Latest news with #UlyssesS.Grant
Scotsman
21-07-2025
- Scotsman
US Presidents in Scotland: Here are all 16 Presidents to have visited Scotland - from Ulysses S. Grant to Donald Trump
1 . Ulysses S. Grant (President from 1869-1877) Ulysses S. Grant was the first US President to visit Scotland - as part of a world tour he undertook after leaving office in 1877. He visited several locations including Glasgow, where he was given the Freedom of the City, Edinburgh and Stirling, where he was given a reception at the Golden Lion hotel. He also toured the Scottish Highlands, Ayr and took in Abbotsford House, the home of Sir Walter Scott. On his visit to Dundee he described the Tay Road Bridge - at that point the longest bridge in the world - as a "mighty long bridge to such a mighty little old town". | Getty Images
Newsweek
20-07-2025
- General
- Newsweek
Black Bear Killed at Yellowstone After Becoming 'Food-Conditioned'
Based on facts, either observed and verified firsthand by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources. Newsweek AI is in beta. Translations may contain inaccuracies—please refer to the original content. An adult female black bear was euthanised by Yellowstone National Park staff after displaying repeated food-conditioned behaviours, according to a park press release. Newsweek contacted Yellowstone National Park for comment via online form on Sunday outside of usual working hours. Why It Matters This marks the first black bear euthanised in Yellowstone for food conditioning since July 2020. In May of this year, an unrelated 11-year-old male grizzly was also euthanised after flipping over multiple bear-resistant dumpsters in high-traffic areas like Old Faithful and Nez Perce Picnic Area, as reported by East Idaho News. What To Know Park officials said the actions took place around 5 p.m. on July 11, at a backcountry campsite in the Blacktail Deer Creek drainage in northern Yellowstone. Officials said that the bear's escalating behavior, including property damage and obtaining a significant food reward, posed a clear threat to visitor safety and warranted removal. The release states that the decision to kill the bear was based on ongoing concern for human safety, property damage to camping equipment, and the bear learning to defeat the park's backcountry food storage poles to obtain human food. A Black bear forages for food near a stream on May 18, 2024 in Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming. A Black bear forages for food near a stream on May 18, 2024 in Yellowstone National Park, bear had previously crushed an unused tent on June 7 and later climbed a properly secured food storage pole to access campers' food bags on July 11. Although incidents involving bears obtaining human food at Yellowstone remain uncommon, when they do occur, the animal may quickly lose its natural wariness of humans. Park authorities warned that such bold behaviour raises serious safety concerns. Yellowstone National Park stretches from Wyoming into Montana, and Idaho and was established as a national park by President Ulysses S. Grant on March 1, 1872. It is the first national park in the United States. The park spans more than 3,468.4 square miles. Yellowstone is home to both grizzly bears and black bears, one of the few places south of Canada where the two species live side by side. What People Are Saying Yellowstone's bear management biologist Kerry Gunther said in the news release: "We go to great lengths to protect bears and prevent them from gaining access to human food in all areas of the park. But occasionally, a bear outsmarts us or overcomes our defenses. When that happens, we sometimes have to make the difficult decision to remove the bear from the population to protect people and property." The park's website states: "Visitors should be aware that all bears are potentially dangerous. Park regulations require that people stay at least 100 yards (91 meters) from bears (unless safely in your car as a bear moves by). "Bears need your concern, not your food; it is against the law to feed any park wildlife, including bears. All of Yellowstone is bear habitat – from the deepest backcountry to the boardwalks around Old Faithful. Prepare for bear encounters no matter where you go by learning more about bear safety." What Happens Next Yellowstone continues to require all backcountry campers to use either food storage poles or bear-resistant food containers at the park's 293 campsites. Officials emphasise that proper food storage, except when actively cooking or eating, is vital for visitor safety and wildlife protection.
