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Marilyn Monroe, Hal Schaefer, Joe DiMaggio, Frank Sinatra and the wrong door

The New York Times published an obituary for Hal Schaefer today.  I had never heard of him, but this picture caught my eye.

This is Mr. Schaefer with Marilyn Monroe in 1953.

Hal Schaefer was a vocal coach, arranger and jazz pianist.  According to the Times

In his professional life as well as his personal one, Mr. Schaefer was often the least famous person in the room; his musical career was substantial but largely uncelebrated. A former prodigy who was inspired by the clean, tumbling melodic lines of Art Tatum, Mr. Schaefer played with big bands led by Benny Carter and Harry James and was the accompanist for Peggy Lee, Billy Eckstine, Vic Damone and other singers. Before he was 21 he led a trio that performed at the intermission of Duke Ellington concerts.

He was also an arranger and a modern jazz composer and for more than 50 years performed and recorded as a soloist and as a leader of small ensembles and jazz orchestras.

“A romantic with a rhythmic soul,” John S. Wilson of The New York Times called Mr. Schaefer after a performance at the Kool Jazz Festival in New York in 1982. “Mr. Schaefer is very much a mainstream pianist, but he has his own way of looking at the mainstream, enlivening the relatively standard repertory that he played with fresh and entertaining ideas.”

Mr. Schaefer probably made his biggest imprint as an arranger and vocal coach in Hollywood, where he often worked with the choreographer Jack Cole. He coached Monroe through “Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend,” her signature number in the 1953 movie “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes” (he arranged the music as well), and Jane Russell, who also starred in that film. He also worked on other movies with Mitzi Gaynor, Betty Grable and Judy Garland. He wrote film scores for “The Money Trap,” a 1965 police drama with Glenn Ford, Elke Sommer and Rita Hayworth, and “The Amsterdam Kill,” a 1977 thriller with Robert Mitchum.

But Schaefer was also involved in an incident involving DiMaggio, Sinatra, and Monroe.  According to his obituary

On Nov. 5, 1954, not long after Marilyn Monroe filed for divorce from Joe DiMaggio, DiMaggio was having dinner with Frank Sinatra when he heard, probably from a private investigator, that if he went to a certain apartment house on Waring Avenue in West Hollywood, he’d find her in the arms of another man.

There are different accounts of what happened later that night, but what is certain is that a party of men, including DiMaggio and Sinatra, showed up at the address and someone broke down the door of the ostensible love nest, terrifying the woman who lived there, Florence Kotz — sometimes identified as Florence Kotz Ross — who was in bed by herself.

“Mrs. Ross was fast asleep about 11 p.m. when five or six men suddenly battered down the back door to her apartment, tearing it from its hinges and leaving glass strewn on the floor,” The Los Angeles Times reported, adding, “A bright flash of light was shone in her eyes and she was confronted with a number of men, some of whom seemed to be carrying an instrument which at first sight she believed to be an ax.”

The incident, which came to be known as “the wrong door raid,” resulted in a lawsuit filed by Mrs. Ross against Sinatra, DiMaggio and four others, which was settled for $7,500. And where was Monroe?

A Los Angeles Times story from June 2, 1957 had an account that was similar.  But added this detail.

The men fled and Ross reported the incident to police as a burglary. Then Confidential magazine published a story about the raid in its February 1957 issue, touching off the Legislature’s investigation of scandal magazines and private detectives.  Ross learned the identities of the raiders when one of the private detectives, Philip Irwin, told the story to the investigative committee and the grand jury.

Sinatra received similar treatment when he was served with a subpoena in Palm Springs at 4 a.m. on Feb. 16, 1957, and he filed a complaint with the LAPD about the incident. Although his testimony was contradicted by others, Sinatra was adamant that he remained in a Cadillac parked outside the complex during the raid.

Private detective Barney Ruditsky, Irwin’s boss, testified before the grand jury that Sinatra and DiMaggio remained outside while he and Irwin broke down the door. During the investigation, Irwin testified that he had been beaten up by six men after he told an official of the State’s Bureau of Private Investigators and Adjusters his version of the raid. He also testified that he hadn’t sold the details to Confidential magazine.

In September 1958, the “wrong door” lawsuit against DiMaggio, Sinatra, Irwin, Ruditsky, Patsy D’Amore and John Seminola was settled for $7,500 ($53,739.63 USD 2006).

