this morning:

Okay, let’s get to what else happened this week. As a reminder, these events mark anniversaries ending in 5 or 0.

1. President Kennedy tells Congress – We are going to the moon on May 25, 1961. Twenty days after Alan Shepard was launched into space, President Kennedy proclaimed that the United States would accelerate efforts to reach the Moon by the end of the decade. The “Space Race” was on, and we were already far behind the Soviet Union. Don’t worry, it all turned out fine. What’s funny is, the Moon objective wasn’t the reason for the joint session of Congress. It was about a ton of stuff, and the Moon aspect was put at the end of a 45-minute speech.

For me, this is a perfect example of what we are capable of achieving in this country when we put focus on something. At one point, our space program employed 400,000 people just to ensure we landed on the moon.

2. Frederick Douglass delivered a commencement speech on May 30, 1881. The end of May is for remembering the fallen and giving speeches to graduating seniors. Storer College was established as an institution of higher learning for Black people located in Harper’s Ferry, the site of John Brown’s uprising in October 1859. Brown and Douglass were friends, and Frederick’s speech was to celebrate Brown, whose zeal “was as the burning sun to my tapered light.”

Storer College closed in 1955, and most of the campus is preserved at Harper’s Ferry National Park. Harper’s Ferry Brewery is a pretty good place, but it has nothing to do with this story.

3. The Tulsa Race Massacre took place on May 31, 1921. Tulsa’s Greenwood neighborhood was known as “Black Wall Street,” a place where formerly enslaved people and their descendants had thrived with their own businesses and financial growth.

On May 30^th, a young black man, Dick Rowland, was accused of “raping” a white elevator operator named Sarah Page. The local newspaper ran a story the next day, along with a mention that a lynching was planned for later. This inspired mobs of people to descend to the local jail, where violence broke out between races – those who were there to protect Rowland and those who were determined to cause him grave harm. When white people died, that sparked two days of white retaliation where mobs of white people destroyed black businesses and murdered black people.

This horrific story was buried – never mentioned to the greater masses about its history, until the late 1990s. It’s an important reminder that there are probably more stories like this in our past. Bringing them to light doesn’t diminish our country’s legacy or future; it just makes us more aware of the challenges we faced and the struggles we will need to confront.

It’s been quite an adventure since we climbed into the car in DC. As I mentioned, the trip took longer than expected (it’s usually around 3 to 3.5 hours). When we got to the cabin, the key didn’t work. After a nice ranger lady let us in with a new key, we settled in, but then the next day, we discovered that the key wasn’t the issue – it was a broken door. Now, to be clear, we learned we were the first people to stay in these A-frame cabins that are built for stargazing (they actually call them the stargazing cabins), so experiencing a broken door that wouldn’t lock would have cut the trip short. But the good folks at the State Park were able to move us to a new cabin, where we understand we are the first people to stay there as well.

the A-Frame cabin and the

It’s a trip of firsts!

We just got back home and are in the land of reliable Wi-Fi!

Hope the holiday weekend has been a relaxing and recharging one for you.

Happy summer, everyone, and thanks for your continued support of Okay History.

Okay,

Chris

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Back in the fall of 2013, a family I didn’t know took a trip to Georgia and stopped at an apple orchard. They noticed that alongside that orchard, there was an old woman selling small animals for pets – mostly cats, though she did have one lone dog she couldn’t unload on someone else.

The family had two daughters, and one, let’s call her Oldest Daughter A (ODA), to protect her identity, came upon the lone dog the old woman was selling and was immediately smitten. Her parents weren’t as confident that buying the dog no one wanted was a good idea, so ODA and the parents agreed to sleep on it.

Nothing would change ODA’s strong desire to go back the next day to the old woman and her makeshift pet stand next to the orchard to purchase the black chow-rottweiler-lab mix. And so she did. The daughter got her dog, and the lone dog got his forever home.

The daughter, of course, was Anonymous, and the dog would be known as Blue, named after the mountain range the family visited those many years ago.

I don’t know what I was doing in the fall of 2013, probably nothing great, but I was doing enough of the right things to be on the path where four years later, Blue and I would meet.

And today, May 11, we celebrate Blue’s 13th birthday.

Dogs are the greatest thing God has given us, and it’s fair to say that everyone who has a dog thinks their dog is the greatest. It’s a nice sentiment, but completely outside of reality, because Blue is, for all intents and purposes, the best dog ever.

For this week’s Maundy Monday Newsletter, we will take a walk down memory lane and highlight three important milestones that Blue and I have shared over the past nine years.

1. The First Meeting – May 2017. There is a strict protocol when meeting Blue for the first time. Number 1: You are not to look him in the eyes, lest he take that as a challenge to his manhood, and come at you with the fury of an army battalion. Number 2: You must ignore Blue; let him sniff you out to see if you are connected to another dog he may know and most likely doesn’t like. The process of not looking him in the eye, as if Blue were a character in a random Stephen King novel, may take days, weeks, or even years, depending on how often they encounter each other. For me, the first meeting went smoothly because I followed Anonymous’s directive (as the rest of my life would play out), and Blue deemed me a reasonable guest. However, he still interrupted any affection I tried to bestow on the woman I was wooing. It would take him years to move past this.

2. The Choosing – Spring 2018. Anonymous and I had been dating for at least a year, and Blue and I had a gentleman’s agreement – he would let me walk him and pet him. We were allowed to have our eyes connect, but we had not yet leaped into “Forever Friends.” It wouldn’t be until Anonymous caught a nasty flu that forced Blue to spend a few nights at my place, where the connecting got more connecting. Then, a few weeks later, when Anonymous went to Germany to give a speech on how to spy effectively, Blue came over for an extended stay. It was then that the bond was sealed, and Blue and I felt like true bros. I basically married Blue before I married Anonymous.

3. Together Forever – Spring 2020. When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, Anonymous and I were three years into our relationship and still living about a mile apart. I’m not exactly sure how it happened, but one day, weeks into the new world order, Anonymous came over and then never left. That meant Blue came along as well. My small one-bedroom apartment was now a family home for three. It was during this time that I became Blue’s primary caretaker, taking him on walks and feeding him. When we moved into our current house later in 2020, Blue established himself in the neighborhood as well, ensuring that anyone who comes near our manor who he doesn’t know or like finds our family abode well protected.

Blue has one distinctive trait that I love; he has a very specific opinion about people and animals. Back in 2018, Anonymous and I drove for what felt like hours into no-man’s-land to meet with a dog trainer we hoped would help us train Blue. When we arrived and got out of the car, we encountered a large donkey.

Now I’m pretty confident Blue had never seen a donkey before. So he did what any dog with Blue’s nervousness and anxiety would do, especially after being in the car for hours – an activity he greatly despises – he barked at the donkey. When the donkey didn’t respond and continued to live his best donkey life, Blue then retreated to shake behind us. The donkey looked Blue in the eyes and won the day.

It was after this encounter that the dog trainer emerged, interacted with us for about 30 minutes, and determined there was nothing he could do to help us with Blue – we had spoiled him too much for any reasonable amount of training to undo any bad habits Blue may have developed.

But it doesn’t matter in the end because Blue always chooses you. He’s the best dog; he’s loyal, loving, and sweet. He does have anxiety, and the minute he walks outside, he thinks the world is against him, but inside the house – nothing but love.

He hates it when you are upset, and defensive when you get mad at him. His food motivation is off the charts. His vet says that, despite being 13, he has the bloodwork of a 2-year-old. He’s an old man who looks years younger.

He’s the sweetest and bluest of the bears. Anonymous and I love him very much. Happy Birthday! We get to see him soon as we return from our trip to Nashville over the weekend. He was sick for most of last week, but hopefully he is feeling better. Either way, he will take his trip to the local pet store to grab a new toy and get a treat. Not all bad habits are really bad. Who knows what the future will hold for us, but I’m grateful to have Blue here with me as we journey into it.

Okay! Happy Mother’s Day to all of the mothers! As I mentioned, we were in Nashville over the weekend with Anonymous’s parents to see the Eagles in concert. They are a great show to take in. I’m glad this upcoming weekend will be one where I stay home.

I hope you have a great week. Thanks for your support of Okay History!

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I’m back after two straight weekends full of friends and life events.

Two weekends ago, Anonymous and I attended a friend’s wedding, where I officiated the ceremony, and she served as matron of honor. The Bride was beautiful, and so was Anonymous. The opportunity to let the Groom and everyone know how well the two of us married above our station in life was too good to pass up. It was fun.

This past weekend I was in Cleveland, visiting one of my oldest friends from college. His wife passed away about a month ago after a battle with breast cancer, and a group of us got together and hung out with him. It was a good weekend, overall, just not under the best circumstances – but also a reminder I need to get back to The Land more often. But not during the winter.

In between, right before I left for Cleveland, Anonymous and I went to Mosaic Theater Company here in Washington, D.C., where we’ve had season tickets for the past two years. Mosaic is a fantastic small regional theater in a surprisingly vibrant theater city. Mosaic mostly produces activist and political theater, which means we usually leave having learned and felt something uncomfortable. But it makes the drinks afterwards much more enjoyable when unpacking everything.

The show we saw was a hip-hop musical premiere about the early life of John Lewis — Young John Lewis: Prodigy of Protest — written by their playwright-in-residence, a man named Psalmayene 24. The show follows Lewis from age 18 through the next decade of his life, through sit-ins and arrests and beatings, through his speech at the 1963 March on Washington, and finishing with the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. in 1968. It’s an ensemble cast of about 15 people, and right from the jump, they grab you by your shirt collar and take you along for the ride. It’s funny, we arrived just before the show began, and the theatre was packed, so the staff let us sit in reserved seats in the front row. This is a highly recommended move for the future, especially for a place that doesn’t provide seat-number tickets.

John Lewis famously described his approach to civil rights as making “good trouble” — the idea that there are moments when the disruptive thing and the right thing are the same thing, and the only question is whether you’re willing to act. He lived that for sixty years. It’s also this week’s theme, because the Freedom Rides began on May 4, 1961, where good trouble made its way down South to change the course of American history.

The Freedom Rides were led by a group of black and white civil rights activists who boarded buses in Washington, D.C. and headed south toward New Orleans. The goal was straightforward: ride together in unsegregated seats through states that had decided that federal law was more of a suggestion.

The Supreme Court had already ruled twice that segregated interstate bus travel was unconstitutional — once in 1946 (Morgan v. Virginia) and again in 1960 (Boynton v. Virginia). The southern states interpreted these directives as something optional, like a toddler told to eat his vegetables, and since we can’t always have a Civil War every 50 years, people like John Lewis and others took on the challenge to make change.

The rides were organized by the Congress of Racial Equality and involved activists from the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, where John Lewis was a central figure. The riders trained in nonviolent resistance, a stance the musical highlights as controversial. These young people knew they would confront violence. They knew they would respond with the exact opposite action.

They went anyway.

And the violence came. Just in Alabama, a bus was firebombed, and mobs worked through the terminals with clubs and chains on multiple occasions. And yet these young people kept going.

Young John Lewis: Prodigy of Protest is 90 minutes of John Lewis with all gas and no brakes – like there was no intermission. He faced challenges at home when he tried to get into Troy State University, with his peers who wanted to match the violence they faced, and with prominent Civil Rights leaders who wanted him to tone down his speeches. Throughout all of this, John Lewis was beaten and arrested more than 40 times over the course of his civil rights career.

All of it was “good trouble.” Lewis passed away in 2020 at the age of 80.

Okay, let’s get to what else happened this week. As a reminder, these events mark anniversaries ending in 5 or 0.

1. Alan Shepard became the first American in space on May 5, 1961. One day after the Freedom Rides left Washington, Alan Shepard climbed into a capsule called Freedom 7 — perfect name – no notes — and was launched into space for fifteen minutes and twenty-two seconds. The United States was behind in the race to space - the Soviets had put Yuri Gagarin into full orbit just weeks earlier, so NASA was operating from a position of considerable pressure.

Speaking of considerable pressure, Shepard’s launch was delayed multiple times that morning while he sat in the capsule. During one of those delays, he reportedly told Mission Control he needed to use the bathroom, but there were no facilities on board. Mission Control’s reaction was to tell him to go ahead and do what you have to do. So Shepard did. No more pressure.

2. The New Revolution opened at Six Flags Magic Mountain on May 8, 1976. The New Revolution was recognized by the American Coaster Enthusiasts as the first modern roller coaster to include a vertical loop. Isn’t it great that we have an American Coaster Enthusiasts organization that grants formal recognition upon roller coasters, and that somewhere there is a plaque?