Atlantic
10-07-2025
- Business
- Atlantic
America Has Never Seen Corruption Like This
The White House has seen its share of shady deals. Ulysses S. Grant's brother-in-law used his family ties to engineer an insider-trading scheme that tanked the gold market. Warren Harding's secretary of the interior secretly leased land to oil barons, who paid a fortune for his troubles. To bankroll Richard Nixon's reelection, corporate executives sneaked suitcases full of cash into the capital. But Americans have never witnessed anything like the corruption that President Donald Trump and his inner circle have perpetrated in recent months. Its brazenness, volume, and variety defy historical comparison, even in a country with a centuries-long history of graft—including, notably, Trump's first four years in office. Indeed, his second term makes the financial scandals of his first—foreign regimes staying at Trump's hotel in Washington, D.C.; the (aborted) plan to host the G7 at Trump's hotel in Florida—seem quaint. Trump 2.0 is just getting started, yet it already represents the high-water mark of American kleptocracy. There are good reasons to think it will get much worse. Virtually every week, the Trump family seems to find a new way to profit from the presidency. The Trump Organization has brokered a growing catalog of real-estate projects with autocratic regimes, including a Trump tower in Saudi Arabia, a Trump hotel in Oman, and a Trump golf club in Vietnam. 'We're the hottest brand in the world right now,' Eric Trump recently proclaimed. In May, Qatar gave the White House a $400 million jet—a gift that looked a lot like a bribe but that Trump had no qualms accepting. David Frum: The Trump presidency's world-historical heist And that's just the foreign front. Domestically, Trump has used flimsy complaints to go after media organizations, resulting in settlements that resemble shakedowns. Last year, he accused 60 Minutes of deceptively editing an interview with his Democratic presidential opponent, Kamala Harris. Legal experts saw the claim as weak. Rather than fighting it in court, however, Paramount agreed to pay $16 million, which will subsidize Trump's future presidential library and cover his legal fees. Following a similarly dubious lawsuit, ABC sent $15 million to Trump's library fund and issued a 'statement of regret.' Beyond the court, the president has peddled Trump perfumes, Trump sneakers, and Trump phones, shamelessly using the prestige of the presidency to boost his family's income. And then there's crypto: the $TRUMP meme coin, the pay-to-play dinners with investors, the paused prosecution of a crypto kingpin who had purchased $30 million in Trump-backed tokens. 'The law is totally on my side,' Trump said after his election in 2016, when he was asked about mixing his financial affairs with his new office. 'The president can't have a conflict of interest.' That statement is now alarmingly close to the truth. Thanks to last year's Supreme Court ruling, Trump has presumptive immunity from criminal prosecution for any 'official act.' He has appointed an attorney general, Pam Bondi, who appears willing to do his bidding no matter the cost to the Department of Justice. He has gutted independent bodies that went after white-collar criminal networks, task forces that investigated kleptocracy, public prosecutors that chased public corruption, and regulation that targeted transnational money laundering. The list goes on. Trump's Treasury Department effectively terminated America's new shell-company registry. His DOJ dissolved task forces that seized stolen assets. The administration froze the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, the bedrock of America's antibribery regime. In sum, Trump has dismantled a network of agencies, laws, and norms that thwarted all kinds of kleptocracy, including the kind that enriches a sitting president. Foreign agents are watching as America's anti-corruption regime crumbles. They see an extraordinary window of opportunity, and they know they'll have to act quickly to take full advantage. Succoring Trump and his family has already proved one of the fastest ways to guarantee favorable policy. Are U.S. sanctions hurting your economy? Consider building a Trump resort. Want to stay in America's good graces? Invest in Trump-backed crypto. All of this grafting is likely to accelerate. Consider the Qatari jet. The gift prompted plenty of hand-wringing in the United States, but also in the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia, which saw their regional foe gain leverage over them by charming Trump. Don't think of the jet as the culmination of the president's greed; think of it as the new bar for bids to come. Any Middle Eastern dictator who wants to surpass Qatar in America's estimation now knows his price. In India, oligarchs and other government allies are opening Trump properties in rapid succession, while Pakistan recently announced a new national crypto reserve, signing a 'letter of intent' to work with a Trump-backed group. Serbia and Albania have both recently vied for Trump's affections, each signing deals for luxury properties with his family. The incentive to out-bribe one's competition could soon take hold in geopolitical rivalries around the world. Perhaps most worrisome is the tacit permission that Trump granted foreign powers to directly bankroll U.S. politicians. This was the precedent he set when he strong-armed prosecutors into dropping the case against New York City Mayor Eric Adams, who was accused of soliciting campaign funds from Turkey. 'You win the race by raising money,' Adams said. 'Everything else is fluff.' One could imagine the president saying the same.
