- So I collected some thoughts together and gave a lecture on XOR. Slightly to my own surprise, I was able to spend a full hour talking about it – and then over the course of the next couple of weeks I remembered several other things I could usefully have mentioned.
- James Buchanan (allthetropes.org)
James Buchanan was the only President to never marry (his niece fulfilled the duties of First Lady). He was engaged to a woman at one point, but they broke up and she died (likely suicide) shortly after. Although each of the three previous Presidents had played a part in creating the circumstances that led to the Civil War (Zachary Taylor’s belligerent approach to the slave states got things off on the wrong foot, Millard Fillmore created an ultimately ill-advised compromise agreement, and Franklin Pierce proceeded to piss off the slave states by breaking the terms of said agreement), the final, fatal lurch towards the conflict happened on Buchanan’s watch.