Bizarre History (9 page)

In a 1962 campaign visit to Chinatown, San Francisco, Nixon spoke to a crowd while children holding welcome signs stood behind him. However, Tuck planted one sign that said “What about the Hughes loan?” which was a reference to a loan the reclusive billionaire Howard Hughes made to Nixon’s brother. Nixon grabbed the sign and ripped it up … on camera. (This prank backfired slightly when Tuck found out later that the sign actually said, “What about the
huge
loan?)

In 1968, Tuck hired a pregnant African-American woman (some accounts say he hired several pregnant women) to wear a T-shirt with Nixon’s slogan and walk through a Nixon rally. What was the slogan? “Nixon’s the One.”

Tuck is mentioned in the Nixon tapes! An October 1972 Oval Office tape caught Nixon saying, “Dick Tuck did that to me. Let’s get out what Dick Tuck did!”

Many historians say that Nixon’s desire to out-Tuck 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.”

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.