Buzz Feed
25-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Buzz Feed
History's Most Gruesome Deaths Revealed
They say history is always written from the perspective of the victor, even though those who have been defeated in gruesome deaths find themselves immortalized in some capacity. Their endings aren't pretty by any means, though they're remembered more vividly than those who've left this world on a less disastrous note. Recently, I did a deep dive on r/AskReddit where, in one post, someone asked users to name the "famous historical figures [who] had deaths proportionally brutal to their level of fame." Here's what people had to say: Note: Some responses have been condensed and edited for clarity. "Ulysses S. Grant, but it was still a noble death." "After losing all his money to a Ponzi scheme, he defied a throat cancer diagnosis in order to write his memoirs (published by Mark Twain) so that the proceeds would sustain his wife after his death. He wrote one thousand words a day, every day, until the cancer left him too weak to write. At this point, he hired a stenographer and dictated the final chapters through the pain of advanced throat cancer, for which he was denied morphine to keep his mind sharp. At the end, he was forced to wear a wool scarf for all public appearances to hide the fist-sized tumor in front of his a year's work and 366,000 words written, he gave the manuscript to Mark Twain to publish and was told that 100,000 copies had been pre-ordered. One week later, he succumbed to cancer. Julia Grant and their children received the modern equivalent of 12 million dollars. The work was such a commercial success, it outsold Twain's other work, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn."–u/maejaws "Julius Caesar's death is pretty wild. Stabbed to death on the Senate floor by people he thought were his political allies and personal friends." –u/JackC1126 "Blackbeard the Pirate (Edward Teach). Cornered by the British Navy, he went down fighting. When his body was examined, he had been shot five times and had 20 sword cuts. The British sailors fired another 20 shots into his body and cut off his head to be displayed as a warning to other would-be pirates." –u/Johhnymaddog316 "Sigurd the Mighty. A Norwegian Jarl of Shetland who conquered part of Northern Scotland." "Charles of Navarre (Charles the Bad) died a quite terrible death. At 54 years old (1387), he fell seriously ill, and on the doctor's advice, they wrapped him in linen soaked in brandy. Because, you know, medieval medicine. Unfortunately, the maid tripped and dropped a candle, which set the brandy ablaze, burning the man alive." –u/MinuteCow8927 "Anne Boleyn. Henry VIII must have actually loved her at one point, to then turn around and have her not only executed, but then erase her as much as he possibly could afterwards. He felt so betrayed (despite being the betrayer himself), he tried to erase her existence." –u/TrespianRomance "Jamestown governor John Ratcliffe, the villain in Disney's Pocahontas. Had his skin peeled off and thrown in a fire in front of him." –u/Pantastic_Studios "Joan of Arc, a 19-year-old girl being slowly burned to death by the same church she dedicated her life to, while chanting Christ's name over and over. Only to be named a Saint by that same church centuries later." –u/SemperFun62 "Qaddafi getting sodomized with a bayonet has to be up there." –u/flightist "Robespierre. Shot in the jaw, unable to speak, which is what helped start the Terror in the first place — his words. Taken to the guillotine like so many others." –u/drulaps "Roland Freisler died a fittingly brutal death. He was a Nazi judge who oversaw a lot of torture and thousands of death sentences. Differing accounts say that he was killed either when a piece of his courtroom crushed him in an air raid, or when shrapnel hit him and he ran out only to bleed to death on the courthouse steps." –u/petitecrivain "Stalin lay on the ground in his office for about 11 hours after having a stroke, dying slowly in pain. The staff were too scared to enter his private office without explicit permission, so they waited until a senior person showed up." –u/unclear_warfare Martin Luther King Jr., as the most visible leader of the Civil Rights Movement, was assassinated in a brutal act of racial violence intended to silence his powerful message. Instead, his death became a rallying cry for the movement and further elevated his status as a global icon of peace and justice." –u/Spice-Fairy04 "Bonnie and Clyde. Holy shit, that car had a lot of bullet holes in it." –u/PreparedStatement "Joseph Smith." "Today, he is best known for founding the Mormon religion, but he had higher ambitions than that. He started a large cult, very similar to what you see today, where he was a godlike leader who had multiple wives and required complete adherence from his followers. But this was the 1830s in the 'Wild West,' where people were distracted with other things, so before time caught up with him, he had developed as a full-on nation-state, with thousands of members, in Western Illinois. For the second time in a 10-year span, Smith amassed a large, heavily armed militia, overthrew the government, destroyed the newspapers, imposed martial law, and declared that he was running for US president, at which point it was assumed he would attempt to take over the entire country, whether he won or was charged with treason and taken to an Illinois prison. Before he could face trial, hundreds of men stormed the jail, shot Smith repeatedly, at which point Smith tried to escape by jumping from the second-story window, which probably killed him, but the mob went outside and beat and repeatedly shot Smith's corpse just to be was a murder trial for some of the mob members who killed Smith, but all the defendants were acquitted, partially due to jury nullification, but also because there were so many people who shot, beat, and took credit for killing him, it was impossible to prove that one person actually did the deed."–u/Many_Collection_8889 "William the Conqueror died of a massive infection caused by an injury he received from the pommel of his saddle." –u/MartialBob "Samuel Doe (21st President of Liberia). He faced 12 hours of torture (which included his ears getting cut off and some of his fingers and toes amputated) before he was finally murdered."
