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VIDEO Did famous performer Sophie Tucker inspire the economic boom of the 1960s? Perhaps, as this clip from the documentary "The Outrageous Sophie Tucker" reveals in this eyewitness account of the time Sophie Tucker picked up the phone and called President John F. Kennedy in 1962 and told him to not sign a bill taxing dividends.

A column by David Mittell in today’s Providence Journal caught my eye. It was devoted to enumerating John Kerry’s many deceits over the years -designed to advance his personal interest. As one who protested the Vietnam War long before it was fashionable (I wrote a scathing, open letter to President Johnson about the Haiphong bombings), I feel some authority to talk about the copperhead from Massachusetts and to gloat a little when I read a column like Mittell’s.

In its 12 Nov 2001 issue, Time ran this brief article on page 31. Hugh Sidey—the magazine's Washington Contributing Editor—has been covering the presidency for Life and Time since 1957. In this snippet, he reveals that JFK told him in 1961 that the Soviet Union has a nuclear bomb in its embassy in Washington, DC. In my book, this counts as a major revelation, yet there are several factors that indicate that this piece was created in a way that minimizes its impact. And that's exactly what happened: minimal impact. A sitting president told a White House reporter that...

Conspiracy theorists and collectors, take note: A section of fencing from the infamous grassy knoll in Dallas' Dealey Plaza is going up for auction. The weather-beaten picket fence, along with its metal posts, goes up for bid Sunday at the Lelands.com online auction house. Bidding on the fence from the scene of President Kennedy's Nov. 22, 1963, assassination runs through June 16. "It's an iconic item, in a macabre sort of way," said Simeon Lipman, director of Americana at the Long Island-based auction house. The fence was rescued from the junk heap five years ago by Dealey Plaza tour guide...

Among his most vocal opponents was none other than Chief Justice Earl Warren. According to RFK, Warren responded to the Hastie proposal with marked rejection: "He's not a liberal, and he'll be opposed to all the measures that we are interested in, and he just would be completely unsatisfactory." Warren's "liberal" peer, Justice William Douglas, told Kennedy that Hastie would be "just one more vote for Frankfurter." Thus, two Supreme Court "liberals" (and an array of Kennedy Administration officials suspicious of Judge Hastie's political leanings) spiked the ascent of the would-be first black Justice.

One Person Does Make A Difference By Kevin Fobbs April 11, 2005 "We are confronted primarily with a moral issue. It is as old as the Scriptures and as clear as the American Constitution, "President John F. Kennedy, Inaugural Address. The moral clarity of President Kennedy's statement speaks to us today just as concisely as it did 44 years ago. President Kennedy was calling upon the better Angels amongst us to understand and respect the need for equality and the value that each human life in our nation had as part of the collective of the whole of our society....

JFK and the corset that helped to kill a president Back brace made Kennedy an almost stationary target By JAMES RESTON JR. Two years ago, historian Robert Dallek revealed new details about the extraordinary range of shots, stimulants and pills President Kennedy took to control his physical pain and present his youthful image to the world. Important and interesting as these details are, they should not distract us from the one medical remedy that probably killed the president: his corset. Members of Kennedy's inner circle had often witnessed the painful ritual that Kennedy endured in his private quarters before he...

HAVANA, Cuba (CNN) -- President Fidel Castro fell, possibly breaking his leg, after giving a graduation speech Wednesday in the central Cuban city of Santa Clara. Sending a buzz through the crowd, the 78-year-old leader appeared to trip as he was walking away from the podium. In an effort to calm the crowd, Castro took the microphone after a few minutes, saying: "Just so that there won't be any speculation, it seems that I broke my knee." He apologized for any concerns he may have caused for those who care about him and then joked how his spill was likely...

WASHINGTON -- Is America ready to be led by another Massachusetts senator, a former Navy war hero with the initials "JFK," a rich, Catholic Bostonian with patrician looks and a glamorous wife, a forward-looking Democrat with a challenge to countrymen to be a part of something larger than themselves? John Forbes Kerry, the three-term senator from Massachusetts, the much-decorated former gunboat captain in Vietnam, the aristocrat with the Boston brogue and the Mozambique-born heiress wife, thinks so. But don't suggest to Kerry that he represents a chance for Democrats to return to Camelot or that he is trying to trade...

