POUGHKEEPSIE

The board game SCRABBLE was invented in POUGHKEEPSIE in 1931 by Alfred Mosher Butts, a local architect.Franklin Delano Roosevelt H.S and Dutchess Community College Graduate Bill Duke (born February 26, 1943) is an American actor and film director. Born in Poughkeepsie, New York, Duke received his first instruction in the performing arts at Boston University. After also studying at New York University's Tisch School of Arts and the AFI Conservatory, Duke began his career behind the camera, directing episodes of several noteworthy 1980s television series, including Hill Street Blues and Miami Vice. Standing an imposing 6'4 and featuring a closely shaved head, Duke became a familiar face to moviegoers after portraying tough guys alongside Arnold Schwarzenegger in Commando and Predator, as well as the memorable police chief in Carl Weathers' action vehicle Action Jackson. He was a dirty cop in the Mel Gibson revenge movie Payback. He also has appeared in the X-Men: The Last Stand as Bolivar Trask. Other Duke films include Car Wash (1976) where he portrays Abdullah, and American Gigolo (1980) as a homosexual. In American Gigolo, Duke is seen with hair as opposed to his other films. Returning to the director's chair, Duke began directing feature-length films in the 1990s with crime dramas A Rage in Harlem and Deep Cover. He also directed The Cemetery Club and the well-received Sister Act 2, starring Whoopi Goldberg. Duke continues to act and direct for both the small and silver screens. He is also a mentor for young African-Americans aspiring for the performance arts.ED WOOD, voted the worst film director of all time was born in POUGHKEEPSIE, NY in 1924. Edward Davis Wood, Jr. (October 10, 1924 December 10, 1978) was an American film director, screenwriter, actor, and producer. In the 1950s, Wood made a bizarre run of independently produced, and extremely low-budget horror, science fiction and cowboy films, now notorious for their technical errors, unsophisticated special effects, idiosyncratic dialogue, eccentric casts and outlandish plot elements. After extensive critical and commercial failure, Wood ended his career making pornography and writing pulp crime and horror novels. Wood's posthumous fame began two years after his death, when he was awarded a Golden Turkey Award as Worst Director of All Time, by popular vote. The lack of conventional filmmaking ability in his work has earned Wood and his films a considerable cult following. Following the publication of Rudolph Grey's biography Nightmare of Ecstasy, Wood's life and work have undergone minor public rehabilitation, with new light shed on his evident zeal and honest love of movies and movie production.Overlooking the Hudson River in Poughkeepsie, NY, the 150 acre estate of Samuel F.B. Morse includes an Italianate villa designed by Alexander Jackson Davis containing extensive collections of American and European decorative and fine arts. Three miles of carriage roads wind through landscaped grounds, romantic gardens and shady groves.1791 - Samuel F. B. Morse was born in Charlestown, Massachusetts.1830 - Two years after Henry Livingston Jr.'s death, his heirs sold his farm to John and Isabella Montgomery, a wealthy couple from New York City. The Montgomerys relocated farming operations to the lower grounds and built a new house (the core of the present house) on the bluff overlooking the Hudson River.1837 - Samuel F. B. Morse patented his electromagnetic telegraph.1844 - Samuel F. B. Morse sent his famous message "What hath God wrought!" from Washington D.C. to Baltimore.1847 - Samuel F. B. Morse purchased the Locust Grove estate from the Montgomerys and moved to Poughkeepsie with his three children. His first wife, Lucretia, had died in 1825.1848 - Samuel F. B. Morse married his second wife, Sarah Elizabeth Griswold.1851 - Samuel F. B. Morse worked with the well-known architect Alexander Jackson Davis to remodel and enlarge the Montgomery's house into an Italianate villa. For the rest of his life, Morse continued to alter and improve the landscape around his home.1872 - Samuel F. B. Morse died at the age of 80. His family spent a few more years at Locust Grove but eventually moved away and rented the estate.1896 - William and Martha Young, a wealthy Poughkeepsie couple with two children, began renting Locust Grove as a summer home1901 - William Young purchased Locust Grove from Samuel Morse's heirs. The Youngs realized its historic importance and preserved it essentially as it had been in Morse's time. They brought to the house important collections of furniture, paintings, and ceramics, and continued to collect throughout their lives.1975 - Annette Innis Young, William and Martha's