Teddy Roosevelt Considers the Night Sky

After an evening of talk, perhaps about the fringes of knowledge, or some new possibility of climbing inside the minds and senses of animals, we would go out on the lawn, where we took turns at an amusing little astronomical rite. We searched until we found, with or without glasses, the faint, heavenly spot of light-mist beyond the lower left-hand comer of the Great Square of Pegasus, when one or the other of us would then recite: That is the Spiral Galaxy in Andromeda. It is as large as our...

 Eisenhower and the Ability to Snear

While he was at Key West, Eisenhower had been told by [his doctor] that he would have to cut down from four packs of cigarettes per day to one. After a few days of limiting his smoking, Eisenhower decided that counting cigarettes was worse than not smoking at all, and he quit. He never had another cigarette in his life, a fact that amazed the gang, his other friends, the reporters who covered his activities, and the public. Eisenhower was frequently asked how he did it; he replied that it ...