Sunday, March 4, 2007
Nice fact, redux
Thanks to alert, cunning and sly rare reader CGHill, one learns and must include amendments (emendments, actually) to Nice fact on former Vice Pesident Charles Gates Dawes and from his U.S. Congress entry:
And two additional lovely facts: (1) that he was inaugurated 82 years ago today, and (2) that he left office four years later, 78 years ago today. Fabulous.
1) Dawes was actually Calvin Coolidge's Vice President. (Coolidge had replaced Warren G. Harding, who died in office in 1923; Coolidge ran for reelection in 1924 and picked Dawes as his running mate.) The two, however, did not get along.Going to prove that Wikipedia is, as people often say, not reliable, and that Dawes was even more interesting than I thought. Several on-line sources have my father being Arturo Toscanini's son, for logical though mistaken reasons, so you'd think I'd know better than to take anything there at face value.
2) Dawes wrote the melody of the song in 1912; he titled it simply "Melody in A Major." Carl Sigman put words to it in 1951 (the same year Dawes died). Tommy Edwards, who got the biggest hit out of it, cut it twice: a fairly conventional pop record in '51, a R&B smash in '58.
2a) Just for the heck of it: Dawes shared the 1925 Nobel Peace Prize for his plan for World War I reparations from Germany, a plan which proved to be seriously buggy.
And two additional lovely facts: (1) that he was inaugurated 82 years ago today, and (2) that he left office four years later, 78 years ago today. Fabulous.
Permalink | 
| posted by jau at 6:13 PM
DADvocate — at 8:58 PM, March 04, 2007:
| posted by jau at 6:13 PM
2 more:
DADvocate — at 8:58 PM, March 04, 2007:
Hmm, I'll have to double check Wikipedia from now on. I did ask "to have composed the music" which I hope made clear he didn't write the words, because I knew that.
I tend to pick up odd, random little bits of trivia.
I tend to pick up odd, random little bits of trivia.
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