What I love about this moment in history is that someone at Six Flags looked at the existing state of roller coasters, asked what would happen if we went completely upside down, was told by every reasonable person around them that this seemed inadvisable, and did it anyway. I’m quite confident that many people pulled an Alan Shepard on this ride.

3. Dr. John Pemberton sold the first Coca-Cola on May 8, 1886. Dr. John Pemberton was a Confederate veteran and pharmacist from Atlanta who, after being wounded in one of the final engagements of the Civil War, developed a morphine addiction and set about trying to find something better. What he invented was a syrup he marketed as a nerve tonic and headache remedy, which he sold at Jacobs’ Pharmacy in Atlanta on this day for five cents a glass.

The original formula included extracts from coca leaves — that’s right: COCAINE! — and caffeine from kola nuts. This was not considered unusual. Patented medicines of the 1880s operated on the working assumption that if something made you feel dramatically better immediately, we would sort out the consequences later.

Pemberton sold the rights to his formula for a modest sum and died in 1888, having seen none of what Coca-Cola would become. The cocaine was quietly removed from the formula by 1903. The sugar and the calories remained.

One last thing about Young John Lewis: Prodigy of Protest.

Psalmayene 24 (I cannot pronounce the name, but I love how his name presents the way he engages the world) spent seven years crafting this show. The book is sharp. The lyrics are sharper — tight, biting, and forceful in the way that good protest writing has to be, meeting the moment. The music was created by Kokayi – a Grammy-nominated artist – and you can see why. There are plenty of times where the Fourth Wall is broken, and the audience is pulled into the world – mostly for humor, but not for cheap laughs – but more so as a reminder you are an active participant in this experience. We were told a few times not to sit down. I did what I was told.

Michael Bahsil-Cook, who plays Young John, is inspiring. The talented actor delivers the fear, the faith, and the cost of choosing to stand up anyway, as Lewis did. It is a remarkable performance. If you get a chance to, go see this performance.

This week, Anonymous and I head to Nashville (coincidentally, where John Lewis began his Civil Rights journey) on Friday to visit her parents, who are driving up from Florida to join us for an Eagles concert. They have been rocking since 1971. And this tour has been going on since 2019. That’s just incredible. It’s the second time seeing the Eagles as a family – I can’t wait!

I hope everyone has a great week. Thank you, as always, for reading Okay History.

Okay, Chris

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I remember feeling that his passing was awful for a variety of reasons, most notably his direct opposition to the policies of the Trump Administration Part II: Bring the Cruel. Francis’s advocacy for migrants and his desire to create a Church that was more inclusive and centered on service to the poor stood in stark contrast to a government that sought to cleanse the country of these very people, enrich itself and the insanely wealthy, and to do all this quickly.

With the Trump sequel in place, Vice President JD Vance, the recent convert to Catholicism, took the opportunity to meet with Pope Francis during the Easter holiday. At the time of the visit, Francis was in poor health. Their official meeting did not last long, just an exchange of pleasantries and Francis gifting chocolate to Vance’s children, while VPJD presented the Holy Father with the awkwardness he is now famous for.

Soon after, Francis passed away.

Charged with the immense responsibility of replacing Francis, the College of Cardinals shocked the world when they elected Robert Francis Prevost, the next Vicar of Christ, on May 8, 2025. Pope Leo XIV is the first American to become the head of the Catholic Church, and is only the second, following his predecessor, to hail from the Americas.

Almost immediately, my anxiety about the uncertainty of who would lead the Church has been calmed greatly. Pope Leo is continuing many of Francis’ priorities, including placing women in more prominent positions within the Vatican bureaucracy, while continuing to advocate for migrants, the poor, and, lately, peace. Sure, Leo is a Chicago White Sox fan, but we all have flaws.

I dislike the phrase “we are living in unprecedented times” because it tends to be overly dramatic. But we are living in a world where the President of the United States is a convicted felon (whether you agree with that or not), cannot form any coherent policy position, and is generally considered the cruelest man ever to hold the position. At the same time, St. Peter’s Chair is occupied by a guy known to his friends as Bob, and who used to play priest with his brothers as a kid.

We have entered the dawn of a new era of what it means to be an American Catholic. I won’t get into everything that has been exchanged between Trump/Vance, and Pope Leo over the past month, that would take a longer essay. There’s going to be a reckoning for Catholics in this country, who, as a voting bloc that had experienced Trump for well over a decade, chose to bring him back.

Now in Rome, we have someone who understands our country’s politics very well. Leo has a large platform to shine a bright light on the direction our leaders take us, and cannot be easily dismissed like Francis was. Leo has already experienced Vance’s awkwardness in person and lived. You cannot brush Bob off by claiming he doesn’t understand the ways of American politics and people.

Bob knows.

The conflict we are seeing between the Trump Administration and the Vatican is only beginning, and I pray we find ourselves motivated by love for others rather than by what we have been forced to witness.

Okay, let’s highlight what else happened this week. As a reminder, these events mark their anniversary, ending in 5 or 0. Here’s what I got:

1. The U.S. Supreme Court upheld the practice of busing for racial desegregation on April 20, 1971. In the case of Swann vs. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education, the Supreme Court upheld a lower court decision that allowed the city government of Charlotte, North Carolina, and its suburb of Mecklenburg to bus black children to the white-dominant schools, where people fled after the landmark decision of Brown vs the Board of Education forced schools to integrate their population. Busing has been a controversial topic, and there is debate over whether it has had the positive effects intended.

2. New York became the first state to require license plates on cars on April 25, 1901. Governor Benjamin Odell, Jr. signed a law requiring car owners to register their “unnatural” vehicles with license plates. The plates displayed the driver’s initials, and there were no restrictions on their size, color, or material. It formalized a process that allowed cars on certain streets and placed car drivers on the same level as horse drivers. George Chamberlin would be the first person to receive the license plate. I can’t help but think his license plate read: GeorgeC#1.

3. Speaking of Number 1, Elvis Presley’s “Heartbreak Hotel” reached #1 on the Billboard on April 21, 1956. Down at the end of Lonely Street sat Heartbreak Hotel. It was a place people went to when their baby left them, and they needed a new place to dwell. The song was written in an hour by Mae Boren Axton and Tommy Durden, with rumors that it was inspired by a guy who tossed himself out of a window because his lady left him. In November 1955, they presented the song to Presley at the Andrew Jackson Hotel, and he eagerly agreed to perform it as he moved his recording from Sun to RCA. Heartbreak Hotel was released at the beginning of the year and quickly shot up the charts, where it stayed for eight weeks. I once performed this song in a college variety show to critical acclaim, even though I cannot move my hips.

I finished an audiobook over the weekend. Factory Man, by Beth Macy. This New York Times Bestseller was published in 2014 and follows the life of furniture producer family icon John Bassett and his fight against the emerging globalization of his industry to save his Virginia community from ruin.

It’s a great book, and I recommend it to anyone. Macy is an author I discovered last year while reading Paper Girl, which was one of my favorite books of 2025. Even though Factory Man was written first, it doesn’t match the subject matter of Paper Girl.

I’m glad I finished the book, because I have concluded that I have been consuming too much negative news for months now and need to cleanse myself with something funnier. I’ll take any suggestions on audiobooks. Just FYI, I use the library app, Libby, so I don’t have the option to grab the most recent publications. Thanks for any recommendations for my mental health improvement!

Anonymous and I have a bunch of travel plans over the next several weeks, and this weekend begins with a banger. Good friends and subscribers to Okay History are getting married this weekend. I have the privilege of being the Officiant, while Anonymous is the Matron of Honor.

Because of that, I will be off from posting the next edition of VP rankings this Saturday and the next round of Monday Maundy Newsletter. If I can get something up, I will. But for the next few months, I will be more realistic about my schedule. I apologize for any disappointment and appreciate the support and patience!

Join me in wishing the best for our friends Catherine and Michael!

They will not be honeymooning here:

Heartbreak Hotel

See you soon.

Okay,

Chris

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“Path” is one of my favorite words. It’s a strong and commanding phrase.

Most four-letter words are. Here are a few – top of the head examples:

• Stop

• Goal

• Roar

Or how about this one:
Dake

Path is also visual. You can close your eyes right now and imagine what a path looks like. It can be a smooth, long highway that drifts into the distant mountain range, or it can be uneven, where you need to climb over rocks to reach that mountain top.

When I was courting Anonymous many years ago, I was smart enough to know right away that I needed to marry her. Enough of this dating nonsense, I needed to get on the path to matrimony. I didn’t care if it was a smooth ride or a rocky one; I was going to get it done.

Anonymous, on the other hand, took her time with me and our relationship. Even though I knew she felt the same toward me as I did for her, after two years of dating, I asked her whether getting married was in the future, and her usual response was :

“We are on that path.”

It was a reassuring answer. A path takes you places, such as the house your wife picks out that you will live in. What is marriage other than two people sharing life’s path together? Fortunately, after four years, four months, and four days of dating, we finally got engaged and have been on the path to happiness ever since.

But not all paths lead to happy destinations. Sometimes, you can find yourself going down the wrong path, like all the guys Anonymous dated before me. These dudes were “Wrong Path Guys” (WPG). I don’t know any of them at all, thank goodness, but I imagine they all lacked the gifted traits I possess, like a great set of hair and a healthy dose of humility.

It’s a good thing I helped Anonymous get off the WPG loop she was in before May 2017.

Wish we could say the same thing concerning our country back around the Civil War.

In our next edition of ranking the vice presidents of the United States, we are going to take a quick look at two WPG that tried to steer the United States off the path to prosperity and into something that wasn’t free and equal.

44: John Breckinridge

14^th Vice President

Term – March 4, 1857 – March 4, 1861

Presidential Administration: James Buchanan (Okay History 2021 Presidential Ranking: 43)

The Good:
I’m finding it hilariously frustrating to figure out what to put in these “good” sections for a position that does nothing, while on top of that, when the job is occupied by someone who was also terrible in so many ways. But, trying to be a more positive thinker, I will say the good Breckinridge did was to show young people that it is possible to fail forward. John is the youngest vice president in our history, assuming the second position under Buchanan at age 35. And there is a part of me that thinks that is a good thing. At 35, I was still six years away from meeting Anonymous, and she was stuck with her WPG.

The Bad:

There isn’t anything he did as vice president that stood out, and he was wildly popular back in his home state of Kentucky. Not giving away the ending, but after leaving the vice presidency, Breckinridge was elected to the United States Senate by the good people of Kentucky. He responded with that kindness, encouraging the state to break from the Union. When he failed to do that, he traveled down to Virginia and offered his services to the Confederacy, which were accepted. This is when Breckinridge earned another distinction – the highest federal office holder to turn traitor. He is a first-rate WPG.

Did he become president?

He did not. He did run in 1860, along with 40 other people. That divided ballot allowed Abraham Lincoln to win. I think this might have been a good thing?

Why did I rank him here?

He probably should be a few spots higher, but I forgot about him when I first was putting the list together, mostly because I forgot about the Buchanan presidency. In my defense, 44 is still pretty bad.

43: Andrew Johnson

16^th Vice President

Term – March 4, 1865 – April 15, 1865

Presidential Administration: Abraham Lincoln’s second term (Okay History 2021 Presidential Ranking: Numero Uno)

The Good:
I will always respect the fact that Andrew Johnson held firm to the Union and the Constitution of the United States in the face of increased disdain to both from his home state of Tennessee. To put this into perspective, Johnson is from East Tennessee, where Unionists outnumbered those who preferred the way of life the Confederacy was offering in 1860. In fact, the first vote of secession failed. Then they took a revote, and it passed. My father’s side of the family was also from East Tennessee, but it appears they went straight to the bad side right from the beginning. But Johnson held firm on the right path.

The Bad:

I’m not someone who knocks on people who like to drink. As someone who enjoys a good cocktail or simply a few beers, I try not to sit in judgment of others who may be fighting to keep their lives together despite the power that alcohol has over them. But Andrew Johnson was a drinker. When you are known as a “drinker,” it’s very hard to shake that off, unless you come out adamantly in words and deeds that you do not imbibe. Johnson didn’t do that. And in fact, just the opposite, as he had such a problem with drinking that he was hungover for his inauguration on March 4, 1865.

Did he become president?

Unfortunately, Andrew Johnson became the 17^th president of the United States. Johnson was a Democrat and ran with Lincoln on the National Union Party ticket in 1864, and defeated the ineffective Union General and Democratic candidate, George McClellan. Of course, Johnson and Lincoln did not see eye to eye on issues. Johnson’s job on the ticket was to appeal to any voter who could tolerate Lincoln when it appeared the country was going to tear itself in two.

Why did I rank him here?

