Meme Scholar with Madness (PhD)

[EndtheMadnessNow]

Someone just gave Donald Trump his Teddy Roosevelt moment. On the left is President Teddy Roosevelt after getting shot in 1912. On the right is Donald Trump after getting shot in 2024.

Theodore Roosevelt’s opening line was hardly remarkable for a presidential campaign speech: “Friends, I shall ask you to be as quiet as possible.” His second line, however, was a bombshell.

“I don’t know whether you fully understand that I have just been shot.”

Clearly, Roosevelt had buried the lede. The horrified audience in the Milwaukee Auditorium on October 14, 1912, gasped as the former president unbuttoned his vest to reveal his bloodstained shirt. “It takes more than that to kill a bull moose,” the wounded candidate assured them. He reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a bullet-riddled, 50-page speech. Holding up his prepared remarks, which had two big holes blown through each page, Roosevelt continued. “Fortunately I had my manuscript, so you see I was going to make a long speech, and there is a bullet—there is where the bullet went through—and it probably saved me from it going into my heart. The bullet is in me now, so I cannot make a very long speech, but I will try my best.”

When Teddy Roosevelt Was Shot in 1912

Damn, what a day in America.




Lights out!!

Why the 1977 Blackout Was One of New York’s Darkest Hours

The blackout that hit New York on this day, July 13, in 1977 was to many a metaphor for the gloom that had already settled on the city. An economic decline, coupled with rising crime rates and the panic-provoking (and paranoia-inducing) Son of Sam murders, had combined to make the late 1970s New York’s Dark Ages.

Then lightning struck, and the city went dark for real. By the time the power came back, 25 hours later, arsonists had set more than 1,000 fires and looters had ransacked 1,600 stores, per the New York Times.

Incredible, but real. From 1980...Gov't approved Home Fallout Shelter Snack Bar for the prudent nuclear family...


...with JFK on the right. My uncle built one of these back in 1980, complete with liquor bar, wine cellar, TV, & board games and all the bar ornaments. He was a meteorologist and was prepared for tornadoes and whatever else might blow his way. It was very cool!

Government Approved Home Fallout Shelter snack bar (April 1980)

The End Of The World: Contemporary Visions of the Apocalypse (1983)

Fallout Shelter snack bar Video Installation


Roger Fisher's nuclear launch protocol proposal from his March 1981 'Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists' essay was brilliantly visualized by writers Nick Cuse & Damon Lindelof and director Craig Zobel in the penultimate episode of HBO's THE LEFTOVERS (2014-2017) IMDB.

In the March 1981 Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, conflict resolution expert, and Harvard Law School Professor Roger Fisher described his "quite simple" proposal to force a US president to viscerally confront the lethal consequences of deciding to use nuclear weapons.



Fisher served in the Army Air Forces as a B-17 weather reconnaissance officer from 1942-46. “Four of his eight college roommates died in combat; that, as well as seeing the aftermath of battle, persuaded him to dedicate his life to helping avoid war.”

Roger D. Fisher, Expert at ‘Getting to Yes,’ Dies at 90


July 13, 1985: the Live Aid extravaganza between Wembley stadium in London and JFK Stadium in Philadelphia. The world's biggest rock stars took part. It is estimated that the concerts were watched by almost 2 billion people worldwide in 110 countries, and raised approximately $127 million for famine relief.


Remembering Live Aid - The Day The Music Changed The World


July 13, 1990: QUICK CHANGE opened in theaters.




Happy 82nd birthday to Harrison Ford! Which Hollywood icon played the better Soviet sub commander — Harrison Ford as Captain Alexei Vostrikovin in K-19: THE WIDOWMAKER, or Sean Connery as Captain Marko Ramius in THE HUNT FOR RED OCTOBER?


I gotta go with Connery.


Get in! We're moving out to the desert for peace & quiet.




Photographer's assistant