Lincoln would not be acceptable to many republicans if they knew more about
his sexual orientation. Here are some excerpts from the 2004 North Carolina
Republican Party Platform; as an example............
Quote:
<a href="http://www.blogactive.com/">NC GOP Remains Mum on Anti Gay Flyers</a>
4. We believe homosexuality is not normal and should not be established as an acceptable "alternative" lifestyle either in public education or in public policy. We do not believe public schools should be used to teach children that homosexuality is normal, and we do not believe that taxpayers should fund benefit plans for unmarried partners. We oppose special treatment by law based on nothing other than homosexual behavior or identity. We oppose actions, such as “marriage” or the adoption of children by same-sex couples, which attempt to legitimize and normalize homosexual relationships. We support the Defense of Marriage Act and will support a constitutional amendment to ensure that marriage is limited to the union of one man and one woman. We commend private organizations, such as the Boy Scouts, which defend moral decency and freedom according to their own well-established traditions and beliefs.
3. America's defense must come second to none. The Republican Party of North Carolina opposes any attempts to weaken our national defense. We support efforts to: (1) restore the ban against known homosexuals in the military
|
In his twenties, Lincoln slept in the same bed with a man
named Joshua Speed. Poet Carl Sandburg did not hide this side of Lincoln in his
Lincoln biography, "The Prarie Years".......
Quote:
<a href="http://www.laweekly.com/ink/04/49/news-ireland.php">http://www.laweekly.com/ink/04/49/news-ireland.php</a>
Was Abe Lincoln Gay?
The blockbuster book that will change America’s history
by Doug Ireland
One of the few traditional Lincolnists to describe (however obliquely) the lifelong Lincoln-Speed relationship as homosexual was the Illinois poet Carl Sandburg, in his masterful, six-volume Lincoln biography. In the tome titled The Prairie Years (1926), Sandburg wrote that both Lincoln and Speed had "a streak of lavender, and spots soft as May violets." "I do not feel my own sorrows more keenly than I do yours," Lincoln wrote Speed in one letter. And again, "You know my desire to befriend you is everlasting." In a detailed retelling of the Lincoln-Speed love story — including the "lust at first sight" encounter between the two young men, when Lincoln readily accepted Speed’s eager invitation to share his narrow bed — Tripp notes that Speed was the only human being to whom the president ever signed his letters with the unusually tender (for Lincoln) "yours forever" — a salutation Lincoln never even used to his wife. Speed himself acknowledged that "No two men were ever so intimate." And Tripp credibly describes Lincoln’s near nervous breakdown following Speed’s decision to end their four-year affair by returning to his native Kentucky.
|
My vote would go to Tesla.....he never got the credit, reward, or reputation
for the true genius of his inventions.........Edison got the credit for electrifying the U.S. in the late 19th century, but it was Nikola Tesla
who designed and built the practical AC electrical generation and distribution system that won out over Edison's unworkable
DC current design. In the 1940's, Tesla finally was acknowledged as the
first to patent wireless radio, not Marconi !
Quote:
Unlike the Bremer administration in Iraq in 2003, Tesla was
able to build his newly designed AC generators in Westinghouse's factory and
install them at the Adams Power Station no. 1 at Niagara Falls in just one
year's time in 1895. Three of his 1895 generators were still in operation 58
years later, in 1953! <a href="http://americanhistory.si.edu/archives/d8047c.htm">http://americanhistory.si.edu/archives/d8047c.htm</a>
|
Quote:
<a href="http://www.pbs.org/tesla/ll/ll_warcur.html">http://www.pbs.org/tesla/ll/ll_warcur.html</a> In November and December of 1887, Tesla filed for seven U.S. patents in the field of polyphase AC motors and power transmission. These comprised a complete system of generators, transformers, transmission lines, motors and lighting. So original were the ideas that they were issued without a successful challenge, and would turn out to be the most valuable patents since the telephone.....
.......With the breakthrough provided by Tesla's patents, a full-scale industrial war erupted. At stake, in effect, was the future of industrial development in the United States, and whether Westinghouse's alternating current or Edison's direct current would be the chosen technology.
It was at this time that Edison launched a propaganda war against alternating current. Westinghouse recalled:
I remember Tom [Edison] telling them that direct current was like a river flowing peacefully to the sea, while alternating current was like a torrent rushing violently over a precipice. Imagine that! Why they even had a professor named Harold Brown who went around talking to audiences... and electrocuting dogs and old horses right on stage, to show how dangerous alternating current was. ..........
.....The Columbian Exposition opened on May 1, 1893. That evening, President Grover Cleveland pushed a button and a hundred thousand incandescent lamps illuminated the fairground's neoclassical buildings. This "City of Light" was the work of Tesla, Westinghouse and twelve new thousand-horsepower AC generation units located in the Hall of Machinery. In the Great Hall of Electricity, the Tesla polyphase system of alternating current power generation and transmission was proudly displayed. For the twenty-seven million people who attended the fair, it was dramatically clear that the power of the future was AC. From that point forward more than 80 percent of all the electrical devices ordered in the United States were for alternating current.
<a href="http://www.pbs.org/tesla/ll/ll_whoradio.html">http://www.pbs.org/tesla/ll/ll_whoradio.html</a>
Tesla filed his own basic radio patent applications in 1897. They were granted in 1900. Marconi's first patent application in America, filed on November 10, 1900, was turned down. Marconi's revised applications over the next three years were repeatedly rejected because of the priority of Tesla and other inventors.
....But no patent is truly safe, as Tesla's career demonstrates. In 1900, the Marconi Wireless Telegraph Company, Ltd. began thriving in the stock markets—due primarily to Marconi's family connections with English aristocracy. British Marconi stock soared from $3 to $22 per share and the glamorous young Italian nobleman was internationally acclaimed. Both Edison and Andrew Carnegie invested in Marconi and Edison became a consulting engineer of American Marconi. Then, on December 12, 1901, Marconi for the first time transmitted and received signals across the Atlantic Ocean.
Otis Pond, an engineer then working for Tesla, said, "Looks as if Marconi got the jump on you." Tesla replied, "Marconi is a good fellow. Let him continue. He is using seventeen of my patents."
But Tesla's calm confidence was shattered in 1904, when the U.S. Patent Office suddenly and surprisingly reversed its previous decisions and gave Marconi a patent for the invention of radio. The reasons for this have never been fully explained, but the powerful financial backing for Marconi in the United States suggests one possible explanation.
Tesla was embroiled in other problems at the time, but when Marconi won the Nobel Prize in 1911, Tesla was furious. He sued the Marconi Company for infringement in 1915, but was in no financial condition to litigate a case against a major corporation. It wasn't until 1943—a few months after Tesla's death— that the U.S. Supreme Court upheld Tesla's radio patent number 645,576. The Court had a selfish reason for doing so. The Marconi Company was suing the United States Government for use of its patents in World War I. The Court simply avoided the action by restoring the priority of Tesla's patent over Marconi.
|
Tesla was a truly remarkable, naturalized American citizen. He was the emitome of the spirit that America was once known for. It is entirely fitting,
in view of the way his contributions changed the lives of so many people,
that he be considered "Greatest American".