Prompt the First - Is the Fourth Turning driving everyone crazy?

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_City_disaster - 1947, so not technically, but
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Port_Chicago_disaster
• Cleveland East Ohio Gas explosion
• USS Mount Hood
• RAF Fauld explosion
• Futamata Tunnel Explosion
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halifax_Explosion
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sultana_(steamboat) - 1965, right around Lincoln’s assassination
• “The official cause of the Sultana disaster was determined to be the mismanagement of water levels in the boilers, exacerbated by the fact that the vessel was severely overloaded and top-heavy. “
• A lot of other major explosions as a part of the war, and some incidental to it -

Prompt the Second - Is The Fourth Turning a bad time to be a white collar criminal?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sam_Bankman-Fried

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernie_Madoff

 

Prompt the Third - How crazy is this current presidential election, really?

Lincoln had a “unity ticket”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unity_ticket

The only unity ticket to win the [United States] presidency was the National Union Party in the 1864 presidential election, which ran a unity ticket between Abraham Lincoln of the Republican Party and Andrew Johnson of the Democratic Party. 

 

FDR changed his VP a couple of times - Garner, Wallace, Truman (last election, was VP for only a few months before FDRs death)

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1940_Democratic_National_Convention

It was mid-July 1940, which also means it was just after the fall of France (June 22) which may have been why FDR changed his mind on running.