Johnson is buried with a copy of the Constitution beneath his head. To me, that’s a projection to others in his present time and those in the future who would look back at him, that everything he did, he did for the Constitution. Now, does this include knocking back a handle of bourbon? Maybe. But Johnson wrecked Reconstruction, which put him near the bottom of the OKH presidential rankings. He started out as a right path guy, helping Lincoln win reelection, but it’s his presidency where we see him veer off and turn into that WPG, perhaps led there by alcohol.

Alright. How did I do this week? Any thoughts on where these guys are ranked? Is there any vice president you think should be ranked next? I have everything set now, but I’m always open to suggestions and well-thought-out arguments.

Who am I kidding? I’ll take poorly thought-out arguments.

Final question – can you think of any Wrong Path Guys in our history? I need to make WPG a thing.

Okay. I’ll be back on Monday with another Monday Maundy Newsletter. Enjoy the rest of the weekend, thanks for supporting Okay History, and stay on the right path.

Okay,

Chris

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It’s been fun turning 50 and having moments of reflection with others about it. Born in America’s bicentennial year, 50-year-olds in 2026 would have meant graduating from high school in 1994. Bicentennial babies have reached a point in life where our graduating year is now a few years away from being eligible to run for president.

Reflection and observation usually mean being drawn to famously successful people my age and seeing what they are up to. Is this a healthy behavior? Probably not, because this almost always leads to a feeling of jealousy. But just a pinch. My mind then tends to wander, and I’m left wondering whether, if these famous and wildly successful 50-year-olds knew I wrote a mediocre US history blog, would they feel a pinch of jealousy, too?

My wondering mind then observed that last week was a big one for famously successful 50-year-olds from the class of 1994. Let me share two quick examples.

First up, one of my favorite authors, Patrick Radden Keefe, published his latest book.

If you don’t know who Keefe is, here’s a quick bio – Patrick is an award-winning writer whom I first began reading years ago in The New Yorker. He’s also written two of my all-time favorite books, Say Nothing and Empire of Pain. He is incredibly talented.

So it was obvious I was going to head over to my local bookstore and pick up my pre-ordered copy of London Falling to celebrate the guy who, after graduating from high school in 1994, earned a degree in history, went to an Ivy League law school, passed the bar, and then decided that instead he would settle into writing.

When I see his success, it’s like I’m practically looking into a mirror. Patrick turns 50 next month, and nothing beats turning 50 by cranking out another New York Times bestseller. We are practically twins at this point.

Then on Friday, the crew of Artemis II returned from its ten-day lunar flyby mission. With all of the craziness coming from my town, it was a hopeful respite to watch these four incredibly brave people willingly launch themselves out of Earth’s atmosphere and then return with such speed and force that I don’t know how they did it.

Here again, we see another bicentennial baby. Victor Glover was the mission’s pilot and will turn 50 in a few weeks. Like Keefe, Glover is a proud member of the high school class of 1994, where he was named “Athlete of the Year.” Just like my uncanny parallel life with Keefe, I achieved a similar level of youthful success with Glover as I lettered in theater.

But the comparisons don’t stop there. Glover’s achievement of becoming the first black man to travel beyond low Earth orbit, whatever that is, is quite impressive. I’m the first person in my family to attend the same high school for all four years, which is quite an achievement considering I have four siblings. Two peas in a pod, really.

If you were born in 1976, graduated from high school in 1994, went on to excel at Ivy League institutions, military academies, or the 6th-best Jesuit university in the Midwest, you are going off to do some amazing things at the cusp of 50.

I’m proud of both Patrick and Victor and their recent accomplishments. I know they would share the same sentiment toward me if they knew me and the work I did this past week, where I did that thing in a remarkable way that was widely recognized as awesome.

I’m not too proud to admit that I have a pinch of jealousy toward these two. Patrick and Victor had a heck of a week, so let’s raise a glass in honor of all of us 50-year-olds from the Class of 1994!

Okay, let’s highlight what else happened this week. As a reminder, these events mark their anniversary, ending in 5 or 0. Here’s what I got:

1. President Abraham Lincoln issued a proclamation to recruit troops to suppress insurrection on April 15, 1861. South Carolina soldiers attacked Fort Sumter three days earlier, officially beginning the Civil War. Lincoln had been president for about 45 days when he issued the order to secure 75,000 troops to bring freedom to the Southern states. What they thought would last days and months turned into years. In 1994, Bernard Cornwell published his novel Copperhead, which was a part of a series of books about a character named Nathaniel Starbuck. I wonder if he got into coffee.

2. The Bay of Pigs invasion began on April 17, 1961. After Cuba fell to the Communists and Fidel Castro took power in 1959, the United States tried all different ways to get him out of there. After the CIA trained over 1,000 exiles to do that by military force, they landed at a southern port called the Bay of Pigs. The entire mission was an instant disaster as Castro knew of the invasion, and a local radio broadcast saw and detailed the exiles’ every move. Almost all of the fighters were captured, and over 100 were killed. They surrendered to Castro after two days. Can’t wait for us to try this again with the current leaders. Cuba won the Baseball World Cup in 1994, which was the middle of their three consecutive championships.

3. President Joe Biden announced the withdrawal of all US troops from Afghanistan on April 14, 2021. In early 2020, President Donald Trump cut a deal with the Taliban, the opposition force that protected 9/11 terrorist mastermind Osama Bin Laden. This deal meant that the United States would withdraw its troops from Afghanistan by May 2021. When Biden came into office after the extremely important 2020 election, he reviewed the deal, decided to keep it, and then pushed it back to September. Then Biden was criticized for that by supporters of President Trump, who, in 1994, made a cameo appearance on the television show The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air with his second wife, Marla Maples. If you remember, Trump had an affair with Maples while he was still married to his first wife. Maples and Trump were married in 1993, and Jeffrey Epstein attended the wedding. Anyway!

I don’t want to neglect mentioning Glover’s fellow crew member, Jeremy Hansen, who also turned 50 in January. Hansen is Canadian, which means he was likely the nicest on the team. I imagine Jeremy is also quite accomplished by Canadian standards, and I’m sure we both have numerous similarities. But I don’t want you to think I had forgotten about him.

Okay, Anonymous is gone for the week, visiting her parents. Which means it’s guy’s week with Blue. I’ll be back on Saturday with another edition of the vice president rankings – I finally got my act together on this project and feel like I can be on a regular cadence with essays.

In the meantime, thanks, as always, for your support of Okay History. Have a great week!

Okay,

Chris

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One of my current colleagues worked on the Mitt Romney 2012 campaign.1[1] He told me he was entrenched in the vice presidential selection process, which ultimately went to Congressman Paul Ryan.2[2]

I’ll have to check with him about the science and art involved in selecting a running mate, but I’m sure it wasn’t easy. Inevitably, every presidential election has a debate over the merits of the vice-presidential selection, and whether the electorate cares enough to swing the election because of the decision. I tend to think that in the 21^st century, the VP choice is a consequential one, not to be taken lightly.

Election geniuses will point to whatever appeared as a misstep in a campaign, and putting someone on the ticket could be a massive mistake, so much so that it will turn out to be a pretty good movie to watch and praise for not happening.3[3]

It’s funny, if you put someone in charge of looking for your running mate, and he comes back with a one-word response: Me, you could end up with a terrible vice president, one that results in a lot of unnecessary deaths. But what if you simply pick someone who has no clue about anything?

On the other hand, what if you worked a presidential election before the 12^th Amendment and you were stuck with a guy the entire country had voted for the job? Instead of getting someone you could control, you had someone who openly opposed your leadership and disagreed with fundamental ideas of the Republic.

It’s these ideas, the disagreeable and dumb vice presidents, that we dive into in our latest edition of the vice president rankings.

46: John Calhoun

7^th Vice President

Term – March 4, 1825 – December 28, 1832

Presidential Administration: John Quincy Adams’ only term (Okay History 2021 Presidential Ranking: 21) and part of Andrew Jackson’s first term (Okay History 2021 Presidential Ranking: 12)

The Good:
I guess you could argue that Calhoun was bipartisan, since he is the most recent vice president to have served under two different presidential administrations, John Quincy Adams and Andrew Jackson. We all know how crazy the presidential election of 1824 was, and Calhoun put himself in the middle of it. But he was smart enough to realize it would serve him better to commit to the vice president job, which he landed fairly easily.

The Bad:

The good section is filled with nothing but how good you were at just getting elected, and you can be sure the bad section will end up being really bad, and it proves to be true for Calhoun.

Calhoun got right to work, first disagreeing with JQA on his foreign policy, thinking that the president of the United States shouldn’t worry himself about such matters. He disliked the 6^th president so much that Calhoun wrote Jackson, telling him that he would support Old Hickory’s election efforts in 1828.

That decision proved wise as Jackson swept into office and eventually swept Calhoun out. Why? Although both men were slaveholders, Calhoun felt states had more sovereignty than the United States itself. Which makes you wonder why, if he felt that way, would he have taken the supposed second-highest job in the country? Calhoun advocated that states could nullify laws passed by Congress, and Jackson nullified his voice by kicking him out of the job.

Did he become president?

Nope. Thank goodness, because John Calhoun looks scary as all get out.

Why did I rank him here?

I have always remembered Calhoun as one of those South Carolinians who just LOVED South Carolina so much simply because someone came up with the concept of South Carolina. You could easily rank him last. But this is close enough.

45: James Danforth Quayle

44^th Vice President

Term – January 20, 1989 – January 20, 1993

Presidential Administration: George H.W. Bush (Okay History 2021 Presidential Ranking: 20)

The Good:
Dan inspired all of us who feel imposter syndrome to know that it’s okay. He was an actual imposter, someone so entirely unqualified, even for a job that I don’t think should even exist. But Dan Quayle was the original “DEI hire” that the right now likes to use. He was admitted into law school despite failing a comprehensive exam — apparently as a diversity candidate, minority being defined, in his case, as really dumb. Dumb people need jobs too, and Quayle was the poster boy for what Dumb people could aspire to.

The Bad:

Dan can’t spell. Of course, if this were a requirement to get the job, I’d 100% never be vice president. But Quayle was a walking gaffe machine, way before social media was a thing. I can’t imagine the memes a 21st-century Vice President Quayle would produce today. Dan built many careers for the members of Saturday Night Live in the early 1990s.

Did he become president?

No. In fact, Quayle never became a serious player in the Republican Party after he left office. For the rest of the 90s, he wrote a couple of books and announced he wouldn’t run for governor of Indiana or for the GOP nomination in 1996. He did return to the arena for the 2000 elections, which began with him facing his former boss’s son, and by the end of the first Iowa straw poll in August, he was finished; he hasn’t run since.

Why did I rank him here?

Quayle never inspired any confidence. If Bush had died in office, the United States would have been invaded by a dozen countries. Heck, Canada might have gotten into the action because a teenager would have run the country. Quayle once got into a fight with a fictional character, Murphy Brown, a woman who was a hard-charging journalist, and the decisions she made in her made-up life, including not having a child. To which Dan Quayle wagged his finger like a weirdo as a fighter for family values, and that, in fact, all fictional characters need to have children. The entire circumstance was weird.

We are slowly getting through the vice president rankings. Are you enjoying them? Did I rank these guys accurately?

I know that we haven’t even gotten to the guys we have never heard of – mostly because I need to read more about the guys we have never heard of. Then we will see if I got these rankings correct – but I’m feeling pretty confident at the moment.

As a reminder, I will be taking Monday off due to the Easter holiday. Happy Easter to you all, and thanks again for all your support.

Appreciate you all!

Okay,

Chris

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There was a time in my life, for about 20 years, when I didn’t drink it or eat chocolate. Perhaps unrelated, I was much thinner during this time.

Then, in 2015, I decided to see if I could drink a latte without dying. In a parking lot in Raleigh, North Carolina, I consumed a large one, and by a minor miracle, I lived. I have been hooked ever since.

Coffee itself has been around for a long time. We can trace it back to an Ethiopian goat herder who discovered that certain berries his flock ate made them all spaz out. He tried it himself and felt so energized despite having the boring job of watching goats all day.

With the help of local monks who figured out how to soak the berries in hot water and brew a drink that kept them awake all night, coffee was officially born and spread like a religion. Over the centuries, we developed all sorts of coffee-related stuff, including coffee houses, places where you could go and hang out for hours and drink. Since coffee is so accessible, that’s why lattes at the airport cost $12.

When I wasn’t drinking coffee or any caffeine, I kept telling everyone it’s a horrible side effect – like how I am a spaz when I take the substance. But actually, coffee has a lot of health benefits. Studies over the decades have shown that drinking coffee regularly can reduce Type 2 Diabetes, Parkinson’s disease, and dementia. In 2024, thanks to Joe Biden, the FDA classified coffee as “healthy.” So drink those $12 lattes before you board!