And where was Monroe during all of this? Next door, visiting girlfriend Sheila Stewart Renour at 8120 Waring.

Wrong.  Monroe was, Schaefer claimed, with him.

A female friend of hers claimed at the time that they had been together that evening, but years later, Hal Schaefer, a jazz pianist who was also Monroe’s vocal coach and who had become her confidant and romantic partner, admitted in interviews that he and Monroe were trysting in an apartment just a few yards away.

“We were very close to making love; I don’t remember the stage we were at, but I would say half-dressed,” Mr. Schaefer recalled. He added: “And all of a sudden for some reason, Marilyn got these vibrations, and we went over to the window and saw this group standing across the street, one of whom was Joe DiMaggio and another was Frank Sinatra. They all came en masse and broke this door in, demolished it. We scrambled to get out the back way, and we made it, luckily.”

Frank, Joe and their pals got off easy even for accounting for inflation.  And we are left with this interesting story told by a man who once loved her.

Wrong_door_8122

The wrong door.

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Let’s talk about gun safety

This morning Nate Silver published two charts I found very interesting.

If the news coverage is any guide, there has been a change of tone in recent years in the public conversation about guns. The two-word phrase “gun control” is being used considerably less often than it was 10 or 20 years ago. But the phrase “gun rights” is being used more often. And the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution is being invoked more frequently in the discussion.

In the chart below, I’ve tracked the number of news articles that used the terms “gun control,” “gun rights,” “gun violence” and “Second Amendment” in American newspapers, according to the database NewsLibrary.com. (Because the number of articles in the database changes over time, the figures are normalized to reflect the overall volume of database coverage in any given year, with the numbers representing how often the gun-related phrases were used per 1,000 articles on any subject.)

The usage of all four phrases, but particularly the term “gun control,” has been subject to sharp but temporary shifts based on news events.

The second showed five year averages.

As we can see, discussion of gun control has dropped off sharply.  Silver points out

The change in rhetoric may reflect the increasing polarization in the debate over gun policy. “Gun control,” a relatively neutral term, has been used less and less often. But more politically charged phrases, like “gun violence” and “gun rights,” have become more common. Those who advocate greater restrictions on gun ownership may have determined that their most persuasive argument is to talk about the consequences of increased access to guns — as opposed to the weedy debate about what rights the Second Amendment may or may not convey to gun owners. For opponents of stricter gun laws, the debate has increasingly become one about Constitutional protections. Certainly, many opponents of gun control measures also argue that efforts to restrict gun ownership could backfire in various ways or will otherwise fail to reduce violence. But broadly speaking, they would prefer that the debate be about what they see as Constitutional rights, rather than the utilitarian consequences of gun control measures.

Their strategy may have been working. The polling evidence suggests that the public has gone from tending to back stricter gun control policies to a more ambiguous position in recent years. There may be some voters who think that the Constitution provides broad latitude to own and carry guns – even if the consequences can sometimes be tragic.

But this morning I heard Representative Carolyn McCarthy say something very interesting when she was talking to Chris Hayes on MSNBC.  She wants to call for changes that lead to gun safety not gun control.  She wants to add a new term that is less politically loaded to the conversation.  She pointed out that the word “control” has negative connotations.

This morning in the Boston Globe, Adrian Walker wrote

By now the sites of tragedies practically roll off our tongues. Columbine. ­Aurora. Tucson. And now tiny Newtown can be added to this roster of unthinkable, preventable tragedy.

Yes, I said preventable. Every single one of these might have been prevented if getting hold of a gun in this country was as difficult as, say, getting a driver’s ­license.

Don’t talk to me about the right to bear arms. There is no right to open fire on defense­less children or a congresswoman meeting her constituents or a theater full of moviegoers. Don’t bother trying to tell me that the Founding Fathers intended access to guns as a “right” with almost no limits. That insipid argument is an insult to history, even if a majority of our highest court seems persuaded by it.

Those of us who do not believe that everyone has a right to own and carry a weapon because of the myth of “self-protection” need to step up.  To push our congressmen and women, to push our Senators and to push President Obama.  We know the statistics:  We are up there in gun ownership with Yemen.  Should be proud of that?  We know that guns kept in cars and homes are often used to kill family members, commit suicide, or in a mistaken effort at self-defense.

