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Hard Hats and Hisahito: This Week in Biographies

Monday:  It’s Labor Day in America, celebrating those “who from rude nature have delved and carved all the grandeur we behold.”

For the day off, thank Peter J. McGuire (maybe) for suggesting it, Eugene V. Debs (definitely) for raising a ruckus, and a panicky President Grover Cleveland for quick-signing the legislation in 1894 in hopes of being reelected. (It didn’t work.)

Tuesday: Prince Hisahito of Japan turns 5 today. The traditional gifts are polite silence and adulation. He is third in line to the Japanese throne, but he’ll get there: the two ahead of him have no male heirs.

Wednesday: Pretenders star Chrissie Hynde, ever the durable survivor, turns 60. Buddy Holly, sadly not a survivor, would have turned 75 today. 
 
Thursday: Barack Obama delivers a major jobs speech at 8:00 pm. The President has promised to say “Mother, may I?” to Speaker John Boehner before proceeding with each paragraph.
 
Friday: Back to Cleveland!  Esther Cleveland, Grover’s daughter, became the first (and only) presidential child ever born in the White House on this day in 1893. Which means Mrs. Cleveland declared it Labor Day a year before the President did.
 
 
{ Image: Miners talking at Labor Day celebration in Silverton, Colorado.  Photo by Lee Russell, 1940, via the Libary of Congress. }
 

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