29 th January

1843 President William McKinley was born.

1874 John D. Rockefeller, Jr. was born.

1877 The U. S. Congress established a commission to decide the Hayes - Tilden election.

Remember the good old days? They weren’t always better than the present. On this date in 1877, the tangle of charges and confusion over the 1876 Presidential election was so thick that the U. S. Congress established a special Electoral Commission to decide whether Samuel Tilden or Rutherford B. Hayes had been elected. Old-style politics was not always best even in the good old days. Not too long ago, a politician criticized a particular concept of public policy as “creeping McKinleyism.” That was possibly the only modern reference to the tum-of-the-century U. S. President who was born on this date in 1843. President William McKinley symbolized a totally passe style of laissez-faire conservatism. But he is best remembered because he was assassinated. Teddy Roosevelt became President after McKinley’s death. Roosevelt reputedly ushered in modern American politics.

John D. Rockefeller, Jr., one of America’s greatest philanthropists was born on this day, in 1874. Heir to the Standard Oil Company fortune, this only son of founder John D. Rockefeller, Sr., built New York City’s famous Rockefeller Center and was instrumental in the selection of the city as the site for the United Nations’ world headquarters. He also donated to the construction of the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts; the restoration of colonial Williamsburg, Virginia; Manhattan’s Museum of Modem Art; and the establishment of the United Services Organization which is better known as the U. S.O. As the world’s richest man, Andrew Camegie, once said: “A man who dies rich,

Dies in disgrace.” John D. Rockefeller, Jr. never gave away his entire fortune, but he did contribute $250 million to the arts, education, and charitable aid.