I remember seeing an interview after Congresswoman Giffords was shot.  The young man said he had been getting coffee and heard shots.  He rushed out to find a man on the ground who was being held by another.  He had a gun and thought about using it.  If he had done so, he would have shot, not the gunman, but the person trying to disarm the shooter.

Let’s work to make owning a gun as difficult as getting a driver’s license.  Let’s talk about gun safety the same way we talk about traffic safety or driver safety.

Carolyn McCarthy ran for office after her husband died and her son was injured by a gunman on the Long Island Railroad.

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The death of the Republican party? Part 2

Maureen Dowd calls them  “A Lost civilization”. likening them to the lost tribes of civilization.

The Mayans were right, as it turns out, when they predicted the world would end in 2012. It was just a select world: the G.O.P. universe of arrogant, uptight, entitled, bossy, retrogressive white guys.

Just another vanishing tribe that fought the cultural and demographic tides of history.

…

Someday, it will be the subject of a National Geographic special, or a Mel Gibson movie, where archaeologists piece together who the lost tribe was, where it came from, and what happened to it. The experts will sift through the ruins of the Reagan Presidential Library, Dick Cheney’s shotgun casings, Orca poll monitoring hieroglyphics, remnants of triumphal rants by Dick Morris on Fox News, faded photos of Clint Eastwood and an empty chair, and scraps of ancient tape in which a tall, stiff man, his name long forgotten, gnashes his teeth about the 47 percent of moochers and the “gifts” they got.

Instead of smallpox, plagues, drought and Conquistadors, the Republican decline will be traced to a stubborn refusal to adapt to a world where poor people and sick people and black people and brown people and female people and gay people count.

As the historian Will Durant observed, “A great civilization is not conquered from without until it has destroyed itself from within.”

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Who would ever have thought blacks would get out and support the first black president? Who would ever have thought women would shy away from the party of transvaginal probes? Who would ever have thought gays would work against a party that treated them as immoral and subhuman? Who would have ever thought young people would desert a party that ignored science and hectored on social issues? Who would ever have thought Latinos would scorn a party that expected them to finish up their chores and self-deport?

Calvin Trillin puts it this way

Mitt Romney Explains Why He Lost

Obama was clever as clever could be;
To targeted groups he gave gifts that were free:
Say, healthcare for free until age 26,
And free contraceptives (for sex just for kicks).
Debates in the primaries left our team bruised
From harsh accusations the White House then used.
Whatever the reason for losing might be,
Of one thing I’m sure: it could not have been me.
I’m perfect.

But those of us on the other side should remember that the Democrats have also had some near-death experiences – like after the 1972 election – and we have spent our time in the wilderness, too.  The party has had internal struggles and differences, but, correct me if I’m wrong, there has never been a point where the Democratic party was this close to making itself irrelevant.

Trillin again.

Republican Soul Searching   

We’re searching our souls and we’re wondering why
We got beat so badly our rivals are gloating.
It’s obvious now where our campaign went wrong:
We should have prevented more people from voting.

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The Supremes and getting married

Marriage is several things.  It is a contract between two people recognized by the state and it is a spiritual and, for some, a religious bond.  When my parents were married in a Buddhist ceremony, one of their friends, a Jewish lawyer, is alleged to have said in a stage whisper, “It doesn’t matter what ritual is used, it’s still just a contract.”  I wish I had thought to ask him about this when I became an adult, but true or not it makes a nice story.

Yes, same sex couples can live together and in some places they can have a recognized civil union which may provide some benefits, but it is not the same as being married.  I can tell you from personal experience that they create very different states of mind.  Being married provides a level of comfort and security just living together does not.  And part of this comes from marriage being a contract.  Yes, all types of relationships fail and they fail for as many reasons as there are failures, but marriages are more difficult to sever therefore can provide more of a base on which a relationship can grow.

I’ve been writing about gay marriage as states are added to the list and I’ve been watching the attitude of the country toward gay marriage change.  Chris Cillizza posted two helpful charts on his Washington Post blog, the Fix.

Pretty amazing change is a relatively short period of time.  And Democrats have gone from not wanting to touch the issue to running for office supporting gay marriage in the space of one presidential election cycle.  This change was reflected at the ballot box.  I am happy that Washington State, Maryland, and Maine voted to legalize same sex marriage, but I still have this voice in the back of my head that says equal rights are not something that should be determined by a majority vote.

