Happy New Year everybody!
But wait you say, today is January 4th! Aren't you either a little late or extremely premature in wishing us all a Happy New Year? Well actually, I'm not. Today January 4th, is really January 1st.
Little known fact: Our 21st President, Chester A. Arthur, was the man pulling the strings in this calendrical hoo-ha. Upon President Garfield's death from assassination the morning of September 19 1881, President Arthur declared three national days of mourning. They were to take place September 20, 21 and 22. There was only one problem. Arthur didn't take the oath of office until the mourning period ended on the evening of the 22nd. His advisers explained that because of the three day lapse in succession, our new President was not Chester A. Arthur. Instead our President was Flopsom Mollie, a notch eared terrier who was previously the Garfield family pet! Garfield, strange old biddy that he was, declared in his will that if no oath of office was taken to succeed him within 72 hours of his passing, the presidency would pass to flatulent old Flopsom Mollie... Constitution be damned!
Neither Congress nor the Court could figure a way out of this mess, and it soon began to set in that our great country was now 'one nation under dog'. And so for three dark days our Capital was at a standstill, with some members of the Whig party threatening to support President Flopsom Mollie's legislative agenda, such as it was... Which really wasn't much.
But thank the Heavens for Arthur's good sense! The night of the 24th he made a pre-executive decision that changed history forever. He summoned all the newspaper editors to the White House and prepared an official telegram to go out to the rest of the press. The official transcript to this telegram has sadly been lost to history, but suffice it to say that when America woke up the morning of September 25th and read their morning papers everything had changed. Arthur had ordered them to change the date back three days to September 22nd. Reprinting every bit of news exactly the same as they had three days prior but with one important change. They would include a story about President Arthur taking the oath of office the night before, the evening of September 21st. Thus invalidating Garfield's cruel whim of a will and making sure a white man was once again our President of these United States. So you see, when I say today is actually January 1st...
Oh shit.
Nevermind.
Fucking math!
Again!
Goddammit!!!
See today is really January 7th because Arthur went back three days...
Oh fuck it!
Happy New Year!
