|
Strange Congressional Trivia
Those who want their congressional trivia on paper can still pay for it, at $99 a copy, but it's free to those who want to download its 2,218 pages from www.gpo access.gov.
Searching the electronic version for specific words reveals other unusual facts:
Caleb Powers was convicted of complicity in the assassination of Kentucky Gov. William Goebel in 1900. He was pardoned in 1908 - and two years later elected to the first of four terms as a Kentucky representative to Congress.
Two former representatives, Melville Kelly of Pennsylvania in 1935 and Paul Greever of Wyoming in 1943, died after accidentally shooting themselves while cleaning firearms.
Gunfire ended the lives of no fewer than a dozen others. William P. Taulbee, once a representative from Kentucky, was shot in 1890 in the Capitol itself.
At least nine ex-representatives are listed as drowning victims.
A total of 134 Smiths have served in Congress, but just 57 Joneses.
Only a handful of lawmakers have been professional actors. Best known, thanks to their TV series, may be former Iowa Rep. Fred Grandy (The Love Boat) and former Tennessee Sen. Fred Thompson (Law and Order).
A Depression-era representative from Nebraska, Terry M. Carpenter, ran unsuccessfully for statewide office 11 times and changed his political affiliation five times.
But why? That's a question seldom answered in the directory's brief entries. "It's very barebones in its text, and that's the way it's been since 1859," Koed said. "It's never been particularly wordy."
Only a peek at newspapers of the period reveals that the mother of Arthur Brown's two children fired her revolver twice when the former senator ignored her pleas to "do the right thing by me."
Brown died four days later. Almost a year to the day after the shooting, a jury acquitted the woman of murder.
Submitted by Pasadena Phil
|
|
|
Email This to a Friend
