The Irony – On this day in History: “Join or Die,” ‘Tricky Dick’ Nixon, Oral Contraceptives and Golden Girls

By Elizabeth Nelson

I couldn't miss the irony of the events that happened in history today.  From an event that brought patriots together, to unite and colonize we live in today, another that put an ironic spotlight on a Presidential liar – yet we have a far worse one in office today and yet we are powerless to remove him from office – to an event that can bring women to fever-pitched screams today. Finally, an event that makes us all laugh when we remember it.

On this day, May 9^th, Ben Franklin prints his "Join, or Die" political cartoon, the FDA approves the first oral contraceptive, impeachment hearings for President Nixon begin, and "Golden Girls" airs its final episode, all on this day.

This famous “Join or Die” snake, believed to have been created by Benjamin Franklin, has long enjoyed the distinction of being the first political cartoon published in an American newspaper. Few people realize, however, that it can also be viewed as a basic map.

The image first appeared in the May 9, 1754, issue of Franklin’s Pennsylvania Gazette. By the 1750s, France and Great Britain had been arguing for years over the extent one another’s landholdings in the Americas. Franklin considered the American colonies to be dangerously fragmented and, through this cartoon and its accompanying article, hoped to convince the American colonies that they would have great power if they united against the threat of French expansion in North America. Read more Colonial Williamsburg

Now women have a name, Gregory Pincus, to thank for their “free Obamacare birth control.” On this day in 1960, women were “granted reproductive freedom” and could have controlled when they had babies, instead of aborting them, had they been popping this revolutionary pill.

In the early 1950s, Gregory Pincus, a biochemist at the Worcester Foundation for Experimental Biology, and John Rock, a gynecologist at Harvard Medical School, began work on a birth-control pill. Clinical tests of the pill, which used synthetic progesterone and estrogen to repress ovulation in women, were initiated in 1954. On May 9, 1960, the FDA approved the pill, granting greater reproductive freedom to American women. Read more History.com 

The Irony, even in the 60’s the birth control pill was seen as “reproductive freedom.” So that women could have sex like a man and have a method to avoid having babies.  

Fast forward to today and the “over-liberated” women of our day feel that they have the “reproductive freedom” and “right” to get pregnant and abort the “blob of flesh” in their “reproductive organ,” without the consequences that go with the act of "baby making."

When everyone wants to impeach Obama, and why not when we’re looking at the worst, most corrupt and scandalous President since Carter or Nixon. I would be remise if I didn’t mention this day in history in 1974, when the House voted to initiate the impeachment proceedings of Tricky Dick Nixon.

The House of Representatives Judiciary Committee opens impeachment hearings against President Richard Nixon, voting to impeach him on three counts on July 30.

The impeachment was the result of the scandal involving the bungled burglary of the offices of the Democratic National Committee in the Watergate apartment complex in Washington, D.C., on June 23, 1972. Eventually, it was learned that there was a criminal cover-up that went all the way to the White House. Nixon, facing the impeachment proceedings, resigned the presidency on August 8, 1974. Read more History.com

As much as I’d love to see Obama impeached, I understand that we don’t have the numbers in the Senate. The 2/3rds vote to finish the Impeachment bills that are already standing in the House.  We can’t even overturn a Presidential veto, defund Obamacare or get rid of Amnesty and yet people expect the votes to be there for impeachment?  I’m sure these same people believe in the Tooth Fairy, Santa Claus, and the Easter Bunny too.


Pity, looking over the past, it seems no matter what generation we look back or fast forward to, we don’t seem to be getting any wiser for our mistakes. So, someone please tell me, what was the point of making said mistake, if not to learn from them?