At 11:30 AM on this day in 1931, President Woodrow Wilson pressed a ceremonial button in the White House in Washington D.C. to symbolically turn on the lights inside the newly dedicated tallest building in the world, the Empire State Building.

Meanwhile, in New York City, a crowd of New York's finest gathered on the building's eighty-sixth floor observation deck for a radio address by the former New York Governor Alfred E. Smith and his successor, current Governor Franklin D. Roosevelt. In conclusion to his speech, Roosevelt requested the building's owners reserve an office for him "so that when I leave Albany I will have some place to go."

The future would have other plans for F.D.R., who, having been paralyzed from the waist down by polio in 1921, only stood on the 86th floor that day with the assistance of leg braces.

Or maybe he had a little extra help from someone who knew just how important he would be to history....

Comments (0) | Add a Comment | Tags: empire state building secret history

Over 3000 different keywords/phrases have been used over the years here on the Boosterrific! Blog, some obviously more often than others. Some of them are recurring categories, perhaps first and foremost among them being "solicitations" and "new releases," which alert Booster boosters to upcoming and new Booster Gold appearances in comic books.

Select few recurring items over the years have earned their own banner images. Click on any of the following banners to see their associated posts.

And one more for a series that should have a banner but doesn't...

Thanks for reading!

Comments (5) | Add a Comment | Tags: banners best of favorite pages flashback nostalgic for the future people in his neighborhood powers secret history talking booster gold true story website update

It has become an annual tradition for the President of the United States to "pardon" a turkey for Thanksgiving. Technically, a pardon is a legal forgiveness for having committing a crime, so the word really shouldn't apply to turkeys. We should say that they were granted clemency because they didn't do anything illegal prior to the imposition of their death sentence.

But what if they did?

Although Abraham Lincoln often gets the credit, the truth is that in November 1963, John Kennedy was the first president to pardon an unnamed turkey. "The turkey will probably live a long and happy life as a result of his presidential pardon," reported the Associated Press. Only, as we now know, it didn't.

As it turns out, The Turkey With No Name would soon be given a name: Patient Zero. After the turkey returned to its home in California, it was discovered the turkey was a carrier of the virus then known as "fowl plague." Today we recognize it as influenza A, more commonly called bird flu.

Bird flu is highly contagious and has been responsible for crossing species and killing millions of human beings around the world. In 1963, there was no treatment for the disease, and the only way to prevent the spread was to take swift and decisive action and cull entire flocks of birds... and anyone else who had contact with the infected fowl, including the popular President of the United States. (To prevent public panic over a potential pandemic, such extreme actions were undertaken surreptitiously with suspicion cast on convenient scapegoats.)

Any well-intentioned time travelers aware of this terrible and sordid chain of events might be tempted to take it upon themselves to "improve" history by going back in time and killing the turkey before it could trigger such a tragic spiral. However, as we all know, changing history can have dire unintended consequences. Ensuring that history plays out the way it must is the lonely but necessary job of a Time Cop, preferably one with a force field impenetrable to disease.

Thanks for performing your thankless job, Booster Gold!

Comments (0) | Add a Comment | Tags: holidays jfk secret history thanksgiving

As an American, I'm not too invested in the individual sitting at the head of state for any country, including my own. But I do respect Queen Elizabeth II's long reign. It will certainly be a different world without her.

I went looking, and the only instance I can find of Booster Gold with the former Queen of England was this image I created with the intention of using it on the 35th anniversary of the wedding of Charles and Diana in 2015. Then, for some reason, I didn't actually post it until the wedding of Harry and Meghan in 2018. And here we are, just 4 years later.

Time flies whether you're having fun or not, I guess. Memento mori. Make it count, Booster boosters!

Comments (1) | Add a Comment | Tags: queen elizabeth ii secret history

In comic books, heroes arrive in the nick of time to restore the status quo. That's generally what you want when a crime is being committed. But what if the problem is the status quo itself?

That's why the first Earth Day was organized on April 22, 1970 (as any environmentally conscious time-traveler could tell you).

Most of us have only one Earth, and all things being equal, it has treated us pretty well so far. The least we can do is try to keep it the kind of planet our heroes would be proud to call home.

Comments (0) | Add a Comment | Tags: earth day secret history