This week, we recognize the beginning of a major player in the coffee world, when Starbucks first opened its doors in Seattle, Washington, on March 30, 1971. Gordon Bowker, Jerry Baldwin, and Zev Siegl met as students at the University of San Francisco and discovered their shared passion for coffee. They partnered with Alfred Peet, a pioneer in the coffee roasting business. Soon, the three guys decided to open their own store selling high-end coffee beans roasted by Peet. In fact, Siegl, who taught high school history, quit his job and worked in the store, which makes him my personal hero. And just like that, Starbucks, in reference to the novel Moby Dick, which I have not read, was born.

Fast forward to 1987, and former Starbucks marketer Howard Schultz purchased the company and began creating “espresso drinks.” Funny thing about espresso: for the longest time, I called it “expresso” because I’m a moron. I do like the occasional espresso martini. I’m also on this White Russian kick right now for some reason.

Anyway, Schultz turned Starbucks into the biggest coffee company in the United States. They put stores everywhere, including in your local grocery, because heaven forbid if you had to drive down the street to a free-standing store. Instead, let’s grab an “expresso” before I hit the cereal aisle!

Coffee has a market value of around $200 billion and is expected to grow by another 100 billion over the next ten years. In 2024, the price of coffee increased by 37% thanks to Joe Biden and his inability to manage Asian supply chains or the weather in Brazil. Today, your standard vanilla latte costs about $1.00 more than it did under the last administration, so we have to bomb Iran to ensure prices go down. I think I have that correct. Go ahead and fact-check me on that one.

I’m not a big coffee snob, but there is an Ethiopian coffee place in my old DC neighborhood that I loved, but now I just bounce back and forth from the two Starbucks in my upscale neighborhood – it just depends on if I need to get my steps in. But I’ll pretty much drink any coffee.

Okay, let’s highlight what else happened this week. As a reminder, these events mark their anniversary, ending in 5 or 0. Here’s what I got:

1. President Ronald Reagan was shot in the chest by John Hinckley on March 30, 1981. Reagan hadn’t been president that long before someone wanted to shoot him. He was walking out of the Hilton Hotel in Washington, DC, and waving to everyone, when Hinckley shot him and his press secretary, Jim Brady. I wrote about how this incident interrupted my daily dose of hot dog eating and cartoon watching. Reagan and Brady are both long gone, but Hinckley lives freely in Virginia, where he writes songs and wrote a memoir last year. He probably goes to Starbucks.

2. Two guys named Steve founded Apple Computer on April 1, 1976. Steve Wozniak, Steve Jobs, and another guy named Ronald personally assembled computers and began selling them from Steve’s parents’ garage. Wozniak was the brains behind how the computer worked, Jobs was the master of selling it, and Ron bailed because he wanted to buy a car or something. Who knows. I have an iPhone that tracks how many steps I take to get my Starbucks while watching John Hinckley on YouTube sing a song he wrote.

3. Ted Kaczynski was caught and arrested on April 3, 1996. Known as The Unabomber, Kaczynski was a college mathematician who worked at the University of California at Berkeley. He despised the advancement of technology and began mailing bombs in 1978 to schools, airlines, and technology stores in the hope of deterring what he considered the damage modern technology would do to society. What’s crazy was Ted never got around to bombing the Steves and Apple computers, who, over the course of his bombing career, were flourishing in the old neighborhood. His terrorism eventually bullied major newspapers into publishing his manifesto, including Penthouse. One of the manifesto points was that he specifically called out following sports teams as a waste of modern life, and I gotta say, he nailed that one. He was soon discovered by his brother, who recognized the crazy and alerted the feds. Ted committed suicide in 2023, but in light of other high-profile prisoners who have passed away in prison in mysterious fashion, are we sure? Let’s meet up at the Starbucks in the local Kroger and look through our iPhones for fun.

This was a busy weekend for Anonymous and me. We celebrated St. Patrick’s Day with our neighbors. Yes, I know it’s been about two weeks since it was St. Patrick’s Day, but due to scheduling, this was the weekend we could have pulled it off.

It was a good lesson in paying attention to what you order. We ordered too much wine, too much beer, and hilariously, too many paper green straws.

Anonymous put me in charge of ordering the supplies we would need for the party, with the instruction that we would need supplies for at least “three years,” and I took that direction and ran with it!

Somehow, I ordered 4,000 green straws. This is what 4,000 green straws look like:

So I will be giving away lots of green straws in the future. I should do something fun for subscribers. Got any ideas?

Okay, It’s Holy Week. I will be back on Saturday with another edition of the VP Rankings. But I will be taking off next Monday, April 6th, due to Easter. So no Monday Maundy Newsletter next week.

Thanks again for the continued support. We remain over 400 subscribers. Pretty awesome!

Have a blessed week, and I’ll see you soon.

Okay,

Chris

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It’s important to remember something, and this might not be a concept you are ready to agree with – while there are three branches of the federal government, they are not equal.

They are not meant to be “equal.” While they are meant to “check” each other, even the practice of “checking” doesn’t prevent other branches from carrying on as they please.

One of the fault lines in our government setup is the idea that we need to give the vice president a job. There was no strategic reason for its existence, and rather than just have this person sit around all day waiting for the president to stop functioning and carrying out presidential duties, we needed to give this guy something to do.

So the Framers, geniuses that they were, came up with a doozy of a position for the VP – presiding over the Senate. Which makes sense when you realize that the Senate shouldn’t exist either and that we can easily function without it. But we will never abolish it, since we’ve had it for 250 years. Please explain why longevity is a good idea in this regard.

The specific duties for the Vice President and the Senate are hilariously simple.

1. Keep it professional.

2. Count.

3. Vote only when it’s a tie.

The VP is your basic cat sitter who stays in your place to ensure Mr. Whiskers is alive when you return from St. Kitts.

But modern vice presidents don’t even stroll over to the Senate to do some work. Instead, they give interviews and speeches about how Joe Biden is the reason we needed to bomb Iran. They only show up when they anticipate a close vote.

Remember, the vice president’s office hasn’t always been filled, and, again, there is a strong argument that the current occupant should vacate it right now. If there is no VP, the Senate falls to the President pro tempore. But the PPT is also a senator, so the possibility of a tie vote remains, with no one to break it. God forbid if that happens. On top of that, the current President pro tempore is a man who was elected into Congress before I was born and, in less than seven years, will turn a century old.1 Longevity!

But having no job other than to break ties and give speeches about presidents not in office can lead someone to make up more duties – ones that can be easily viewed as exceeding the basic responsibilities of showing up and counting.

In our next edition of ranking the vice presidents, we examine the two who really set in motion the concept that your cat sitter has now become your financial advisor.

Let’s dig in.

48: Walter Mondale

42^nd Vice President

Term – January 20, 1977- January 20, 1981

Presidential Administration: Jimmy Carter’s Term (Okay History 2021 Presidential Ranking: 25)

The Good:
Mondale served as a Senator from Minnesota for 12 years, so he understood how the Senate worked. Since his boss had a terrible relationship with Congress, Mondale smoothed out any bumps that were preventing the administration from advancing its agenda. In this regard, the VP job has a clear definition.

The Bad:

The Carter administration gave Mondale an office in the White House. Why is this bad, you may ask? Because we don’t need two presidents. Trust me, I’ve worked for organizations where there are two people at the top of the chart, and neither of them was particularly good at leading anything.

Did he become president?

He did not. He did in fact run as the Democratic nominee, but was smoothed out by Ronald Reagan in the 1984 presidential election blowout.

Why did I rank him here?

Walter Mondale is considered the founder of the modern vice president. Vice presidents before him sat in the background or became enforcers. The job wasn’t intended to be another president or to influence policies. Mondale made it possible for other terrible vice presidents to exist and steer policy that the people didn’t necessarily vote for. Thanks, Fritz.

47: Richard Cheney

46^th Vice President

Term – January 20, 2001 – January 20, 2009

Presidential Administration: George W. Bush’s two terms (Okay History 2021 Presidential Ranking: 33)

The Good:
By the time Cheney was leading the vice-presidential search in 2000, he knew where all the bodies were buried in Washington. He served under Presidents Ford, Reagan (In Congress), and Bush. He was a Congressman, a Secretary of Defense, and a CEO of an oil company. Dick Cheney knew everyone, and that skill set was a reason President George W. Bush picked him to be Number 2. I can’t think of anything else good about this man.

The Bad:

A lot of people died because Dick Cheney was in charge of the White House. There’s no way around that. Cheney had perceived real power, and beyond knowing where the bodies were buried, Cheney also helped bury a lot of them. He also shot a friend in the face. I’m pretty confident he had something like six heart attacks that never killed him, so it goes without saying he was an evil Tin Man.

Did he become president?

No. Another reason Cheney picked himself was that he could exercise more control and not have to worry about an ambitious vice president becoming a wedge between him and the president. Why run for office when you can assume the power of the office without it?

Why did I rank him here?

I firmly believe there is a direct correlation between the way Dick Cheney extended his influence and power beyond the reasonable expectations in the office and the current White House deputy chief of staff for policy, Stephen Miller. They are quite similar in style2 in that both men work for guys who were much more well-known and charismatic than they are, but in turn, less entrenched with the policies and implementation of plans than they are. This is a detrimental combination. It’s what led us to war (Cheney) and mass deportations of nonwhite people (Miller), and who knows what could happen in the future. The toothpaste is out of the tube, and no one can clean it up.

One of the most frustrating moments of the consequential 2024 presidential election that I will never be able to shake was the question posed to Vice President and Democratic nominee, Kamala Harris, on a stupid television show about what she would have done differently than her boss, President Biden.

She answered that she couldn’t think of anything, despite having staked out different positions on a variety of issues. She was trying to be loyal and not open a can of worms, which is why a VP shouldn’t run for president, because they don’t typically win. Of course, I wholeheartedly endorse asking the current guy this question and seeing where his loyalties lie.

Okay! Finally! I hope this ranking was worth the wait. Thanks for your patience. What do you think? Did I rank Dick Cheney too low? I feel like it could be too low. Let me know in the comments.

Happy spring to you, and I’ll see you on Monday with another Maundy Monday Newsletter. Enjoy the weekend!

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When the United States declared itself independent from its British overlords, it was decided that Philadelphia would serve as its capital. Makes sense. But then we freaked out because our British overlords were the most dominant military and Navy in the world at the time, and could get to Philly relatively easily and take the place. So in December 1776, we moved the capital to Baltimore, Maryland. Thus began a saga that led us to the current capital, Washington, DC.

Realizing that Baltimore wasn’t the best choice, the return to Philadelphia was made. But then we freaked out again. So we then moved our capital to Lancaster, Pennsylvania, for a day, like it was a pop-up bar on tour. Then our capital was moved to Annapolis, Maryland, which isn’t Baltimore; then Trenton, New Jersey; then York, Pennsylvania; then Philadelphia; then Princeton, New Jersey; and finally New York City. I think we had around nine capital cities before we figured out that moving around like a recent college graduate with a degree in theater wasn’t the best idea.

But ultimately, our main man, Alexander Hamilton, along with guys like Thomas Jefferson, led efforts to compromise and move the capital to a newly created federal city at the confluence of the Potomac and Anacostia Rivers. Maryland and Virginia would cede land to this newly created place, which would eventually be called the District of Columbia, named after Christopher Columbia.

For centuries, the District served as the governing hub of the ever-growing world power that the United States would eventually become. One silly reason for creating Washington, DC, rather than a place within a state, was the idea that the federal government wouldn’t be subject to local interests. I never understood this argument. What local reasons would usurp the interests of an entire nation? Eating more crab cakes or something?

Despite gaining Home Rule many years later, which allowed us to vote for a Mayor and the City Council, there is still no local pressure on the federal government. In fact, it’s just the opposite. All of our laws would depend on people in Congress deciding how we should govern ourselves. It’s the most un-American concept ever.

But this week, we celebrate a minor achievement: the 23rd Amendment was ratified on March 29, 1961, giving the residents of Washington, DC, the right to vote for the president of the United States. Back in 2023, when I ranked the amendments to the Constitution, the 23^rd sat just outside the top ten.

We will elect a mayor in 2026. Our current mayor, thankfully, announced she would not seek a fourth term. Just the fact that she could run for a fourth term is nuts. In case you are wondering, I’m not a fan of Mayor Muriel Bowser, for a variety of reasons, but mostly because of her opposition to the revised criminal code debate, in which she flipped her initial support of the decades-long process to revamp and update everything, and for whatever reason, opposed it. This action provided an opening for Congressional Republicans to hammer the city for the way it prosecutes crimes. Her alliance with the GOP was so successful that President Joe Biden signed a bill overriding the passed reforms. We still have the same system in place since it was passed in 1901. We continue to do patchwork, while our judicial system remains woefully under-resourced with important stuff – like judges. Only Congress can fix that.

