Odd trivia: Rick Feeney is arguably the longest-serving White House appointee ever, having served as the Official White House Squirrel Feeder since 1949, when Truman appointed him to the post. Having never been replaced, he presumably still holds the role. Feeney was 5 years old when appointed, which would make him about 75 now. I wonder what would happen if he wandered up to the White House and insisted on being able to perform his squirrel feeding duty.
The story goes that his father (who was Truman’s administrative assistant) took him to the White House in 1949 to meet the president, whereupon Feeney informed Truman that the White House squirrels were skinnier than the ones in Lafayette Park. So Truman promptly appointed him to be the White House squirrel feeder, noting that the Senate was in recess so their confirmation wasn’t needed. Feeney was to serve “at the pleasure of the President.”
In 1974, when Feeney was 29, he noted that it was really time for someone to replace him, but no other Squirrel Feeder has ever been appointed.
More details at
Southern Maryland This Is Living.
Binghamton Press and Sun-Bulletin - Sep 6, 1974
A children's book published in 2016 tells the story of the White House squirrel feeder.
Available on Amazon.
I do not see that Kleenex makes these in 2019.
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At the end of World War II, the Allied forces wanted to make sure that Nazism didn't rise again in Germany. So they implemented a program of denazification, making it a criminal act, punishable by up to three years in prison, to display Nazi symbols such as the swastika or to give the Nazi salute. However, they encountered resistance from an unusual quarter: a 15-year-old white, female, South-American parrot named Laura who lived in a cage at Munich's Hellabrunn Zoo. This bird had the disturbing habit of greeting visitors by loudly squawking the phrase 'Heil Hitler' as she bobbed her head up and down.
Children at the Munich Zoo hoping to hear Laura say her signature phrase. Image via icp.org.
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Perhaps it's hard to tell whether it's the pigs or the humans screaming...
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Not quite sure why a kangaroo would be deemed an apt symbol for a conservation-minded USA citizen. Weren't there any miserly Scotsmen available?
Original ad here.
Why oh why did Spencer Gifts ever discontinue this item? My entire Xmas shopping for many people would have been accomplished with one order!
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The first people ever executed as heretics in Germany, back in 1051, were apparently identified as such because of their refusal to kill a chicken.
More info from Graeme MacQueen of McMaster University:
In 1051 at Goslar, a town in what is today Germany, a group accused of heresy was examined by ecclesiastical authorities. The heretics:
"were finally condemned when one of the bishops, more zealous in his presentation of the case than mindful of the dignity of his rank, presented them with a live chicken and ordered them to wring its neck. They refused to kill the bird, and were deemed beyond hope of redemption. Ignoring the arguments and threats of the assembly, they refused to recant and were hanged upon a gibbet."
The execution of these heretics, as near as can be determined by modern scholars, was ordered because it was felt that "their attitude implied a dualist-type belief in the transmigration of souls through the animal kingdom" and suggested that they were Manichaeans. The events at Goslar — and this group was not alone among persecuted Christian groups in the eleventh century C.E. in its refusal to kill animals — are often treated by scholars as an important step toward the twelfth century full-blown assault on heresy by the Church linked to the newly proclaimed death penalty for heresy.