Time of India
24-05-2025
- Health
- Time of India
US Presidents who fought Cancer: Joe Biden joins the list following stage 4 Prostate Cancer diagnosis
Former President Joe Biden has been diagnosed with metastatic prostate cancer that had spread to his bones. This serious development raised national conversations about age, transparency, and healthcare in leadership. Tired of too many ads? go ad free now Biden joins a small but significant list of U.S. presidents who have faced cancer or major health crises. Their stories reflect changing medical practices, evolving attitudes toward privacy, and the personal burdens carried by those in the nation's highest office. As medical advancements prolong lives and reshape treatment options, the expectations placed on public figures have grown. The health of a president, once guarded, now influences public trust, policy direction, and global stability. George Washington (President 1789–1797) Although not formally diagnosed with cancer, George Washington's final illness in 1799 involved severe throat inflammation and respiratory distress. Some modern medical historians speculate it may have been linked to a tumor, such as lymphoma or epiglottic cancer, though a severe infection is the more widely accepted cause. Aggressive bloodletting and outdated treatments likely accelerated his decline, revealing the limitations of 18th-century medicine. Ulysses S. Grant (President 1869–1877) In 1884, Ulysses S. Grant was diagnosed with throat cancer, most likely caused by years of cigar smoking. Despite debilitating pain, he spent his final months writing his memoirs to provide financial support for his family. He completed them just days before his death in 1885. His determination is remembered as an act of courage and dignity in the face of terminal illness. Grover Cleveland (President 1885–1889, 1893–1897) During his second term in 1893, Grover Cleveland secretly underwent surgery to remove a cancerous tumor from the roof of his mouth. Tired of too many ads? go ad free now Fearing economic panic, the operation was conducted aboard a private yacht. The press was deceived, and the truth remained hidden for years. Cleveland recovered fully, but the episode remains a landmark case of presidential secrecy regarding health. Franklin D. Roosevelt (President 1933–1945) Franklin D. Roosevelt lived with numerous health issues, including congestive heart failure and paralysis from polio. A lesion above his eye, later believed to have been melanoma, was removed during his presidency, although it was not publicly disclosed. His condition was largely concealed, reflecting a time when presidential illness was shielded from public scrutiny to maintain national morale. Ronald Reagan (President 1981–1989) Ronald Reagan underwent surgery in 1985 to remove a cancerous polyp from his colon. He also received treatment for non-melanoma skin cancers during and after his presidency. Reagan's relatively transparent approach helped promote awareness about colon cancer screenings and early detection, encouraging many Americans to undergo preventive medical checkups. George H. W. Bush (President 1989–1993) Though not diagnosed with cancer, George H. W. Bush was treated for Graves' disease, a thyroid autoimmune disorder, while in office. The fact that both he and First Lady Barbara Bush were affected sparked widespread discussion about environmental and genetic factors in autoimmune illnesses and brought public attention to thyroid health. Jimmy Carter (President 1977–1981) In 2015, more than three decades after his presidency, Jimmy Carter revealed he had melanoma that had spread to his liver and brain. He underwent surgery, radiation, and cutting-edge immunotherapy. Astonishingly, he announced in 2016 that he was cancer-free. His recovery highlighted the potential of immunotherapy and inspired hope for others facing late-stage cancer diagnoses. Joe Biden (President 2021–2025) In May 2025, President Joe Biden was diagnosed with metastatic prostate cancer that had spread to his bones. The cancer, a high-grade adenocarcinoma, is hormone-sensitive and may respond to treatment. His last PSA test was in 2014, raising concerns about screening practices and transparency. Biden's condition renewed national dialogue on aging leadership and medical oversight in the presidency. These accounts reveal that illness does not exempt even the most powerful. From George Washington's mysterious final hours to Joe Biden's modern-day diagnosis, the way presidents manage and disclose serious health conditions continues to shape public expectations, medical policy, and the broader human understanding of leadership under strain.