But that is our lot in life here in Washington, DC. We must not have representation because we weren’t created with that in mind. We were also created with the idea that enslaved people would live here, but whatever! No senators or congresspeople for us.

Happy Anniversary of that reminder!

Okay, let’s highlight what else happened this week. As a reminder, these events mark their anniversary, ending in 5 or 0. Here’s what I got:

1. A fire at the Triangle Shirtwaist Co. in New York City killed 145 workers. March 25, 1911. The factory in Greenwich Village that made women’s blouses was staffed by immigrant women, whom the owners figured would be less likely to unionize and would work up to 70 hours a week, including Saturdays, earning about $3 an hour. A fire began on the 8^th floor, most likely from a cigarette, and quickly consumed the company’s three floors, which were the remaining floors of the building and killed 145 workers. It would have been much more, but the fire happened at the end of a Saturday workday, and many brave people worked to save many lives. It is still considered one of the worst workplace disasters in American history and just another highlight of how we treat labor.

2. President Andrew Johnson vetoed a civil rights bill on March 27, 1866. The low-ranked president vetoed the first federally protected civil rights of newly freed enslaved black people, mostly because of “states’ rights,” but also because he felt the “market” would eventually figure everything out, and we didn’t need to pass federal laws. This action would eventually lead to an enormously complicated 14^th Amendment, which allowed for massive incarceration injustice to the ancestors of those enslaved people. Of course, the current administration wants to remove the citizenship part of this amendment, and if successful, would probably try to get us to revert to slavery.

3. Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were found guilty of passing atomic secrets to the Russians on March 29, 1951. Julius Rosenberg worked as a civilian engineering inspector for the army and passed along vital information to the Russians concerning how the United States built its fighter planes, used radar and other secret stuff. It was discovered that Rosenberg was a member of the Communist Party of the USA, which seems like it would have been discovered sooner in the application process. His wife joined him in his treasonous activities, and they eventually recruited his brother-in-law, who worked on the Manhattan Project, which was the first nuclear weapon development program. The entire family affair resulted in everyone eventually being caught, tried, convicted, and sentenced to death.

I promised you last week that I’d share the three books I read while on vacation. Let’s get after it.

1. To Show and To Tell (Phillip Lopate)

This book needed to be finished on the trip because I started it over a month ago. It explores what it means to excel at the craft of literary nonfiction. Lopate is a well-known and respected essayist who has an obnoxiously large vocabulary. It took me forever to read this book, despite its short length, because it was another book where I spent a lot of time looking up definitions. The end is spent discussing his favorite essayists, which, I felt, dragged the book down. He does provide a laundry list of essays to read, which I really need to do.

2. Orbital (Samantha Harvey)

The first of two space books that Anonymous recommended to me. Fortunately, we own both, which means the books I keep purchasing will take up shelf space while I go through the ones I bought a while ago that have been sitting there. This is a tremendous book, an exploration of what it feels like to orbit Earth with six astronauts and cosmonauts. The pacing of this book puts you into a trance that you don’t ever want to put down. It’s another short book; I finished it in two days rather than one, because I enjoy going into the water. I didn’t have to look up so many words in this one.

3. Project Hail Mary (Andy Weir)

Anonymous scheduled us to watch the movie upon our return, but I didn’t realize it because it wasn’t added to the calendar. Therefore, I scheduled a work event for that Sunday, so I will have to see it when it streams. This is easily one of the best books I have ever read. I’m not a huge science fiction guy, but PHM is such a delight. I sped through this book in two days as well. The themes of curiosity, determination, and unlikely friendship are the reasons we read on vacation. I don’t think I would have enjoyed this book as much if I had to read it on the commute to work because I wouldn’t get to work. I would ride the train right out to Dulles airport and then back home until it was finished. I talked about this book with a friend, and we both laughed at the idea that reading it so quickly was partly because we skipped most of the science. So keep that in mind if you aren’t well-versed in how science works, but science folks praise Weir on how real he keeps it.

Okay! I know I keep promising you another VP Ranking, and I keep failing to deliver because work keeps spilling into the week. We will see if I can finish at least one of them and have it for you on Saturday. I appreciate everyone’s patience. At least we aren’t ranking scandals!

Also, Blue is 100% healed. We celebrated by eating pizza on Saturday night.

Thanks for the continued support of Okay History. I’m grateful that you take the time to read and like the essays.

Okay,

Chris

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“I have found out that there ain’t no surer way to find out whether you like people or hate them than to travel with them.” — Mark Twain

I married at 46. I didn’t want to rush into anything. When I mention the age I was when I stood before God, declaring that I took Anonymous to be my wife, people tend to ask me if I was ever married before. It’s not unreasonable to assume that someone like me, a guy with a great set of hair and who writes a mediocre US History blog, would have been snatched up many years prior.

But there are many reasons I denied other women the chance to allow me to bring them coffee in the morning. One important factor was that I never vacationed with anyone I had dated before I met Anonymous. Just like what Mr. Twain said smartly years ago, I never really determined if I liked any of the others, because I decided I never wanted to figure it out by going somewhere and vacationing.

To be fair, I wasn’t good at vacationing for most of my life. To me, there’s an art to vacationing, and I am fortunate that my wife has made a huge difference in my life when it comes to taking a break.

For long-time readers, you know, Anonymous and I have spent time together at St. Martin, a gorgeous Caribbean island directly east of Puerto Rico in the Lesser Antilles. It has two halves and therefore two different experiences. We always stay on the French side, which is the north. It’s like experiencing the Mediterranean, or so Anonymous tells me, because I have never been there, but I do know it’s very different than the Dutch south, which looks too loud and therefore too much for this snob who thinks he has a great set of hair.

But unlike the trip I made four years ago, my brief sabbatical last week was spent on the other side of Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic.

Neither of us had been there before, making last week a rare moment when my wife and I were experiencing the same thing in real time. This might be the second time this has happened. As a spy, Anonymous travels a lot, like this upcoming weekend.

But the Dominican Republic was a lovely place to unwind. If you don’t know anything about the Dominican Republic, here’s the Okay History version:

In 1492, Christopher Columbus arrived and declared the place for Spain. Then, over centuries, they massacred the indigenous people, leaving just a few tens of thousands, who then intermixed with the Spaniards and enslaved Africans. Many centuries passed, and they declared their independence. Then, Haiti took them over. Then they declared their independence. Then France took them over. Then they declared their independence. Then the United States took them over, and later we granted them independence. Then they had about 200 leaders and 75 constitutions until they figured out democracy on their own. The US Ambassador to the Dominican Republic is Secretary Road Rules, sister-in-law.

Today, the Dominican Republic is thriving, producing some of the best professional baseball players (like my all-time favorite – Jose Ramirez), and even though they lost last night in the World Baseball Classic, they are a force on the diamond.

It was a wonderful trip. I read three books (I’ll share the list next week), caught up on sleep, and met almost everyone from Canada. I’m not kidding, every person in the place we stayed was either from Canada or Buffalo. These people understand the art of vacationing.

It’s always fun spending time on vacation apologizing to the nicest people on the planet about our cruel president and his administration. On our final night there, we had the pleasure of meeting a few of Halifax’s finest, who proved their kindness by subscribing. So special welcome to Dave, Ducky, and Ruth!

Okay, let’s highlight what else happened this week. As a reminder, these events mark their anniversary, ending in 5 or 0. Here’s what I got:

1. Vans opened its first store on March 16, 1966. Paul Van Doren founded the Van Doren Rubber Company with his brother James and another guy named Gordon. They started off by selling shoes with thick rubber soles. Paul’s son Mark was into skateboarding, which was all the rage in Anaheim, California. The company shortened its name to Vans, and the “Off the Wall” motto was adopted in 1976 as a reference to skateboarders’ perspectives on life (I’m guessing). I’m bringing this up at this moment in history because Anonymous and I love Vans, and we wore a special pair at our wedding reception. If you were there, you know. Also, I brought a pair on this vacation. I’m “Off the Wall!”

2. Nevada legalized gambling on March 19, 1931. Unlike its neighbor, California, Nevada never had a big gold rush boom in the mid-1800s. Instead, it had a minor silver boom in the early 1900s. Surrounded by desert and not much else, Nevada began a steady decline when the silver mines dried up. Then the Great Depression hit, so in response, the state legalized gambling to bring people in, have them stay, and then lose all their money. The outpost desert town of Las Vegas took off after World War II, thanks to the Mafia, and now gambling is no longer considered a vice, because we walk around with little casinos in our pockets, ready to rob us of our money that we could spend on a cool pair of Vans and be “Off the Wall!”

3. The Social Media network Twitter launched on March 21, 2006. Twitter.com was already owned and being used, so Twitter went by Twttr, which is cool because they left out the vowels. Co-Founder and long-time CEO Jack Dorsey typed the first tweet – a declaration of words within the set limit, with “just setting up my twttr.” The world’s wealthiest man now owns it, and it’s a place where people go and yell at each other over their gambling losses.

Blue did not enjoy our break. Instead, he had surgery on his paw that had developed a cyst. Our poor boy spent the week with a cone on his head at his dog sitter’s, and we hope everything has healed.

I’ll see you on Saturday. I’m a bit behind on the Vice President rankings, so let’s get back at it.

Thanks for supporting Okay History. “Okay” is one of the favorite words in Canada. Have a great week.

Okay,

Chris

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I’m positive I have made this argument before – but history doesn’t work like that. Just knowing something that took place in the past doesn’t mean that you won’t repeat it. If that were the case, things like donuts or re-electing Donald Trump wouldn’t be a thing.

And yet, while I have family arguments about the cost of donuts, I still purchase them from time to time and delight in eating them, while lamenting the weight gain from such actions. Despite the numerous examples of Donald Trump’s inability to be an effective and empathic leader, we managed to bring him back to the White House and now suffer through another act of cruelty.

In what is a regular occurrence of his flip-flopping on important positions, over the weekend, President Trump declared War again on the Islamic Republic of Iran.

The word “again” is notable because last June, the United States and Iran had what is now called the Twelve-Day War. Over the course of twelve days, US Air Force warplanes, supported by Tomahawk missiles from US Navy submarines, along with the Israeli Air Force, struck three nuclear facilities in western Iran with such force that President Trump declared the offensive had completely obliterated the Persian nation’s ability to enrich uranium, an important process if you want to develop nuclear weapons.

But with President Trump, nothing is ever true. Eight months later, he, along with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, decided that Iran was on the cusp of producing, or maybe acquiring, nuclear weapons. Who knows. But three American soldiers have already been killed, while many more have been wounded, since Iran started launching missiles into Israel and American military bases throughout the Middle East.

Did we learn anything from our past? Back in 1991, President George Bush asked the Iraqi people to rise up and overthrow their awful dictator, Saddam Hussein. That didn’t turn out great. So, despite learning that, Donald Trump is using the same playbook by encouraging the Iranian people to also rise up and take over the country. The same country that has been brutalizing its citizens for any dissent for the past 40 years.

History always repeats itself. The United States will always go to war with someone from the Middle East. We continue to have to fight racism despite past efforts that reduced it. The Cleveland Guardians always enter spring training with no serious offensive player to support Jose Ramirez.

Why do we succumb to these repeated outcomes? I have no idea, but it’s terribly frustrating. But remember, if you tell someone we must learn from our history, you are forgetting that learning does not mean we will not repeat.

Okay, let’s highlight what else happened this week. As a reminder, these events mark their anniversary, ending in 5 or 0. Here’s what I got:

1. The “Star-Spangled Banner” was adopted as the national anthem on March 3, 1931. The Star-Spangled Banner was also known as the Great Garrison Flag, stitched together to display the 15 stars and flown over Fort McHenry in Baltimore Harbor. During the Battle of Baltimore in 1814, a DC lawyer, Francis Scott Key, traveled to Baltimore to seek the release of an American prisoner who was being held on a British ship. Key witnessed the battle, which featured hundreds of rockets and bombs bursting into the air. By the dawn’s early light, Key saw that the American Flag was still there, with its broad stripes and bright stars, and wrote a poem on the back of a letter which asked the question: are we the home of the brave? It was then set to music from a popular British drinking song at the time, which is hilariously ironic, yet somehow became so popular that Congress passed a resolution declaring it the official hymn of the nation. President Herbert Hoover signed it into law, giving him at least one checkmark in the “Win” column in an otherwise low-ranking presidency.

