CBS News
Washington’s princess: How former first daughter Alice Roosevelt captivated America
As the 2024 election nears, “60 Minutes: A Second Look” turned to the archives for a look at Alice Roosevelt Longworth, a former first daughter who captivated America for decades.
The American public was enthralled with President Theodore Roosevelt’s daughter from 1901, when she was just a teenager in the White House, until her death in 1980. Alice spent decades in the spotlight, but she never appeared on U.S. television until her 1969 interview on “60 Minutes.” She also sat down with “60 Minutes” in 1974. During her 1969 interview, Alice, then 85, dished about almost every president of the 20th Century.
She called Warren Harding “probably the most inferior man,” Benjamin Harrison a “little squat man with a beard,” and William Howard Taft a “nice, fat, old bird.”
“She has, at 85, lost none of the wit and high spirits that made her such a popular figure during the presidency of her father, Theodore Roosevelt,” Harry Reasoner, one of the original “60 Minutes” correspondents, said at the time.
Alice the first daughter
Alice was 17 when her father, then vice president, ascended to the presidency in 1901 after the assassination of William McKinley.
Just like Beyoncé and Madonna today, Americans knew her by a single name: Alice. She was also sometimes called Miss Alice or Princess Alice.
People named their babies after her and there was even a color, Alice Blue, named after her, according to Stacy Cordery, author of “Alice: Alice Roosevelt Longworth from White House Princess to Washington Power Broker.”
“She was very much the personification of the zeitgeist of the new century,” Cordery told “60 Minutes: A Second Look” host and CBS News correspondent Seth Doane. “Young Americans in particular loved this. And they copied her and they followed her. And after a while when she appeared in public, crowds gathered around her.”
Alice was known to carry a copy of the Constitution and a green garter snake named Emily Spinach around in her purse.
“When the dinner parties got boring, she would open her purse and let Emily Spinach out to slither along the table and liven things up,” Cordery said.
She also married Nicholas Longworth, who later became speaker of the House, at the White House in 1906. Her wedding has been called the biggest and most impressive of all White House weddings.
Alice’s granddaughter
Alice had a long-term affair with Idaho Sen. William Borah. She had a daughter, Paulina, with the senator and later also raised Paulina’s daughter, Joanna Sturm.
Sturm was with Alice for both her 1969 and 1974 interviews with “60 Minutes.” She’s one of the only people still alive to have known the former first daughter so well. Sturm was 10 when her mother died and she went to live with Alice; she stayed there for 25 years.
“She had many characteristics that are gone forever,” Sturm said of her grandmother. “Nobody had the same accent. Nobody knows poetry any more.”
Sturm’s Washington home — about a mile from the mansion where Alice once lived — is filled with memorabilia that once belonged to Alice. Sturm’s favorite? A narwhal tusk that may have been given to “Grammy” as a wedding president.
Sturm also has a pillow of Alice’s, which was a gag gift from a friend. Some of Alice’s signature wit is embroidered on the pillow: “If you haven’t got anything good to say about anyone, come and sit by me.”
It’s indicative of an “acerbic quality” her grandmother had, Sturm said.
Alice’s influence as a power broker
Alice spent decades entrenched in the world of politics and entertained guests — both Democrats and Republicans — at her home. Sturm still keeps the oak dining table Alice entertained at.
“Why do you find politicians so interesting? You’ve had thousands of them through this house,” CBS News’ Eric Sevaried asked Alice in 1974.
Alice replied it “just amuses” her.
“I like to see what they’re doing,” she told Sevaried. “What they do and how they behave and how they regard one another.”
As Cordery worked on her biography of Alice, she started to see Alice as a power broker.
“Her position as an insider in Washington, D.C. was wholly unique,” Cordery said. “She has friends in every department and every office.
Alice was encouraged to run for her husband’s seat after his death. She also had a newspaper column, and readers suggested she could one day become the first female vice president or president, but Alice opted to wield her political power behind the scenes.
“Lyndon Johnson quite liked Mrs. Longworth,” Cordery said. “Richard Nixon said Mrs. Longworth was his favorite dinner partner, but Jack Kennedy also said the same thing.”
“We need an Alice today.”
At the time of Alice’s second “60 Minutes” interview, the country was roiled by the Watergate scandal and President Nixon was just months away from resigning. Alice stood by Nixon while acknowledging the divisiveness in the country.
Alice brought politicians to her dinner table so that they could talk to one another, Cordery said.
“And it did not matter to her whether they were Democrats or Republicans or nothing. She liked to see the sparks fly, she once said,” Cordery said, adding, “I submit to you that one of the difficult things we have going on in the United States of America today is the fact that our legislators don’t talk to one another.”
Cordery feels “we need an Alice today.”
As for Sturm, well she isn’t sure what her grandmother would think of the political situation in the country today.
“I cannot even imagine,” Sturm said. “She could not, I think, conceptualize somebody like Trump. I mean, I think he is so beyond anything she could imagine. I just can’t even imagine it.”
The Nobel Peace Prize was awarded Friday to the Japanese organization Nihon Hidankyo, with the Nobel committee lauding the “grassroots movement of atomic bomb survivors from Hiroshima and Nagasaki” for its work to “achieve a world free of nuclear weapons and for demonstrating through witness testimony that nuclear weapons must never be used again.”
