Sunday 17 June 2012

Spiro Agnew

Daily News (New York) dated Friday September 28th 1973

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Spiro Agnew was the Vice President to that other paragon of virtue Richard Nixon from 1969 to 1973. He was charged with taking over $100,000 in bribes during the time he was Governor of Maryland.
The trial resulted in him being fine $10,000, having to pay the State of Maryland over $250,000 and getting 3 years probation; all on the proviso that he resigned as Vice President.
Apparently Richard Nixon didn't like him and is reported as having said that ’no-one in their right mind would assassinate me because they’d get Agnew as President.’


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CIA officer E Howard Hunt was convicted of burglary, conspiracy and illegal wire-tapping in connection with the Watergate break-in. His wife Dorothy was also a CIA employee.
No evidence of sabotage was found by the official inquiry into the plane crash, but it still became the subject of various conspiracy theories surrounding the Watergate break-in and its consequences.
Try Google’ing ‘United Airlines Flight 553’ for more information if you are interested.

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As with most technological innovations no one person can be said to have been the sole inventor. The theory for a hovercraft dates back to 1926 but it is the English engineer Christopher Cockerell that designed and built the first full-scale commercially viable Hovercraft in 1959.

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I think the Police Chief was right when he asked, “What is wrong with society?”


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Two days earlier, after nearly 60 days in Space, the crew of the SkyLab 3 mission had splashed down in the Atlantic and been picked up by the USS New Orleans. They’d completed over 850 orbits of the Earth, which was more than twice the previous record.
Alan Bean and Jack Lousma were two thirds of the back-up crew for the 1975 Apollo/Soyuz Mission, which was the first US/Russian combined Space flight referred to in the side-bar.


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That picture doesn't look a bit like Sylvester Stallone!
In fact when Spiro Agnew resigned Gerald Ford became Vice President and it wasn’t until Ford became President that Rockefeller got the ‘Veep’ seat.

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The Black Liberation Army grew out of the Black Panther Movement as a direct action group that was intent on killing policemen and other authority figures. In January 1972 two New York Police officers were ambushed on the Lower East Side and killed by submachine-gun fire.
Henry Brown was arrested for the murders but escaped while awaiting trial. He was recaptured and tried, but was acquitted.

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The beautifully drawn Gasoline Alley comic strip was first published as far back as 1918 and is still going today. The artist responsible for this particular version was Dick Moores who took over from the originator Frank King in 1956 and drew the strip for 30 years.

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US TV 1973 style. In the UK we were still limited to BBC, BBC2 and ITV. Even Channel 4 was 9 years away let alone the numerous cable and satellite channels that have sprung up since then.
There are lots of familiar titles of US programmes that graced our own screens, like The Flintstones, The Flying Nun, I Love Lucy, Lost in Space, Batman, Dragnet and I Dream of Jeannie, but I can’t only see one (The Avengers) that made the trip the other way. 
‘Sanford and Son’ was the Yank’s take on ‘Steptoe and Son’.

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Baseball. Rounders with silly trousers on.

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