2. Rodney King’s beating by the LA Police was caught on videotape on March 3, 1991. King was intoxicated while speeding down California Interstate 210 when police began to chase him. After finally catching him, King would exit the car, get on the ground, and grab his backside, which led the officers to believe he had a weapon. They also believed he was on PCP. Using a maneuver called “Swarm,” four officers proceeded to swarm King, who they also believed was resisting arrest, and beat him with their nightsticks. George Holliday lived across the street and was an amateur videographer who recorded the entire act of violence. He sent the tape to the local news, and King’s beating went viral. The accused officers were acquitted of the crime, and despite learning about the riots of the 1960s, people rioted in the streets of LA for days.

3. Alexander Graham Bell received a patent for the telephone on March 7, 1876. Bell was a Scottish immigrant who arrived in Massachusetts in 1871 to teach deaf students. As a child, Bell dabbled with inventions, and as he grew up, he had a particular interest in whether sound could be transmitted over wires. He experimented with whether sound vibrations could be converted into electrical signals and transmitted over wire — building on the telegraph, which could send coded messages rather than the human voice. The patent would eventually become the telephone, and it’s currently killing us all slowly.

It’s going to be a busy week – but at the end, Anonymous and I head out of the country for a week. We are not going to our usual place but are headed to the Dominican Republic, home of Jose Ramirez, the greatest baseball player ever.

I have a few essays lined up for when I’m gone, but I appreciate your patience as I take this much-needed break from life and winter.

Finally, please keep Blue in your thoughts tomorrow. He heads back to the vet to have a cyst removed from his front right paw. Lumps and bumps are part of the aging process, but we were happy to learn from the Vet that Blue’s blood work is consistent with a two-year-old. Which sounds about right, because he is milking this injury for all it’s worth.

Thank you for your support of Okay History. I hope you have a great week!

Okay,

Chris

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However, that’s never the case when you are someone of status. There’s never just one obit.

Jesse Jackson passed away last Tuesday. He was 84. He was in poor health for some time. In 2017, he was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease, the same affliction of his father, Noah Louis Robinson, who died in 1997 at the age of 88. His family stated he passed in comfort, surrounded by family.

Jackson’s status in American history is why this edition of Maundy Monday Newsletter is another essay about his life, his legacy, and my reflection on both.

Jackson was born out of wedlock in Greenville, South Carolina, at the beginning of World War II. I mentioned this intentionally because his acceptance of the circumstances surrounding his conception became a core ethos to a man who would become one of the most influential civil rights leaders in American annals.

While Robinson was his biological father, Jackson’s mother married another man, and Jesse adopted his stepfather’s last name while maintaining a close relationship with Robinson. The complicated bonds of Jackson’s parents are the perfect example of how Jesse Jackson viewed the world – he wanted everyone in his life to be connected, respected, and loved.

Jackson was a gifted student in academics and athletics. He finished near the top of his high school class and earned a football scholarship to the University of Illinois. He left after a year and attended North Carolina A&T, where, like me, he was incredibly popular and served as a student government president. After graduating in 1964, Jackson immersed himself in the civil rights movement, participating in the Selma marches and impressing Martin Luther King, who placed him into leadership positions in the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.

Jackson was a member of King’s inner circle and was with him in Memphis on the fatal day in April 1968. After MLK’s assassination, Jackson would attempt to carry out King’s dream of America living up to its promise of creating equal opportunity for all people.

In 1971, Jackson founded the nonprofit, People United to Save (Serve) Humanity (PUSH). He would also begin another nonprofit, the Rainbow Coalition, in 1983. By 1996, he merged the two, and the Rainbow PUSH Coalition is a leading social justice and civil rights advocacy organization.

After Ronald Reagan won the White House in 1980, Jackson continued to rise as an opposition leader to the religious conservatism that was sweeping the United States. Jackson would run for the Democratic party nomination twice that decade, finishing third in 1984, which turned into a Reagan resounding victory, and second in 1988, behind the eventual loser to Reagan’s vice president, George HW Bush.

But it was that run in 1988 that planted a seed which would bear fruit twenty years later – when America finally elected its first black president.

I was twelve during the 1988 presidential election and in the 7th grade. It was this grade that my religious education and faith grew in awareness and intensity (for a teenager) due to the exceptional teacher I had – Regina Courey, a former nun who was a demanding instructor in many subjects, especially religion.

During Advent, as we prepare for God’s incarnation as Jesus Christ, we learned about the concept of “The Root of Jesse.” Its essence is that Jesus can trace his lineage through human history to Jesse, who was King David’s father. Jesus, therefore, fulfils what the prophet Isiah proclaimed that a savior would be: “A shoot shall sprout from the stump of Jesse, and from his roots a bud shall blossom.”

Jesse Jackson’s successful ascent from activism to major party politics paved the way for future Democrats like Obama and Kamala Harris to be seen as viable and serious candidates. His positions on lifting up and protecting the poor and working-class citizens didn’t resonate with the electorate until people like Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren came close to securing the nomination with similar platforms.

His gift as an effective orator helped push a progressive agenda that included positions ahead of their time, such as equality for the LGBTQ+ community, reparations for the descendants of enslaved people, and universal healthcare. He also pushed to cut defense spending and reduce the use of nuclear weapons, positions that were the antithesis of the Cold War era.

Despite his political defeats, Jackson cemented his place as an elder statesman in the Democratic Party. He walked picket lines with striking union workers, he called for a free Palestine, and he negotiated the release of an American pilot held in Syria.

While he received many accolades, such as the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2000, he was the scorn of right-wing conservative politicians and media mouthpieces. His positions in the Middle East and statements about Jews who live in New York City were controversial and antisemitic. He admitted to an affair, as his mother and father had, and it resulted in the same out-of-wedlock child that stains the religious leader. But Jackson took responsibility for missteps, something his detractors never could be bothered with.

Which is why, reading about Jackson this week, there are numerous references to times when Jesse Jackson made mistakes or was painted unfairly to advance a narrative that served the privileged.

This is the consequence of a life of status. We remembered Jesse Jackson this week, and while you may have read a lot about his flaws, let us not forget the good he did in faithfully serving his country and the God he loved.

Okay, let’s highlight what else happened this week. As a reminder, these events mark their anniversary, ending in 5 or 0. Here’s what I got:

1. The battle of the Alamo began on February 23, 1836. The Alamo Mission was built in 1718, two years after the Spanish government began to expand its influence over what is now South Texas. The Mission served as a hub for the Catholic Church in its efforts to convert native tribes. During the Texas Republic War of Independence, Mexican President General Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna attacked the 100 Texas soldiers stationed there. The battle lasted 13 days and resulted in Mexico’s victory, reclaiming the site. “Remember the Alamo” became a rallying cry, and a few months later, at the Battle of San Jacinto, a resounding Texas victory secured its independence. Texas has been an unbearable loudmouth about it ever since.

2. The twenty-second amendment to the US Constitution was ratified on February 25, 1951. After a repeated beatdown at the election polls by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the Republican Party and 47 Democrats passed an amendment that would prevent future presidents from living in the White House, seemingly forever. It was a top-ten Constitution Amendment in our amendment ranking back in 2023, and I hope it can hold the line in about two years.

3. President John F. Kennedy founded the Peace Corps on March 1, 1961. In 1957, then-Massachusetts Congressman John F. Kennedy proposed sending recent American college graduates to the Middle East, “bringing technical advice and assistance to the underprivileged.” A few years later, JFK was president and created a federal program that would serve as a mission of democracy worldwide, expanding US influence. Over 240,000 Americans have served in the Peace Corps, and the agency currently works in 60 countries. I think I have applied for a few jobs at the Peace Corps over the years, never even got an interview. America apparently likes me right where I am.

I didn’t like Jesse Jackson when I was 12. I also didn’t like strawberries. But both positions flipped over the course of a lifetime. As I have grown up, I have come to accept rather quickly that, as a curious and introspective person, I can afford myself the grace to adopt ideas and positions I didn’t always share.

One example of my change in position is when the Cleveland Indians changed their name four years ago to the Guardians. For many years, I was an adherent Chief Wahoo supporter. But over time, my feelings changed. Mix in a better understanding of the plight of indigenous people, coming to terms with the undeniable racist caricature logo (while watching fellow Indian fans wear red face to games), and many seasons that fell short of winning a World Series, and I was done.

But selfishly, I’m relieved that no one will write about my mistakes or the people that I have upset. We know there will never be a story about any election losses (7-0). That hasn’t elevated me to any status outside of my mind.

Okay! Long MMN this week. That’s what happens when you take a week off to launch the 5th anniversary.

As a reminder, I’ll be publishing a second essay (either rankings, Even More Okay, or perhaps an Ask Me Anything) on Saturday morning. Please let me know if you like the change. Or not. I’m willing to take either!

The snow is back in town, at the beginning of a busy week for me. I hope it’s a good one for you.

Thanks for the support. I’m grateful to you all.

Okay,

Chris

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In my unexpert opinion, the best hockey is currently being played in Milan, Italy, during the 2026 Winter Olympics. Although I do not consider myself a hockey expert, or even a casual fan.1 I am fortunate to live in a city with a public transit system and a hockey team.2 I feel that elevates your intelligence status3 because you live in an elite international metropolis.

Inhabiting an elite international metropolis, while not being even the slightest enthusiast in any subject, should never stop anyone from making declarative statements, and in turn, from anyone reading them. So here’s my superior, intelligent position on hockey: Olympic hockey is better because it appears to be faster than regular-season games in the National Hockey League.4 Also, one good nuance between the two games is that Olympic hockey also lacks a role typically found on every professional league team – the Enforcer.

The Enforcer has a unique role in sports. Despite its existence, it’s not listed as an official position on any roster list. I can’t think of another sport with a specific player whose job is defined by a single action beyond the simple position.

But to hockey teams, the Enforcer is an essential player because his assignment on the ice is to strike fear and intimidate the opposing team, while at the same time protecting the star player5. The Enforcer can turn a hockey game into a bar brawl.6

“The tough-guy” responsibility evolved over time as teams discovered that, in exchange for penalty minutes racked up by one player, they could increase their win total. The Enforcer role entered its golden era in the 1970s, when championship teams had the “old school goon” who looked like a bouncer and was paid even less, doled out punishment for any reason – to change momentum, for protection, or to draw penalties. They lacked skills such as defending, scoring, and passing.7 Enforcers are characters in the hockey universe and have villainous names like “The Big Dog,” “Tank,” and my personal favorite, “Spicy Tuna.”

What hockey discovered success through brute force, the same can be said of politics.

Politics can easily be described as a “Street Fight.”8 Someone who runs an office or holds an elected position is expected to be a “fighter” or willing to “fight”. In the social media world of the 21^st century, demonstrating your toughness is critical to your political success and advancement. In presidential politics, who you choose as your running mate indicates how much you embrace the idea that you need someone to enforce your positions and set the expectations to the voting public that your opponent is hot garbage that should never be elected.

We all understand that during a presidential election, the candidates will let zingers fly and provide the red meat to their base on the campaign trail, but the vice president position has evolved into the Enforcer of the president.

Just as the NHL Philadelphia Flyers were winning Stanley Cups in the 1970s, the term “attack dog” was beginning to take hold as vice presidential lingo. In 1976,9 Pulitzer Prize columnist Mary McGrory described then Republican vice-presidential candidate Bob Dole as an “attack dog” partisan, a person on the ticket who was “a bone thrown to the smoldering right.”

McGrory correctly predicted that Dole and his boss, a former vice president himself, Gerald Ford, would lose that fall election.

Over the past 50 years, the term “attack dog” has stuck. During the last election in 2024, I dreamed of a Vice President Coach, but his attack skills were no match for the Not Rated, name-changing current Vice President, who employs his attack dog mentality to denigrate mothers who were murdered by federal agents.

We can trace the beginnings of the presidential attack-dog-enforcer role even further back. This is where we begin our next round of vice president rankings and the guys who defined their enforcer ways – forever entrenching them as bad vice presidents and showing us that being the goon is politically advantageous, but democratically corrosive.

Let’s Dive in.

50: Richard Nixon

36^th Vice President

Term – January 20, 1953 – January 20, 1961

Presidential Administration: Dwight Eisenhower’s Two Terms (Okay History 2021 Presidential Ranking: 5)

The Good:
Nixon envisioned a modern vice presidency where he could cultivate his foreign affairs chops and lean into his aggressiveness, which is pretty much the only reason Dwight agreed to put him on the ticket in the first place. The General wanted no part of the attack dog persona attached to him. Nixon was happy to oblige and, in the first campaign, went after President Truman’s administration for a variety of perceived incompetencies.

