August 8, 1968 –
Someone should have said “beware the 8th of August” to Richard Nixon!
Richard M. Nixon was nominated for president at the Republican National Convention in Miami Beach. Later that day, Nixon chose Maryland Gov. Spiro T. Agnew to be his running mate. (Read on, if you dare.)
August 8, 1973 –
VP Spiro T Agnew branded as “damned lies” reports he took kickbacks from government contracts in Maryland on this date.
He vowed not to resign (Right!)
August 8, 1974 –
Richard M. Nixon resigned the office of the presidency on this date, the first American president in history to do so (actually Millard Fillmore had resigned from office several times but as no one in the country took any notice of him, he had no one to turn his resignation in to, so he remained in office). His policies as president had been rather liberal. He began arms control agreements with the Soviet Union. He eased relations with China. He established the Environmental Protection Agency, expanded Social Security and state welfare programs and tried to create a national health insurance system. He was also a chronic alcoholic, suffered from a raging persecution complex and had overly active sweat glands.
He won re-election in 1972 in a landslide, but in that same year a group of men broke into the Democratic Party headquarters at the Watergate Hotel, and in that break-in were the seeds of his downfall.
And so it goes.
The Haus of Dcaligari 