Former US President Gerald Ford was born on this date in 1913. 10 things you might not know about him:
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Gerald Ford wasn’t the name he was given at birth. His birth name was Leslie Lynch King Jr., but his parents separated soon after he was born and his mother re-married, a man named Gerald Rudolph Ford, and they began calling her son Gerald R. Ford Jr. His name was legally changed in 1935.
As a boy he was a keen boy scout and achieved the rank of Eagle Scout. He was the only American President to do so.
He almost became a professional footballer. He played football for the University of Michigan’s team, The Wolverines and was named their most valuable player. On graduation, Ford received offers from two professional football teams, the Detroit Lions and the Green Bay Packers, but he turned them down to take a position as a coach at Yale University, where he hoped to study law.
Despite some conflict with the university over whether he could attend classes and fulfil his duties as a coach, he ended up graduating in the top-third of his class.
He enlisted in the US Navy after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. Ford was sent to the Pacific aboard the U.S.S. Monterey, a light aircraft carrier. He would earn 10 battle stars. He almost lost his life on this ship, not through enemy fire but by being nearly washed overboard during a storm.
When he returned from the war he met Betty Bloomer Warren. She was a model and a dancer and had been married before. At the time of their engagement, Ford was campaigning to become a member of the United States House of Representatives. The wedding was delayed because, according to the The New York Times, "Jerry Ford was running for Congress and wasn't sure how voters might feel about his marrying a divorced ex-dancer."
When Vice President Spiro Agnew resigned in 1973, then-president Richard Nixon invoked the Constitution’s 25th Amendment to appoint a replacement. He chose Ford, who was the first vice president chosen under the amendment’s provisions. Ford would serve only nine months as vice president before the Watergate scandal led to Nixon’s resignation. Again thanks to the 25th Amendment Gerald R. Ford succeeded to the Presidency, and invoked the amendment himself to appoint Nelson Rockefeller as Vice President. At time of writing, these are the only three times this amendment has been invoked.
Ford survived two assassination attempts, both by women, in 1975. In Sacramento on September 5, the Secret Service apprehended Lynette “Squeaky” Fromme, a former follower of Charles Manson, after seeing her with a pistol at an event in Capitol Park. Barely two weeks later, radical activist Sara Jane Moore fired a gun at Ford in San Francisco, but a bystander who happened to be a former Marine, knocked the weapon out of her hand.
He was only President for 896 days. He lost the 1976 election to Jimmy Carter. Ford’s decision to pardon Richard Nixon for Watergate might have contributed to the loss.
He was the first President to appear on Saturday Night Live, on April 17, 1976. Ford opened the show with a taped message “Live from New York, it’s Saturday Night!”
The six richest people in Britain decide to hold a contest to settle the question of which of them is most successful. It will be a gladiator style contest with each entrant fielding a team of ten super-powered combatants. Entrepreneur Llew Powell sets out to put together his team, which includes his former lover, an employee of his company with a fascinating hobby, two refugees from another dimension (a lonely giant and a drunken sailor), two sisters bound together by a promise, a diminutive doctor, a former Tibetan monk initiate and two androids with a history. As the team train together, alliances form, friendships and more develop, while others find the past is not easy to leave behind.
Meanwhile, a ruthless race of aliens has its eyes on the Earth. Already abducting and enslaving humans, they work towards the final invasion which would destroy life on Earth as we know it. Powell’s group, Combat Team Alpha, stumble upon one of the wormholes the aliens use to travel to Earth and witness for themselves the horrors in store if the aliens aren’t stopped. Barely escaping with their lives, they realise there are more important things to worry about than a fighting competition.
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