The Bad:

Right off the bat, after accepting the vice presidential nomination in the 1952 presidential election, Nixon was caught up in a scandal involving financial backers who paid his campaign expenses. Many in the country considered this a conflict of interest and called for Eisenhower to drop Nixon from the ticket because Dick wasn’t going to resign. This led to Nixon’s famous speech about his dog.10 Nixon also struggled to impress during his famous 1959 ‘Kitchen Debate’ with Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev.

Did he become president?

He sure did! Nixon would become the 39^th president, and he was not okay!

Why did I rank him here?

Nixon was unrelenting when it came to becoming the president. In his mind, securing the vice president was a critical step in that direction, while having the endorsement of the popular Eisenhower as proof of his worthiness. But it was Eisenhower who put it best when asked about Nixon’s contributions as Number #2 - “If you give me a week, I might think of one.” Nixon’s behavior was rewarded, and we have forever suffered from this form of government with cruelty since.

49: Spiro Agnew

39^th Vice President

Term – January 20, 1969 – October 10, 1973

Presidential Administration: Richard Nixon’s Two Terms (Okay History 2021 Presidential Ranking: 34)

The Good:
Much like his boss and the current vice president, Agnew shared the same appetite when it came to being an “attack dog.” He discovered his bombastic skills while Governor of Maryland. During the racial tension of the late 1960s, Agnew would spar with civil rights leaders over a black student activist who delivered a speech so passionate it inspired riots in the college town of Cambridge, Maryland. Agnew emerged as the “law and order” governor, who believed that activists should be thrown in jail and then the key thrown away.

The Bad:

Agnew looooooved corruption. Just as he was discovering what a jerk he could be as the chief executive of a highly ranked state, he also began to realize he could squeeze payments out of companies for government contracts. And since neither behavior prevented him from ascending to the Number 2 position in the country, he continued. It was only after being discovered and threatened by a long prison term that Agnew resigned in disgrace.

Did he become president?

No, he did not.11 But he initiated the unprecedented set of circumstances of allowing the president of the United States to assume the office, having never been elected to either position in the executive branch. Instead of not having a Vice President and allowing the succession to pass to Carl Albert,12 then the Speaker of the House, we had three vice presidents in just six months. That’s like having three couches in your bathroom – what are we doing here?

Why did I rank him here?

Spiro Agnew’s saving grace was that his demise occurred before Watergate came to light, and for the most part, he is forgotten. He landed his role because he was a first-rate dirtbag, hired by an astronomical narcissist. On top of that, he was a corrupt loser.

Okay, that’s TWO ranking essays this week. How does it feel? Feels good, doesn’t it? I feel good. Do you like the Saturday posting? I’m really hoping you do!

I’m back on Monday with the usual Maundy Monday Newsletter, so you won’t miss out on what’s happening in the week of history. Until then, have a great week.

Don’t forget – the United States and Canada in the Men’s hockey final. Do we sweep our neighbors to the north after our women won gold earlier this week?

Appreciate you all!

Okay,

Chris

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About three weeks before Ronald Reagan would be sworn in as the 40^th president of the United States, I turned five. “The Great Communicator” would become one of the most consequential presidents in our history. Evidence of that was his landing in the top ten of the inaugural Okay History Presidential Rankings.

There’s not much I remember about turning five. But according to scientists, turning five marks the time when your brain becomes attuned to learning, playing, and speaking. There’s no doubt that I was impressive as a five-year-old, having established that despite numerous talents, I would need all sorts of help to function later in life.

And the fruits of that village-like assistance came to bear in 2021, when the rankings of Reagan and the other US presidents launched Okay History on Presidents’ Day. A few weeks before this incredible moment in history that can never be repeated took place, former Vice President Joe Biden walked into the Oval Office and began his best effort to wipe away the stains of his predecessor, a president who tried in vain to overturn his defeat in 2020 election by encouraging his supporters to embrace violence and storm the Capitol, subverting certification and keep him in power.1

Here we are, after those humble beginnings, Okay History is now five years in – almost 400 masterfully argued essays published.2 Meanwhile, in an unexpected plot twist, after those successful Biden years3 America decided it needed to bring Donald Trump back as president. Despite a laundry list of offenses that makes the term laundry list woefully short, Americans ignored or looked past a man who was twice impeached, convicted of thirty-four felonies of business fraud, federally indicted for mishandling federal documents, and also indicted forty-one times by the state of Georgia for election fraud involving his reelection.4

However, just like any five-year-old, Donald Trump has many talents. If you believe him, he is a championship-level golfer, peacemaker, and stalwart on the economy. But at his best, President Trump has the astonishing skill to convince people that the reality we all live in is, in fact, not real. Take, for instance, the election process. Trump has consistently presented the idea that somehow the Democratic Party mishandled its ability to steal elections in 2016 and 2024, when they and the “Deep State” were in charge, bumbling each, therefore handing him his rightfully earned victories, won by prodigiously wide margins. In turn, Deep State Democrats were brilliantly covert in stealing the election in between, when presumably Trump and his Make America Great Again Anti-Woke Warriors would have been positioned to have already dismantled the unelected bureaucracy that has supposedly rotted the government for generations.5

And it’s this idea, this consistent and repeated manipulation of what is fiction and what is not, that leads us to our latest round of ranking stuff – ranking all the Vice Presidents of the United States.6

I’m sure you are asking, “Wait, what?”

I’m happy to explain.

At his core, Trump is a narcissist. A narcissist holds negative values. One example of this is that everyone other than the narcissist is fundamentally wretched. The only way a narcissist can gain power and hold it is by surrounding themselves with people who are brazenly committed to protecting the narcissist’s image, promoting their self-importance, and attacking the credibility and dignity of anyone who challenges them.

Basically, a narcissist needs their sycophants.

Sycophants are worse than the narcissists themselves7, because their drive to gain and maintain approval motivates them to create narratives that people with shorter attention spans than five-year-olds will not only understand but readily accept. The consequences of such relationships and engagement mean people in this country no longer have access to affordable things like eggs or to due process.

And unfortunately for America, we have one big lickspittle currently inhabiting Number One Observatory Circle.

I’m on record stating that the office of vice president is unessential. I think the current occupant and the lead-off for this edition of rankings is a perfect example of why this office doesn’t need to exist.

The Founders initially tended to agree with my position. About the only thing the Articles of Confederation got right was the exclusion of the office of the vice president. But when they crumpled up that form of government and started over, framers of this federal constitutional republic reversed their decision and inserted the vice presidency into the Constitution at the last minute. Even then, they still messed it up.

Despite creating the position along with the terrible Electoral College in Article II, Section I, our representatives needed to correct a damaging flaw in the way we elect both a president and a vice president. This resulted in an additional Constitutional Amendment to further define this useless position that one vice president,8 described as “the spare tire on the automobile of government.9

I’ll save more opinions about this non-practical position over the course of the year.10 But for now, we got 50 people to get through, so let’s dive in and discuss the current guy and why he is the worst.

NR: James David Vance

50^th Vice President

Term – January 20, 2025 – Incumbent

Presidential Administration: Donald Trump, Second Term (Okay History 2021 Presidential Rank: 44)

The Good:
Let me be clear here. The “good” I’m going to describe means “good at lacking integrity.”11 Vance reminds me of a former boss. This person presents herself quite well. She runs good meetings and can moderate panels with relative ease12 and comes across as intelligent in client meetings. Working with her, however, is another thing. She is practically a different person. She lacks the experience to understand the nuances of the client’s job, is deficient in innovation or expertise, and, worst of all, throws people under the bus when it looks like the truth about her flaws is about to see the light of day.

This bozo boss is the quintessential sycophant for the big boss, who is a standard narcissist and has definitely voted for Trump three times.13

Vice President Vance14 presents the intellectual weight behind MAGA. Vance has a tone in his interviews that effectively delivers messages to people who don’t like being spoken down to, even as they don’t realize an Ivy League grad elite is playing them. Whereas Trump throws a tantrum that would rival any five-year-old when berating anyone who stands up to or questions him, Vance’s calm approach can present his disagreement with the opposition in a way that sounds reasonable.

Another way of putting it - he’s very good at lacking honor.

The Bad:

At one point, Vance was an Anti-Trumper. At one point, he was also known as James Donald Bowman.15 Vance once described his boss as “America’s Hitler,” but that all changed when presented with power.

The vice president converted to Catholicism in 2019, and two years later, he converted to MAGAism when he ran for the Senate in his home state of Ohio.16 I feel for his former friends, who can’t believe or understand his turn in politics. I speak from experience. I used to like this former boss, but when she pushes you in front of the bus the narcissistic big boss is driving, you tend to change your mind.

All of that is to say, James Donald Bowman is never coming back. And I will never get these tire tracks off my back.

Did he become president?

This is the standard question for these rankings going forward, and while it doesn’t pertain to this situation, it’s important to note that Vance won’t necessarily ascend to the presidency.

Becoming president is a difficult challenge, regardless of your situation. As we saw in 2024, being the vice president means you are attached to all the bad your boss has done. It’s also worth noting that the MAGA cultists do not hold Vance in the same regard as their cult leader.

Should Trump not run in 2028 for whatever reason, it’s going to be an all-out bloodbath of a Republican primary if we are fortunate enough to hold one.17

Why did I rank him here?

Vance has been on the job for a little over a year.18 He’s terrible, which isn’t surprising. However, do not be fooled by a guy who changes his views, his name, and religion depending on the opportunities presented to him at any given time.

During his short time as a United States Senator, Vance partnered with Democratic Senators on numerous occasions to pass legislation that required critical thinking skills to pass. Now that he no longer has an actual job, other than lecturing to whomever the Bishop of Rome is, and giving interviews on shows he argues no one watches, Vance is a dangerously disingenuous person who wakes up every morning and says, “Yes, I like how my eyes look.”

Okay! So what do you think? Do we like this year’s ranking? Not a fan? Please comment below.

Important essay scheduling note as we move into year six: I will keep posting the Maundy Monday Newsletter19 But moving forward, I will send out an essay on Saturday morning rather than Friday. I need the extra day – it’s just too challenging right now with everything that I am working on20 to keep it within the work week. I hope you like this move. Please let me know.21

One last note about the weekend. Saturday was my Dad’s birthday. He would have been 83. He passed away in the summer of 2015, and here’s the essay I wrote about him on that anniversary.

I miss my Dad very much, but really, I wish he could pull some strings up in heaven to get the Cleveland Guardians a World Series. Or at least help with them and walk the guys who are really good hitters.

Have a great week. I’ll see you on Saturday with the next set of rankings. Appreciate you.

Okay,

Chris

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As it carves through the land, it forms the eastern boundaries of Nebraska and Kansas and the upper northwest of the state that bears its name. The Missouri River then cuts east before it reaches its mouth. This area of Missouri is known as “Little Dixie” because white migrant settlers from Virginia, Tennessee, and Kentucky traveled there in the late 18^th and early 19^th centuries and brought along their enslaved people. It encompasses about 13 counties, give or take, and in 1860, the enslaved people made up about 10% of the population. I’m sure it’s just lovely.

“Little Dixie” is the place where Jesse Woodson James was born in 1847. Jesse’s father was a Baptist minister who would head west to California in search of gold and meet a tragic death. Jesse and his older brother, Frank, would live chaotic lives as the march toward the American Civil War intensified throughout their youth. When the Kansas-Nebraska Act was passed in 1854, Missouri and its neighbors would begin engaging in violent actions against each other over the expansion of slavery.

The James Brothers would eventually fall into a group of Missourians called “Bushwackers” who were Pro-Confederacy. When the war broke out, the James boys were engaged in heavy guerrilla activities against Union troops. This includes the Centralia Massacre, where Jesse, under the leadership of some loser named “Bloody Bill” Anderson, summarily executed 24 Union soldiers that surrendered to them after traveling through “Little Dixie” on a train. No one ever paid the price for this war crime, and Frank and Jesse would survive the war but never feel defeated.

After the war, and clearly frustrated with their disappointed, hateful lives, Jesse and Frank would continue their act of violent crime by forming a gang with another guy named Cole Younger and his equally dysfunctional brothers. The “James-Younger Gang” began their decade-long terror campaign when they committed the first daylight robbery during peacetime on February 12, 1866, at the Clay County Savings Bank in Liberty, Missouri.

The heist netted nearly $60,000, which would be $1.2 million in today’s money.

Their confidence grew, and the gang branched out, robbing banks in Kentucky, Iowa, and Minnesota. It was in Minnesota that it all came to an end. The Younger brothers were captured, while the James brothers fled to Tennessee to live in peace until the urge to rob banks in Missouri returned a few years later in 1879. Three years after that, another criminal named Bob Ford shot and killed Jesse James. Ford was pardoned for the murder by the Missouri governor, who desperately wanted the state rid of the James Brothers at any cost. Frank surrendered to the authorities, would live another 30 years, and hold odd jobs, including work as a theater ticket-taker guy.

