Thread by @DavidCranmerUn1

Edward M. House - Wikipedia

Having a self-effacing manner, he did not hold office but was an "executive agent", Wilson's chief advisor on European politics and diplomacy during World War I (1914–18) and at the Paris Peace Conference of 1919. In 1919 en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_M.…

Wilson, suffering from a series of small strokes, broke with House and many other top advisors, believing they had deceived him at Paris.

House helped to make four men governor of Texas: James S. Hogg (1892), Charles A. Culberson (1894), Joseph D. Sayers (1898), and S. W. T.

Lanham (1902). After their elections, House acted as unofficial advisor to each. After Wilson's first wife died in 1914, the President was even closer to House. However, Wilson's second wife, Edith, of whom he had commissioned the Swiss-born American artist Adolfo Müller-Ury

(1862–1947) to paint a portrait in 1916, disliked House, and his position weakened. It is believed that her personal animosity was significantly responsible for Wilson's eventual decision to break with House.

House relied on the information received from British diplomats,

especially the British foreign secretary Edward Grey. After a German U-boat sank without warning the British passenger liner Lusitania on 7 May 1915, with 128 Americans among the 1198 dead, many Americans called for war. The ship was carrying war munitions, although this was

not publicly revealed at the time. House played a major role in shaping wartime diplomacy. He supported Thomas Garrigue Masaryk Czechoslovak legions especially in Russia as well. House served on the League of Nations Commission on Mandates with Lord Milner and Lord Robert Cecil

of Great Britain, Henri Simon[15] of France, Viscount Chinda of Japan, Guglielmo Marconi of Italy, and George Louis Beer as adviser. On May 30, 1919 House participated in a meeting in Paris which laid the groundwork for establishment of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR).

Throughout 1919, House urged Wilson to work with Senator Henry Cabot Lodge to achieve ratification of the Versailles Treaty, but Wilson refused to deal with Lodge or any other senior Republican. The Fourteen Points were based on the research of the Inquiry, a team of about 150

advisors led by foreign-policy advisor Edward M. House, into the topics likely to arise in the expected peace conference. Initially, a "Council of Ten" (comprising two delegates each from Britain, France, the United States, Italy, and Japan) met officially to decide the peace

terms. This council was replaced by the "Council of Five", formed from each country's foreign ministers, to discuss minor matters. French Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau, Italian Prime Minister Vittorio Emanuele Orlando, British Prime Minister David Lloyd George, and

United States President Woodrow Wilson formed the "Big Four" (at one point becoming the "Big Three" following the temporary withdrawal of Vittorio Emanuele Orlando). These four men met in 145 closed sessions to make all the major decisions, which were later ratified by the

entire assembly. Britain had suffered heavy financial costs but suffered little physical devastation during the war,[55] but the British wartime coalition was re-elected during the so-called Coupon election at the end of 1918, with a policy of squeezing the Germans "'til the pips

squeak". Lloyd George also intended to maintain a European balance of power to thwart a French attempt to establish itself as the dominant European power. A revived Germany would be a counterweight to France and a deterrent to Bolshevik Russia. Lloyd George also wanted to

neutralize the German navy to keep the Royal Navy as the greatest naval power in the world; dismantle the German colonial empire with several of its territorial possessions ceded to Britain and others being established as League of Nations mandates, a position opposed by the

Dominions. The treaty stripped Germany of 65,000 km2 (25,000 sq mi) of territory and 7 million people. It also required Germany to give up the gains made via the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk and grant independence to the protectorates that had been established. The treaty also called

for the signatories to sign or ratify the International Opium Convention. The Convention was implemented in 1915 by the United States, Netherlands, China, Honduras, and Norway. It went into force globally in 1919, when it was incorporated into the Treaty of Versailles. The

primary objective of the convention was to introduce restrictions on exports as opposed to imposing prohibition or criminalising the use and cultivation of opium, coca, and cannabis. That explains the withdrawal of the United States and China, which were gravitating towards

prohibitionist approaches, as well as the beginning of negotiations leading to the 1925 International Opium Convention in Geneva. A compromise[6] was made that banned exportation of Indian hemp to countries that have prohibited its use, and requiring importing countries to issue

certificates approving the importation and stating that the shipment was required "exclusively for medical or scientific purposes."

The use of ropes for hunting, pulling, fastening, attaching, carrying, lifting, and climbing dates back to prehistoric times. It is likely that

the earliest "ropes" were naturally occurring lengths of plant fibre, such as vines, followed soon by the first attempts at twisting and braiding these strands together to form the first proper ropes in the modern sense of the word. Leonardo da Vinci drew sketches of a concept

for a ropemaking machine, but it was never built. Remarkable feats of construction were accomplished using rope but without advanced technology: In 1586, Domenico Fontana erected the 327 ton obelisk on Rome's Saint Peter's Square with a concerted effort of 900 men, 75 horses,

and countless pulleys and meters of rope. By the late 18th century several working machines had been built and patented.

Rome Murdick (bottom left) had 3 sons: C. Gould Murdick (oldest – bottom middle), Arthur Jerome Murdick (top left) and F. Jerald Murdick (youngest – top

middle).
In 1887, the Murdick family began the very first fudge store on Mackinac Island (now sold out of the family)– the same year that the Grand Hotel opened. 
Henry and Newton Jerome (Rome) Murdick opened the first fudge store in Michigan calling it  Murdick’s Candy Kitchen.

Father and son were boat builders and sail makers, and were commissioned to make the awnings for the newly built Grand Hotel. Mackinaw cloth is a heavy and dense water-repellent woolen cloth, similar to Melton cloth but using a tartan pattern, often "buffalo plaid".

Buffalo check or buffalo plaid has black hashes on a red background. In the United States, it got its name around 1850 when a designer at the Woolrich mill at Chatham's Run in Pennsylvania (who owned a herd of buffalo) copied a pattern known as "Rob Roy" in Scotland, named

after the folk hero Rob Roy MacGregor.
Along with many Highland clansmen, at the age of eighteen Rob Roy together with his father joined the Jacobite rising of 1689 led by John Graham, 1st Viscount Dundee, known as Bonnie Dundee, to support the Stuart King James II who had fled

Britain during the Glorious Revolution of 1688. Although victorious in initial battles, Dundee was killed in 1689, deflating the rebellion. Rob's father was taken to jail, where he was held on treason charges for two years. Rob's mother Margaret's health failed during Donald's

time in prison. By the time Donald was finally released, his wife was dead. Tartan, at least in its modern form, is not perhaps as ancient as one might imagine. It’s thought that until the invention of regimental tartans in the mid 18th century, patterns (or ‘setts’) derived from

local areas or Highland districts rather than specific clans, surnames or organisations, especially if natural dyes were available in a particular region. Following the Jacobite rebellion of 1745, the Dress Act banned the wearing of ‘Highland Dress’; repeat offenders faced the

prospect of transportation to Australia. And then in 1782 the act was repealed. Two years later, a society of enthusiastic Scottish aristocrats met in Edinburgh to promote ‘the general use of the ancient Highland dress’. Tartan was back in business.