The Boston Globe reported

Last month, Washington, Maine, and Maryland became the first states to pass same-sex marriage by popular vote. They joined six other states — New York, Connecticut, Iowa, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Vermont — and the District of Columbia that had already enacted laws or issued court rulings permitting same-sex marriage.

And now the Supreme Court will be ruling on the issue.  The New York Times explains

One of the cases, from California, could establish or reject a constitutional right to same-sex marriage. The justices could also rule on narrower grounds that would apply only to marriages in California.

The second case, from New York, challenges a federal law that requires the federal government to deny benefits to gay and lesbian couples married in states that allow such unions.

The California case was brought by the two lawyers who were on opposing sides in the infamous, Bush v. Gore case, Ted Olson and David Boies.  The second case is one of several that challenged the Defense of Marriage Act or DOMA.  It is interesting that the Massachusetts case is not the one being heard.

There was reason to think that Justice Elena Kagan was not free to hear an appeal from the Boston case because she had worked on it or a related case as United States solicitor general. The current solicitor general, Donald B. Verrilli Jr., gave the court a number of other options, including Windsor, probably partly to make sure that a case of such importance could be heard by a full nine-member court.

Edith Windsor of New York sued to be treated as a surviving spouse

The Obama Administration is not defending DOMA.

Chris Cillizza ended his post with this thought.

Go deeper into the Pew numbers — and thanks to Pew, you can! —  and you see why those trend lines won’t be reversing themselves.  In 2011-2012, 62 percent of people 18-29 supported gay marriage — by far the strongest support among any age group. During that same time period, just 32 percent of those 65 or older supported gay marriage.

The simple truth: Support for gay marriage tracks directly with age. The younger you are, the more likely you are to support it. Given that, it’s hard to imagine gay marriage getting less popular as the years go on.

Whatever the Supreme Court does with its two gay marriage cases next year, the die has been cast on the politics of the issue. By the 2016 presidential election, this could well be a decided issue that neither party — yes, that includes Republicans — spends much time talking about.

My guess is that the Supreme Court will overturn DOMA and rule that states can allow gay marriage if they want.  We will see in a few months if I’m right.

Photograph – Chester Higgins Jr./The New York Times

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Nancy wins again

John Boehner as Majority Leader has, so far, appointed one woman to chair a House committee.  All both men and women are white.  The lone woman, Candice Miller, will head the Administration Committee.  In contrast, Nancy Pelosi has announced that she is appointing three women to be the ranking minority member on Appropriations, Finance, and Rules.

Politico reports

Rep. Nita Lowey — Bronx-born, Jewish and Mount Holyoke-educated — was tapped  to be the ranking Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee on Tuesday,  making her the highest-ranking woman in the history of that once hidebound  Southern male enclave that famously resisted hiring even female secretaries for decades.

The 75-year-old New Yorker will succeed retiring Rep. Norm Dicks (D-Wash.) in  the new Congress just as Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) will move into the  ranking spot on the House  Financial Services Committee, replacing Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.).  Together with Rep. Louise Slaughter (D-N.Y.) in the Rules Committee, they pose a  remarkable trio for Democrats: women leading the opposition party in three of  the House’s five most exclusive committees.

Two white women and one African American.  When you have power over money and rules, you begin to have real influence.

And the vote to appoint Representative Lowey was between two women.

Among the top committee posts voted on Tuesday by the Democratic Steering and  Policy Committee, Appropriations was the only real contest. Lowey had to first  get around another woman, Rep. Marcy Kaptur (D-Ohio), who enjoys more seniority  on the panel but less of a following in the party.

In a secret ballot, the New Yorker prevailed easily, 36-10, and by prior  arrangement, the two lawmakers had agreed not to contest the outcome in the full  caucus. Seeing the handwriting on the wall, Kaptur joked beforehand of being the  Toledo Mud Hens vs. the New York Yankees: “I’m just happy to be in the league,” she told reporters.

Unfortunately, there are not enough Republican women in Congress for them to compete for a position.  I don’t expect the picture to change as long as the Republicans continue to hold such anti-women positions.

Nita Lowey is shown at a news conference. | AP Photo

AP photograph of Representative Lowey.

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John Boehner makes his move for diversity

After people noticed that all the House committee chairs were chairmen, John Boehner announced the appointment of Candice Miller to head the House Committee on Administration.  Miller is a white woman which does nothing for racial or ethnic diversity, but does give them a token woman in a leadership position.

