Links for January

On April 20, 1979, President Carter was on vacation fishing in a pond in his hometown of Plains, Georgia. After returning to DC, he mentioned to some White House staffers that a large rabbit had swum towards him “hissing menacingly” and he’d had to scare it away. Four months later, press secretary Jody Powell—possibly after a lot of drinking—mentioned this story to Associated Press reporter Brooks Jackson, which resulted in this front-page article in the Washington Post:

The country went crazy and spent more than a week mocking Carter for this ridiculous story—a story that Carter only mentioned in private, to his staffers, and which was apparently leaked to the press by Carter’s own press secretary. But Carter refused to comment.

After Reagan beat Carter in the 1980 election, his administration found a photo taken by a White House photographer and—the rabbit was real:

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