Wednesday, January 28, 2009

Did you know ...

... that Barack Obama is not the first highly placed member of the American Executive to be of mixed racial ancestry? Well, no, we have not had any Presidents before but there was a Vice-President, Charles Curtis (1860 - 1936), whose maternal ancestry was almost entirely Native American. His mother, Ellen Pappan, was one-fourth Kaw, one-fourth Osage, one-fourth Pottawatomie and one-fourth French. (So Mr Curtis was one-eighth French. Hmmm, not sure about that.)

And whose Vice-President was he? Well, dear me, that of the much derided Republican Herbert Hoover. I do think this should be better known.

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