Politico reports

It’s a consolation prize of sorts for Miller, who lost to Rep. Mike McCaul  (R-Texas) in a three-way race for the Homeland Security chairmanship. In that race, Miller told  POLITICO she was making the pitch that she was “tough enough” to chair the panel  charged with overseeing the nation’s vast homeland security infrastructure.

According to the Committee website, the committee is responsible for a mix of duties ranging from housekeeping (overseeing the dining room) and important (overseeing elections).

Now in its 60th year of existence, CHA’s two principal functions include oversight of federal elections and day-to-day operations in the House.

…

CHA also exerts great influence on the internal procedures and priorities of the daily operations of the institution. In its first three decades, the committee’s influence grew as it attained the power to fix the level of allowances available to Members, to oversee House officers, to implement new services for Member offices, and to set human resources and management policies for staff and service personnel on the House side of Capitol Hill. CHA has a hand in a number of house-keeping duties outlined in House Rule X. These responsibilities range from disbursing appropriations for committee staff and member staff salaries to handling parking assignments, restaurant services, and the issuance of identification badges. The committee also administers travel allowances for Members, assigns office space, and compiles and publishes information related to campaign financial disclosures. CHA must approve the acceptance or purchase of works of art for the Capitol. Additionally, the committee has oversight of the Library of Congress, the House Library, the Botanic Gardens, and the Smithsonian Institution.

In more recent years the committee has focused on technology updates. Since 1971, with the introduction of House Information Systems, later named House Information Resources (HIR), the committee has introduced technological innovation to the institution. HIR became the primary computer support service for Members and committees. In the 1990s, CHA facilitated development of the House e-mail system and the availability of Internet access, and authorized software and networking upgrades to provide better electronic links between Members’ Washington, D.C., offices and their district offices. In the late 1990s, CHA took a lead role in developing THOMAS, a Library of Congress Web site that provides public access to the Congressional Record, committee reports, roll call votes, and information of the status of bills pending before Congress. The committee also was a moving force in developing a House Intranet system, as well as a reliable cellular phone and text-messaging network for Members and staff.

So while the work of the CHA is not necessarily trivial, it is strange that the only woman to chair a House Committee is in a job that bears more than a passing resemblance to what men would call “women’s work.”  Of course, every woman knows that without someone to take on the management of a household, things do not always run smoothly.

Good managing, Representative Miller.

Rep. Candice Miller is pictured. | AP Photo

AP Photograph.

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Talking full moon

I woke up about 4:30 this morning with the moon shining through my window.  I hadn’t expected to see it as it had been cloudy when I went to bed.  This was an important full moon for several reasons.  First there was a partial penumbral eclipse and second, it was the smallest full moon of the year.

This full moon is called the Beaver moon by some native Americans and is also known as the Frosty moon.  This from the Washington Post

The U.S. Naval Observatory’s Geoff Chester offers the reasoning behind the name: “[The] name comes from Native American skylore reminding trappers to set their final traps for the season before the beaver ponds freeze up for the winter,” Chester writes.

Chester notes this moon is sometimes also referred to as the “Frosty Moon.”

So what is a penumbral eclipse anyway?  EarthSky explains

What can you expect to see during the November 28, 2012 penumbral lunar eclipse?  First, here’s what you will not see.  You won’t see a dark bite taken out of the moon by Earth’s shadow.  And you won’t see the moon turn blood red as during a total eclipse of the moon.  A penumbral eclipse is more subtle than either of these.  At the central part of the eclipse, you’ll see a dusky shading covering about 90% of the moon’s face.  By the way, that brilliant planet near tonight’s moon is the king planet Jupiter. The moon and Jupiter will be even closer together tomorrow night.

So, before you set your alarm clocks, consider yourself forewarned.  A penumbral lunar eclipse is not nearly as stark and obvious as an umbral eclipse of the moon. During an umbral lunar eclipse, the moon passes through the umbra– the Earth’s dark, cone-shaped shadow. During a penumbral eclipse, the moon passes through the light penumbral shadow surrounding the umbra. (See feature diagram at top.) Your best chance of noticing any penumbral shadow on the moon’s surface is at mid-eclipse (greatest eclipse) in a dark sky not obscured by dusk or dawn.

But the eclipse was not visible in Boston so all I saw was the smallest full moon of the year.  This was the smallest and least bright because the moon was at apogee or at the furthest point from the earth.  It might have been the smallest and least bright but it was still enough to wake me up.

