This Day in History

On this day in 1913 Richard Milhouse Nixon, thirty-seventh President of the United States was born in Yorba Linda, California. One of the most maligned and misunderstood figures in American political history, Nixon was a major national figure for a third of a century and his impact upon our political culture cannot be understated. It is reasonable to assert that, after Franklin Roosevelt, Nixon was the most important American political figure of the Twentieth Century. Only today are we beginning to come to terms, for better or for worse, with his legacy.

The official White House biographical sketch is here.

The Wikipedia entry, which is relatively even-handed, is here.

An excellent short biography, written to accompany the PBS "American President" series, is here.