Franklin Pierce

William Rufus DeVane King was the 13th Vice President of the United States for about six weeks , and earlier a U.S. Representative from North Carolina, Minister to France, and a Senator from Alabama. He was a Unionist and his contemporaries considered him to be a moderate on the issues of... sectionalism, slavery, and westward expansion that would eventually lead to the American Civil War. He helped draft the Compromise of 1850. The only United States executive official to take the oath of office on foreign soil, King died of tuberculosis after only 45 days in office. With the exceptions of John Tyler and Andrew Johnson—both of whom succeeded to the Presidency—he remains the shortest-serving Vice President. King was born in Sampson County, North Carolina, to William King and Margaret deVane, and graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1803. He was admitted to the bar in 1806 and began practice in Clinton, North Carolina. King was a member of the North Carolina House of Commons from 1807 to 1809 and city solicitor of Wilmington, North Carolina, in 1810.
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The United States presidential election of 1852 bore important similarities to the election of 1844. Once again, the incumbent president was a Whig who had succeeded to the presidency upon the death of his war-hero predecessor. In this case, it was Millard Fillmore who followed General Zachary... Taylor. The Whig party passed over the incumbent for nomination — casting aside Fillmore in favor of General Winfield Scott. The Democrats nominated a "dark horse" candidate, this time Franklin Pierce. The Whigs again campaigned on the obscurity of the Democratic candidate, and once again this strategy failed. Pierce and running mate William R. King went on to win what was at the time one of the nation's largest electoral victories, trouncing Scott and his vice-presidential nominee, William Alexander Graham of North Carolina, 254 electoral votes to 42. After the 1852 election the Whig Party quickly collapsed, and the members of the declining party failed to nominate a candidate for the next presidential race; it was soon replaced as the Democratic Party's primary opposition by the new Republican Party.
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Bowdoin College /ˈboʊdɨn/, founded in 1794, is a private liberal arts college located in the coastal Maine town of Brunswick, Maine. As of 2011, U.S. News and World Report ranks Bowdoin 6th among liberal arts colleges in the United States. At times, it was ranked as high as 4th in... the country. It is widely considered as one of the Little Ivies. The college enrolls approximately 1,700 students and has been coeducational since 1971. It offers 33 majors and 4 additional minors, and the student-faculty ratio is 9:1. Famous alumni include Joshua Chamberlain, Henry W. Longfellow, Franklin Pierce, and Nathaniel Hawthorne. Brunswick is located on the shores of Casco Bay and the Androscoggin River, 12 miles north of Freeport, Maine, and 28 miles north of Portland, Maine. In addition to its Brunswick campus, Bowdoin also owns a 118-acre coastal studies center on Orrs Island and a 200-acre scientific field station on Kent Island in the Bay of Fundy.
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The Battle of Khushab took place on 7 February 1857 and was the largest single engagement of the Anglo-Persian War. Having taken Borazjan without a... fight, the British expeditionary army under Sir James Outram was in the process of withdrawing to Bushehr when it was ambushed by a far larger Persian force under Khanlar Mirza, drawn up in battle order to its rear. The distinguishing action of the battle was the charge of the 3rd Bombay Light Cavalry against an infantry square of the 1st Khusgai Regiment of Fars, in which two Victoria Crosses were won. The recipients were the commander's adjutant Lieutenant Arthur Thomas Moore, who first broke into the square, and Captain John Grant Malcolmson, who then extricated Moore. Only twenty of the five hundred soldiers in the square escaped. Having beaten off the ambush, the British continued their withdrawal to Bushehr.
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