[O]n Feb. 20, 1954 — President Dwight Eisenhower interrupted his vacation in Palm Springs, Calif., to make a secret nocturnal trip to a nearby Air Force base to meet two extraterrestrial aliens.
Or maybe not. Maybe Ike just went to the dentist. There’s some dispute about this. —Peter Carlson
—Ike and the alien ambassadors (M$ NBC)
A precious quote, from the author of a book on the political implications of an extraterrestrial presence on Earth: “There’s a lot of stuff on the Internet,” he says, “and I just went around and pieced it together.”
Journalists aren’t supposed to editorialize while covering the news, but the use of this quote pretty much says all that one needs to know.
A close second is the following:
Mixson’s article “A History of Dwight D. Eisenhower’s Oral Health” — published in the November 1995 issue of the Bulletin of the History of Dentistry — is the definitive work on Ike’s teeth. [Some tooth-related info here.] That may be more than you wanted to know about Ike’s dental work. If not, Mixson goes on at some length, quoting a long, lyrical passage written by Fairchild on this troublesome presidential incisor.
