Sorry, Hillary, but in practice, if not in legality, the first woman president took office (although not the oath of office) this week (Oct. 2) in 1919.  That is when, after an exhaustive nationwide campaign to rally support for American membership in the newly established League of Nations, President Woodrow Wilson suffered a stroke that incapacitated him both mentally and physically.  As a result, his wife Edith entered into what she called her “stewardship” of the presidency, but what many historians have called an unprecedented, unconstitutional and unsupportable assumption of presidential power.

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Did Tom Jefferson, author of the Declaration of Independence and third president of the United States father children by one of his black slaves, Sally Hemings?

Contrary to what you may have read or heard, there is zero, zip, zilch conclusive proof that he did. There is conclusive proof — via the DNA of one of Hemings’ descendants — that someone belonging to the Jefferson family, perhaps Tom himself, fathered at least one of Hemings’ children. But it is not a certainty.

The accusation first surfaced this week (Sept. 2) in 1802 in The Richmond Recorder, a Federalist newspaper that was openly hostile to Jefferson and his Republican Party.  What’s more, this Recorder story was written by James Callendar, an unscrupulous hack-for-hire who had once been paid by Jefferson to malign the Federalists.  Angered that President Jefferson had denied him a political appointment, Callendar promptly switched sides and began spreading rumors and gossip for the Federalists. Thus anything that Callendar wrote about Jefferson was of dubious veracity.

And yet there is a body of circumstantial evidence that supports Callendar’s charge.  Not only was Sally young, attractive and light skinned, but also she was the half-sister of Jefferson’s wife Martha (Sally’s mom was the slave mistress of Martha’s father), who, before she died young, extracted a promise from Jefferson that he would never remarry.  Given Jefferson’s relative youth and physical robustness, it is possible that he saw a relationship with Sally as a way to “square the circle” of honoring Martha’s request, yet still have a “conjugal” relationship with someone close in blood, body and spirit to his dead wife.

But perhaps the most compelling circumstantial evidence centers on the fact that, with almost clock-like regularity, every time Tom returned home to Monticello from one of his many trips, Sally produced a child approximately nine months later.  In her book Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings: An American Controversy, historian Annette Gordon-Reed writes, “Jefferson comes home for six months and leaves. Hemings bears a child four months after he is gone.  Jefferson comes home for six weeks. Hemings bears a child eight months after he is gone. Jefferson comes home for two months and leaves. Hemings bears a child eight months after he is gone. This went on for fifteen years and six children. He was there when she conceived and she never conceived when he was not there.”

Then again, many other male members of the Jefferson clan — male cousins and a brother — hung out at Monticello when Tom was home, and didn’t when Tom was away.  So Reed’s point that Sally only got pregnant when Tom was there would apply to those fellows as well.  Interesting, even compelling, but to repeat, inconclusive.

You don’t have to be a war hero to become president of the United States but it doesn’t hurt, as our 35^th president, John F. Kennedy, discovered in the wake of the World War II adventure that befell him this week (Aug. 2) in 1943. While commanding a Navy torpedo boat — the PT-109 — in the South Pacific, Lieutenant Kennedy and his crew were returning to base when suddenly they were rammed by a Japanese destroyer, cutting the boat in half, killing two crew members and wounding several others.

Kennedy quickly organized a rescue operation, which necessitated swimming to an island some three miles away. Adding to the burden of a three-mile swim and an injured back that he had sustained during the collision, Kennedy literally had to tow one of the wounded crew behind him — a tow rope clenched in his teeth as he led his men toward the distant shore.  After reaching shore, tending to the wounded and foraging for food, Kennedy began planning their escape and recovery, which was made possible when he and another crew member swam to a nearby island and met two natives who agreed to deliver a rescue message — which Kennedy carved into a coconut — to an Australian coast watcher located in the area.  Days later a Navy vessel rescued the entire crew.

And a legend was born.  Kennedy was promoted and awarded the Navy and Marine Corps medal, and the story of his heroism was featured in newspapers nationwide, including The New York Times.

As for Kennedy, he initially tried to play down the incident, and among experienced Naval officers there was grumbling about the fact that an extremely maneuverable PT boat should easily have avoided a slow-moving destroyer — unless the crew had been (if not literally, then figuratively) asleep at the wheel.

But back in the U.S., questions about his seamanship quickly gave way to kudos for his courage, and nearly two decades later when JFK ran for president, the PT-109 story — in true Naval fashion — was brought out of mothballs, given a paint job, and sold to an electorate that was charmed by Kennedy’s charisma, but unsure about his depth and strength of character. Songs were written about Kennedy and PT-109, replicas of the boat were handed out at campaign rallies, and the famous Kennedy PR machine promoted the story to every media outlet it could find.

Which is not to say that the PT-109 incident won Kennedy the 1960 election, but it is not to say that it didn’t.  Kennedy beat Richard Nixon by a mere 100 thousand votes in what is the second closest election in modern times. In politics, every little bit helps.