This photograph is by Duke Marsh and was posted on EarthSky today.  The little dot at 10 o’clock is Jupiter.

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Are the Obamas the real life Huxtables?

The Cosby show Huxtable family was never the “typical” African American family or really a typical American.  For one thing, they lived in a New York brownstone had a doctor father and lawyer mother (who were happily married to each other), and they had, with five kids, a larger family than most.  The Cosby Show which premiered in 1984 was revolutionary in depicting through a sit-com format, a happy and successful black family.  Yes, it told America, black people are successful and have the same goals and the same problems as other families.  Whether we were like a sit-com family or not, all of us of a certain age secretly wanted to be like the Nelsons or grow up like the Beaver.  Then we had the Huxtables.

I ran across this story in the Guardian this morning wondering if the Obama family were not somehow the real life Huxtables.

Americans have always been fascinated by the lives of first families, much as Brits are with the royal family. The people who live in the White House however, unlike the occupants of Buckingham Palace, are meant to reflect ordinary lives and hopes and dreams. It rarely happens, of course. Nobody would say the Kennedys, the Reagans, the Clintons and the Bushes were normal folks. But many Americans do recognise themselves in the Obamas.

“From the kids with braces and basketball games to the Portuguese water dog and the date nights, the Obamas are right out of central casting as an upper-middle class American family with, of course, the very big exception that they live in the White House,” says Isabel Wilkerson, the first black woman to win a Pulitzer prize for journalism and the author of The Warmth of Other Suns, a book that documents the migration of black Americans across their own country.

“I think they’ve exposed the country and the world to a slice of African-American family life that is larger than many people realise – college-educated people with high ideals for their children. They’re like The Cosby Show come to life. They have endured an intense amount of attention and scrutiny and come out about as normal and quintessentially American as anyone might hope to see.”

I think the Obamas have worked hard to make life in the White House as normal as possible.

…Michelle Obama is the “mom-in-chief” but she expects the president to do his share.

When the children were younger, she has said she would rise early to go to the gym and her husband would feed and dress the girls. The family sits down to dinner at 6.30 most days when he is in Washington, and on Sunday afternoons the president has a standing date to play basketball with his daughters. They try to make their White House quarters as much like a normal home as possible. The girls have to clean their rooms and make their beds, and Malia does her own laundry. There is no TV until homework is finished.

With four more years in the White House, the Obamas are aware that their daughters will spend their formative teenage years in the spotlight. The press corps in Washington has agreed not to routinely write about the girls unless they are with their parents at formal events. Both girls are regularly spotted around town with their friends and they have been allowed rite-of-passage experiences such as attending summer camp – though with secret service agents in tow.

I know the President has joked about the moment his daughters start to date saying he won’t be too worried because they have men with guns with them.

“I think they are the first kids in the White House growing up where everybody’s got a cell phone and everybody’s watching,” Michelle Obama told the women’s website iVillage last month. She has warned her daughters not to be “bratty”. “You may be having a moment but somebody could use that moment and try to define you for ever,” she told them.

So far, it seems the girls are making their parents proud. There was a touching moment on stage last week when 11-year-old Sasha nudged her father several times as he celebrated his win. “Turn around, Daddy!” she said, urging him not to forget the people on the other side of the stage. He duly heeded her advice and the crowd roared its approval.

We Americans should be proud that we have a real family in the White House.  Whether the Obamas are the Huxtables or not, the girls are fun to watch grow up.

President Barack Obama, first lady Michelle Obama, right, and their daughters Malia and Sasha, left.

The Obama family on November 7.  Photography by Jason Reed/REUTERS

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What do Lincoln and Obama have in common?

We all know that both are from Illinois, but did you know that both were elected on November 6?

Abraham Lincoln was first elected on November 6, 1860.  Barack Obama was elected to his second term yesterday, November 6, 1012.

When my husband mentioned this yesterday, I thought this was another good omen and it, like the 7/Eleven, Nickelodeon, and Scholastic polls was correct.

From This Day in History

Abraham Lincoln is elected the 16th president of the United States over a deeply divided Democratic Party, becoming the first Republican to win the presidency. Lincoln received only 40 percent of the popular vote but handily defeated the three other candidates: Southern Democrat John C. Breckinridge, Constitutional Union candidate John Bell, and Northern Democrat Stephen Douglas, a U.S. senator for Illinois.