daughter, died after spending 80 of her 90 years living at Locust Grove. In her will, she established a trust to preserve the estate and its contents for the "education, visitation, and enlightenment of the public."1979 - Locust Grove opened to the public, offering guided tours, lectures, and special events.1998 - To better serve its rapidly growing audience, Locust Grove began construction on a new visitor center, opened to the public in 2001.FORMER DUTCHESS COUNTY ASSISTANT DISTRICT ATTORNEY AND NIXON FLUNKY: G. GORDON LIDDY.................................George Gordon Battle Liddy (born November 30, 1930) was the chief operative for President Richard Nixon's White House Plumbers unit. Along with E. Howard Hunt, Liddy masterminded the first break-in of Democratic National Committee headquarters in the Watergate building in 1972. The subsequent cover-up of the Watergate scandal led to Nixon's resignation in 1974. Liddy later became an American radio talk show host, actor and political strategist. Liddy's radio talk show is now syndicated in 160 markets and on both Sirius Satellite Radio and XM Satellite Radio stations in the United States. He has also been a guest panelist for Fox News Channel. Liddy was born in 1930 in Hoboken, New Jersey to Sylvester J. Liddy and Maria Abbaticchio, raised in West Caldwell, New Jersey, and educated at Fordham University. He graduated in 1952 and joined the United States Army, serving for two years as an artillery officer in the U.S. during the Korean War. He returned home in 1954 to study law at Fordham. Graduating in 1957, he went to work for the FBI under J. Edgar Hoover. That same year he married Frances Ann Purcell. Liddy tells a story of an unusual encounter he had with Hoover: while paying the director a courtesy call, the purpose to which Hoover had only briefly alluded, the latter launched into a bizarre 45 minute tirade against Eleanor Roosevelt. In this tirade he said that the former First Lady was an enemy of the Bureau and a subversive. Liddy later said, "Despite the irrelevance, I found this fascinating." He joked that afterwards another young agent approached him saying he was also going to have a meeting with the legendary director and wanted to know how to make a good impression. Liddy put on his best poker face and told his colleague to just let Mister Hoover know how much he loved and admired Eleanor Roosevelt. Liddy left the FBI in 1962 and worked as a lawyer in New York City and Dutchess County, New York. In 1966, he organized the arrest and unsuccessful trial of Timothy Leary. In his autobiography, Will, he recounts finding the Leary mansion to be filled with hippies tripping on LSD and sitting in piles of their own feces. He ran unsuccessfully for the post of District Attorney and then for the House of Representatives in 1968, but used his political profile to run the presidential campaign of Richard Nixon in the 28th district of New York. In 1971, after serving in several positions in the Nixon administration, Liddy was moved to Nixon's 1972 campaign, the Committee to Re-elect the President, (officially known as CRP but to opponents known as CREEP), in order to extend the scope and reach of the White House "Plumbers" unit, which had been created in response to various damaging "leaks" of information to the press. At CRP, Liddy concocted several plots, some far-fetched, intended to embarrass the Democratic opposition. Most were rejected, such as firebombing the Brookings Institution, but a few were given the go ahead by Nixon Administration officials, including the break-in at Daniel Ellsberg's psychiatrist's office. Ellsberg had leaked the "Pentagon Papers" to the New York Times. At some point, Liddy was instructed to break-in to the Democratic National Campaign headquarters in the Watergate complex. He insists that he resisted the order, pointing out that the break-in served no useful purpose, but relented when his objections were overruled. The break-in attempt was uncovered and the political and legal fallout led to the downfall of President Nixon. There is a great deal of speculation as to the actual origins of the order to break-in to the Watergate offices. Liddy's account can be found in his autobiography, Will. Attempting to find a solution to the heat coming down on the Nixon administration, Liddy suggested several far fetched ideas as a distraction, one of which included Liddy just "getting assassinated on some street corner". For his role in Watergate, which he coordinated with Hunt, Liddy was convicted of conspiracy, burglary and illegal wiretapping, and received a 20-year sentence. He served four and a half years in prison before his sentence was commuted by President Jimmy Carter.