I bring this story up because the president of the university where I attended and was widely popular used to call my brother and me the “James Brothers,” and I wonder if that meant he thought we were bad guys. I don’t think so, but it makes you wonder.

Okay, let’s highlight what else happened this week. As a reminder, these events mark their anniversary, ending in 5 or 0. Here’s what I got:

1. A US nuclear sub struck a Japanese fishing boat on February 9, 2001. USS Greeneville was demonstrating its capabilities to various civilian VIPs, including a random sports columnist, when it sped to the surface from the Pacific Ocean and collided with a Japanese fishing boat carrying 35 passengers, mostly students and teachers. Nine people died when the ship sank, and the submarine’s captain refused to apologize for the incident. It caused serious harm to the US-Japan diplomatic relations. It would be another 20 years before the captain finally relented and penned an apology.

2. The second impeachment trial of President Donald Trump began on February 9, 2021. About a month after instigating an insurrection to try to overturn the 2020 presidential election, the Senate held the second and likely not final impeachment of Trump. The only impeachment after a president left office was used as an excuse for Republican senators not to convict him and provide him with yet another chance at political life, which he has used with vengeance. Remember that President Andrew Johnson survived removal from office by one vote.

3. Halley’s Comet last neared Earth on February 9, 1986. The first sighting of this ball of gas and other chemicals was back in 240 BC. The last approach, 40 years ago, was considered the least favorable for observing it because it would put most people and the comet on opposite sides of the sun. Does that sound right? I have no idea, I don’t remember much of Halley’s Comet when I was ten, but I’m sure it was fantastic. It will return in 2061, and I doubt I’ll be alive. Now I’m wondering why I bothered listing it, but I’ve come this far. I still can’t come to terms with the fact that 1986 was 40 years ago.

I hope you enjoyed the Super Bowl and, more importantly, the halftime show. I thought it was a great performance. I don’t know Bad Bunny very well, but it’s a 13-minute performance that didn’t ruin my life, forcing me to watch some other concert. In fact, it reminded me a lot of West Side Story, the groundbreaking musical from the 1960s that pitted American teenagers fighting Puerto Rican immigrant kids over turf and integration. It was just a lot of fun – we need more of that.

In more important news - next week is Presidents’ Day – which means Okay History celebrates an anniversary. This year marks five years since I launched the site – beginning with my trademark essays – ranking the presidents of the United States.

Which means, after the debacle of last year’s political scandals rankings, which I hope to return to someday, this year’s rankings will have less hype and be more in line with boring American history figures.

I bet you can’t wait to begin!

Okay, it’s Monday. I hope this week is a good one, and as always, I remain grateful for your continued support.

Okay,

Chris

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Since the beginning of time, we have always tried to predict the weather, a task that is extremely difficult to do, considering we occupy a ball of gases, water, and rocks floating in space, going around a massive nuclear star that provides us warmth if we are tipped toward it in a certain way.

Still, getting a sense of what the weather might do next is something we’ve been determined to master. Early civilizations looked to the stars, convinced they offered clues about incoming storms. Thinkers like Aristotle tried to explain rain and thunder primarily through observation and speculation. In many ways, being a “weather guy” has always been a bit of a racket.

As our technology advanced, we better understood how pressure, moisture, and temperature interact. Instead of looking up and writing down our thoughts, we would send up a balloon with contraptions that collected this information.

Fast forward to the Space Age.

In the 1960s, the United States started launching weather satellites into space. The first was in April 1960, but this week, on February 3, 1966, NASA launched ESSA-1, the first of a series of satellites to collect weather data over Earth.

The difference with the ESSA satellites is that they spin, unlike their predecessors. Which, I guess, means they last longer in observing Earth’s cloud cover as it rotates. At least that’s all I can figure out, considering I took one science class growing up. Whatever, this isn’t Okay Science.

Either way, these satellites help meteorologists get a sense of what Mother Nature has in store for us, like the massive storm that hit us last week. I knew I was in trouble with ice when the storm shifted north, meaning Washington, DC, would get more sleet, which we did. It was a lovely coating of ice over 6 inches of snow. I can feel the complaints rising in my head as I type this out. The point is that spinning satellites in space helped me understand what the weather would be like.

I can’t imagine not having a weather forecast. Fortunately, we have these satellites above us, spinning, collecting data, and taking pictures for us to joke about how wrong they are.

Okay, let’s highlight what else happened this week. As a reminder, these events mark their anniversary, ending in 5 or 0. Here’s what I got:

1. Doctors in New York successfully performed the world’s first face and double-hand transplant on February 4, 2021. In 2018, 18-year-old Joe DiMeo was in a serious car accident when he was asleep at the wheel, returning home from a late-night shift at work. Roughly 80% of his body suffered third-degree burns, costing him essential body parts, like his lips and fingers. A medical team of 140 practitioners spent 23 hours in surgery, giving him the face of a 47-year-old man who donated it. DiMeo continues to recover and is now happily married to a nurse.

2. Delegates from six southern states met to form the Confederate States of America on February 4, 1861. After years of tension over slavery, especially its expansion, many southern states threatened to secede from the Union if the country elected a Republican president. After the 1860 election, which ushered in Abraham Lincoln to the White House, South Carolina announced its independence. Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, and Mississippi sent delegates to Montgomery, Alabama, to hammer out details and form the Confederate States of America. Five days later, they named Jefferson Davis of Mississippi as president, and the march to the Civil War was on.

3. NASA’s Apollo 14 mission landed on the Moon on February 5, 1971. This was the third time we put men on the moon, and for some reason, these men decided to hit a golf ball and throw a javelin, which I guess landed in the same crater. I’m starting to agree with the conspiracy theorists that this was staged. We would continue to send guys up there through the following December.

I spent last week sheltering inside the house, and over the past weekend, I finally pulled the ice sheets from my car—such a great time.

Hopefully, by tomorrow, it will get over 32 degrees and begin to melt this stuff. I have a feeling it’s going to be a long time before all of it is gone.

Two quick things:

1. Happy Black History Month. Here’s a refresher from what I wrote two years ago about its history.

2. Thanks to a few of you who have upgraded your subscriptions. This allowed me to have a moment where I was trending in the history section of Substack newsletters. I made it up to #45! Pretty cool.

Okay, another week ahead. I hope it’s a good one. Stay warm. Appreciate you.

Okay,

Chris

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I miss the days when I was a child, and I got out of school because of the snow. Being an adult is okay. It has its rewards, like going to bed when you want. But unlike school, adult work is never cancelled, especially since adults invented technology that keeps us productive.

Really would love to thank the adults who made this possible.

While “Snow Days” were the best, being out of school because of parent/teacher conferences was a close second. You remember these, right? Your parents would take off work, drive to the school, and sit with one of your teachers for about an hour, who would describe how you behave every day. As an adult, you are probably doing this for your children, which is a downside because you leave your work to do other work.

There’s one particular parent/teacher conference that stands out for me and how it connects to our focused history lesson this week. My family moved down the interstate from Cleveland to Columbus in the summer of 1985. In January 1986, my mom and dad experienced the parent/teacher summit in the new Catholic school for the first time. They met my fourth-grade teacher, Mrs. O’Donnell, a lovely woman, who no doubt explained to them that their son was full of energy but appeared to struggle with just a few basic subjects, like math, science, and reading. As a lovely woman, Mrs. O’Donnell probably gave them hope by highlighting my attentiveness in religion classes and my ability to retain information delivered by Jesus.

The exact date of this meeting was January 28, 1986. Since it was parent/teacher conference day, my sister and I stayed home and watched television all day, without worrying that our parents would realize in real time they were wasting their hard-earned money on the early education of their idiotic youngest.

It was a big day for the country. The Space Shuttle Challenger was set to launch. So my sister and I turned on the small TV we’d placed on the kitchen table, since it was close to lunchtime, and watched Peter Jennings on ABC News.

I’ll never forget not understanding what I watched as 73 seconds after takeoff, the Space Shuttle exploded, killing all seven people on board.

This is what we learned: Due to the cold weather, an O-ring seal failure caused a booster to fail immediately after the launch. This failure caused burning gas to reach the outside of the Shuttle to the external fuel tank. The entire rocket was destroyed, and America lost Francis Scobee, Michael Smith, Ronald McNair, Ellison Onizuka, Judith Resnik, Gregory Jarvis, and Christa McAuliffe. McAuliffe was a school teacher, and her opportunity to go into space was witnessed by millions of students, like me, across the country.

President Ronald Reagan was supposed to give the State of the Union address that night, but instead he spoke to the nation for about 5 minutes. It was a solemn, elegant speech, addressed to the families who had lost loved ones, helped a nation heal, and spoke directly to children like me who were trying to understand what happened.

My favorite part of Reagan’s address is towards the end.

“The crew of the space shuttle Challenger honored us by the manner in which they lived their lives. We will never forget them, nor the last time we saw them, this morning, as they prepared for their journey and waved goodbye and “slipped the surly bonds of earth” to ‘touch the face of God.’”

Okay, let’s highlight what else happened this week. As a reminder, these events mark their anniversary, ending in 5 or 0. Here’s what I got:

1. The U.S. Air Force started atomic testing on January 27, 1951. Operation Ranger was the first time the United States dropped nuclear bombs domestically. The first device, called “Able,” was a one-kiloton blast that landed on a dry lakebed at Frenchman Flat in the Nevada desert. I have no idea what a one-kiloton is, see 4^th grade report above, but it sounds like a lot. It took us 100 tests over the years to begin to understand that it was having a negative health impact on locals. So we did another 26 and called it quits. The last one we did was in the 1990s. In October, President Trump stated he wanted to restart the program.

2. Louis Brandeis was appointed as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court on January 28, 1916. Nominated by President Woodrow Wilson and confirmed with the vote from a Nebraska Republican who proposed the Twentieth Amendment to the United States Constitution, Brandeis would become the first Jewish American on the bench. Known as the “People’s Lawyer,” Brandeis advocated for social justice and the breaking up of monopolies. Wish we had him on the bench right now – he sounded awesome.

3. White supremacist terrorists bombed Martin Luther King Jr’s home on January 30, 1956. A month after Rosa Parks sparked a boycott of the Montgomery Bus system and launched King into the national spotlight, and consequently a target for white supremacists. While King was preaching at a church, a man drove to his house, walked up, and tossed an explosive on the porch. It caused some damage, but did not harm King’s wife, Coretta Scott King, and their daughter, Yolanda, who were inside. Despite the attempted murder, King reiterated his non-violent approach. “I want you to love our enemies.” The suspect was never caught.

Vivek Murthy is about a year younger than me, but unlike me, he was a good student growing up, which led him to become the 19^th and 21^st Surgeon General of the United States. In 2023, he declared loneliness a health epidemic. He said that Americans had been trending this way for many years, but COVID exponentially accelerated the problem.

Loneliness can affect anyone at any time. I have experienced loneliness plenty of times throughout my life. I know, it sounds crazy, a guy like me with great hair, but it’s true. When you feel like everyone’s against you, you become overwhelmed by anxiety, depression, and anger, all of these interconnected feelings that can have devastating impacts on your mental health.

When you can’t think straight, and loneliness takes hold of you, you seek out belonging and purpose. An unfortunate outcome could lead someone to join a cult. One expert in cult psychology, Margaret Singer, says there are six conditions for cult leaders to succeed with people. One stands out for me:

Create a closed system of logic and an authoritarian structure that cannot be changed by anyone other than the individual(s) in charge.

“Create a closed system of logic…that cannot be changed by anyone other than the people in charge….”

That’s what we’re living in right now.

The United States executed another protester in Minnesota on Saturday, this time an ICU nurse who worked at the Veterans Hospital, who was trying to assist a fellow protester. Both were expressing their God-given First Amendment rights.

His name was Alex Pretti. On Friday, anyone who would describe him would use the present tense, but because we live in a world where lonely people have found purpose and belonging in a cult, Alex can now only be referred to in the past tense.

The US has now murdered a poet and a nurse in broad daylight on public streets. Just like I was in the 4^th grade, I watched this tragedy on television, but this time, instead of the president of the United States speaking to me to help me understand what happened, we have people in his administration trying to control the logic of what they want you to think happened.

It’s terrible to imagine that only Trump can change the way many lonely people think.

I hope the weather hasn’t wrecked your weekend or caused any issues with the upcoming week. I think this type of situation is a nice reminder to slow down and enjoy the gifts we have in being warm and safe.

Blue in particular loves this weather. He can never hide as he bounces through the snow, his favorite pastime that doesn’t come along often.

Have a good week. Appreciate you.

Okay,

Chris

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