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Tuck led to his department of dirty tricks and the resulting Watergate scandal. During the Senate Watergate Committee hearings, Nixon’s former chief of staff, H. R. Haldeman, passed Tuck at the Capitol and said, “You started all of this.” Tuck replied, “Yeah, Bob, but you guys ran it into the ground.”
    Note: Tuck ran for a California senate seat in 1966. His campaign slogan was, “The Job Needs Tuck and Tuck Needs the Job.” When he lost, his concession speech included this gem: “The people have spoken … the bastards.”
Lord of All Beasts
    Although he was known as the Butcher of Uganda for his brutal rule of the country during the 1970s, he preferred to be known as His Excellency President for Life, Field Marshal Al Hadji Doctor Idi Amin, VC, DSO, MC, Lord of All the Beasts of the Earth and Fishes of the Sea, and Conqueror of the British Empire in Africa in General and Uganda in Particular. During his reign, he had around three hundred thousand people tortured and/or killed. And although it has been debated, it’s been reported that he kept the heads and other body parts of some of his victims in a refrigerator and once told his minister of health that he found human flesh rather too salty.
    SIDE NOTES:
    Amin was Uganda’s light heavyweight boxing champion from 1951–1960.
    After receiving a message from God in a dream, Amin decided to make Uganda a “black man’s country.” He expelled the up to eighty thousand Indians and Pakistanis in the country.
    He wore specially designed tunics that were lengthened so that he could wear more World War II medals.
    Amin wiped out entire villages and had their bodies thrown in the Nile. Workers had to keep fishing the bodies out in order to stop the ducts at a nearby dam from becoming clogged.
    In 1974, he praised Adolf Hitler and condemned the Jews in front of the United Nations General Assembly.
    In 1976, he declared himself “the uncrowned King of Scotland.” He also liked to wear kilts.
    Amin once wrote to Britain’s Queen Elizabeth, “Dear Liz, if you want to know a real man, come to Kampala.”
    After the British broke diplomatic relations with his regime, Amin said he had beaten the British, and then considered himself Conqueror of the British Empire.
    The United States didn’t end diplomatic relations with Amin until 1978—seven years into Amin’s reign of terror.
A Real Stinker
    “Maybe if I hadn’t been so fastidious, I could have changed history,” Lina Basquette once remarked. But she would have had to put up with a lot….
    Basquette was an American actress known for her long-ranging career, which began in the silent film era, and her nine marriages. She received a fan letter from Adolf Hitler in 1929 that proclaimed her his favorite movie star after seeing her performance in
The Godless Girl.
In 1937, she was even invited to Germany, and she accepted. She met with Hitler and reported that he made a pass at her. Basquette recounted, “The man repelled me so much. He had terrible body odor; he was flatulent. But he had a sweet smile, and above all, he had these strange penetrating eyes.” When Hitler got too close for her comfort, Basquette declared that she kicked him in the groin and then told him she was part Jewish. There was no one else present, so it’s impossible to corroborate the story; however, in a 1989 profile, the
New Yorker
found all the other claims she made about the visit to be accurate. Plus, it’s an awesome story, and if it isn’t true, it should be.
Behind Every Strong Man …
    Rutherford B. Hayes’s wife, Lucy, began the beloved tradition of the Easter Egg Roll at the White House. She, however, was not so beloved of State Department officials because of her insistence on not serving alcohol at state dinners. The officials nicknamed her Lemonade Lucy and spiked oranges with rum punch behind her back and served them with dinner.
    President William McKinley’s wife, Ida, hated the color yellow and banned it from the