Jacqueline Kennedy was so racked with loss after her husband's assassination in 1963 that she spoke repeatedly of suicide to her confessor, a new book about the Kennedys' Irish-Catholic heritage reveals. "It is so hard to bear," she told the Rev. Richard McSorley months after her husband's death. "I feel as though I am going out of my mind at times. Wouldn't God understand if I just wanted to be with him?" Later, after she seemed to rebound, she sank further into gloom and again spoke of suicide as a way out, saying, "I was glad that Marilyn Monroe got...

<p>July 14, 2003 -- If you ever wanted to walk in Jackie Kennedy's shoes or slip into a pair of JFK's boxer shorts, here's your chance.</p> <p>An amazingly intimate collection of personal items once owned by John F. Kennedy and the first lady will be auctioned off this Saturday in New Jersey.</p>

Here's what I've found so far: "Schwartz" for the NY Daily News AP via the NY Post Louis Lanzano for the Associated Press Mohammed Awad for Reuters

It was the early 1960s, on the cusp of the sexual revolution, when a 19-year-old White House intern named Mimi Beardsley commenced a sexual relationship with President John F. Kennedy. She was not the only woman to have an affair with JFK, nor he the last President to dally with an intern. Yet the unearthing of the long-buried secret does matter. Like it or not, care or not, it's a piece of American history. Some people think it should have remained hidden. Not Mimi. Marion Fahnestock, now 60 and living on the upper East Side, confirmed her identity to the...

Mimi Fahnestock leaving Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church yesterday... ...and in 1963, during her alleged affair with then President John F. Kennedy (below) Not Mimi! That was the reaction yesterday from the shocked friends of Marion (Mimi) Fahnestock after she admitted to the Daily News that she was "the Mimi" who had a 17-month affair with former President John F. Kennedy. Their image of the poised and demure administrator who took the pictures at the Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church in Manhattan was jolted by the revelations. "She is the least likely person I would ever have suspected to have had...

JFK's Mimi stepped out of history's shadows yesterday as new details emerged about the life of the striking woman who kept her White House affair a secret for more than four decades. Braving a thicket of reporters, Marion (Mimi) Fahnestock, now 60, confirmed to the world how, as a prep school senior, she caught the eye of the world's most powerful man. "From June 1962 to November 1963, I was involved in a sexual relationship with President Kennedy," Fahnestock said in a short statement. "For the last 41 years, it is a subject I have not discussed." Fahnestock's statement indicates...

<p>May 16, 2003 -- The former White House intern whose affair with JFK predated Monica Lewinsky by four decades went quietly to work at her tony Fifth Avenue church yesterday as offers for a steamy Oval Office memoir poured in.</p>

A new biography of John F. Kennedy claims that the late president had an affair with a teenage White House intern. But while historian Robert Dallek's "An Unfinished Life: John F. Kennedy, 1917-1963" does not identify JFK's young squeeze, documents recently unsealed by the Kennedy presidential library seem to put a name to the young gal--and it's Mimi. As part of the library's oral history program, scores of Kennedy aides have provided recollections of their Camelot days, with interview transcripts being archived by library officials. Included in this group was Barbara Gamarekian, a White House aide, who was interviewed in...

John F. Kennedy's intern admitted to the Daily News yesterday: "I am the Mimi." Marion (Mimi) Fahnestock, now 60, called it a huge weight off her shoulders to finally reveal her affair with the dashing young President four decades ago. "The gift for me is that this allowed me to tell my two married daughters a secret that I've been holding for 41 years," she said. "It's a huge relief." "It's all true," said Fahnestock, sitting in a pew in Manhattan's Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church, where she works as an administrator. Referring to stories in The News this week detailing...

<p>A BOMBSHELL new book by Frank Sinatra’s valet lifts the lid off the seedy side of Old Blue Eyes’ long and colorful relationship with the Kennedys.</p>

HE WAS only married to Marilyn Monroe for nine turbulent months, but Joe DiMaggio, the reclusive US baseball legend, vowed he would never forgive the Kennedys for her death. Now, four years after his own demise, the man immortalised by Simon and Garfunkel in the song Mrs Robinson appears to have his revenge. A new book, written by his long-time lawyer and close companion Morris Engelberg, reveals he really did believe the Kennedy clan killed Monroe. "They murdered the one person I loved," DiMaggio confided to Mr Engelberg. Officially, Monroe, who allegedly enjoyed affairs with both John Kennedy, the US...