The 2024 Peace Prize was awarded against a backdrop of devastating conflicts raging in the world, notably in the Middle East, Ukraine and Sudan.
Alfred Nobel stated in his will that the prize should be awarded for “the most or the best work for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses.” Since 1901, 104 Nobel Peace Prizes have been awarded, mostly to individuals but also to organizations that have been seen to advance peace efforts.
Last year’s prize went to jailed Iranian activist Narges Mohammadi for her advocacy of women’s rights and democracy, and against the death penalty. The Nobel committee said it also was a recognition of “the hundreds of thousands of people” who demonstrated against “Iran’s theocratic regime’s policies of discrimination and oppression targeting women.”
In the Middle East, persistently spiraling levels of violence over the past year have killed tens of thousands of people, including thousands of children and women. The war, sparked by a bloody raid into Israel by Hamas-led militants on Oct. 7, 2023 that left about 1,200 people dead, mostly civilians, has spilled out into the wider region.
The war in Gaza has killed more than 42,000 people, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, which doesn’t differentiate between civilians and combatants in its count but says more than half are women and children. In Lebanon, more than 1,400 people have been killed, with thousands more injured and around 1 million displaced since mid-September, when the Israeli military dramatically expanded its offensive against Hezbollah.
The war in Ukraine, sparked by Russia’s invasion, is heading toward its third winter with a staggering loss of human life on both sides.
The U.N. has confirmed more than 11,000 Ukrainian civilian dead, but that doesn’t take into account as many as 25,000 Ukrainians believed to have died during the Russian capture of the city of Mariupol or unreported deaths in the occupied territories.
Western officials have estimated Russian military casualties around 600,000, with perhaps 150,000 dead, and public reports put Russian civilian dead around 150, mostly in the border region of Belgorod.
Ukrainian military deaths were last announced in February at 31,000 and the president has said there are six wounded for every soldier killed.
On the African continent, Sudan has been devastated by a 17-month war that that has so far killed more than 20,000 peopleand forced more than 8 million people from their homes, while roughly another 2 million were already displaced within the country before hostilities broke out.
The Nobel prizes carry a cash award of 11 million Swedish kronor ($1 million). Unlike the other Nobel prizes that are selected and announced in Stockholm, founder Alfred Nobel decreed the peace prize be decided and awarded in Oslo by the five-member Norwegian Nobel Committee.
The Nobel season ends Monday with the announcement of the winner of the economics prize, formally known as the Bank of Sweden Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel.
CBS News
Using night mode on your phone can help capture photos of the northern lights. Here’s how to turn it on.
PITTSBURGH, Pa. (KDKA) — The northern lights are expected to be visible again throughout parts of the United States on Friday night.
When the northern lights, or the aurora borealis, are visible, the best way to see them is to find a dark spot away from bright lights, allow time to enable your eyes adjust to the darkness and look toward the north.
The northern lights show up best in photos.
Here’s how to use night mode on your phone’s camera to try to capture photos of the colorful auroras.
How do I turn on night mode on an iPhone?
If you are using an iPhone, Apple says the default settings will have night mode turn on automatically “when the camera detects a low-light environment.”
When night mode is active, an icon will turn yellow in the top left corner of your screen.
A number will show up next to that icon showing you how long it will take for the photo to take.
You can adjust how long the exposure will last by tapping the arrow that shows up above the viewfinder.
How do I turn on night mode on an Android phone?
Starting night mode on an Android device will depend on the type of device you have.
On a Samsung Galaxy device, a yellow moon icon will pop up in the bottom right of your screen. On a Pixel device, you can tap Night Light, then tap Capture and hold your phone still for a few seconds. In the Google Camera app, you can turn Night mode on by tapping settings and turning the mode on or off.
Will the northern lights be visible where I live?
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Space Weather Prediction Center has issued its “Aurora Forecast” for Friday with numerous parts of the United States in the range of potentially being able to see the bright auroras of the northern lights.
Space Weather Prediction Center
The map of the aurora forecast shows that northern parts of the country have a better chance of seeing the auroras.
A view line that shows “the southern extent of where aurora might be seen on the northern horizon” stretches from Washington, D.C. across the Midwest and through Illinois, Pennsylvania and New York.
The northern lights were on display on Thursday night
The northern lights were visible all throughout the country on Thursday night.
Mario Carrasco
Photos of the northern lights were captured in places like Pittsburgh, Chicago, Boston, New York, Baltimore, and Philadelphia.
The colorful auroras had green, purple, red and pink hues scattered throughout the skies.
What causes the northern lights?
When a geomagnetic storm occurs, solar wind is sent toward Earth.
Charged protons and electrons follow Earth’s magnetic field and enter the atmosphere where the magnetic fields are the weakest: the poles.
The electrons smash into all the different molecules that make up our atmosphere, creating a dazzling display of colors in the sky.
Deer Park, Texas — At least two workers at a Houston-area oil refinery were killed Thursday when hydrogen sulfide leaked at the plant, setting off urgent warnings for nearby residents to stay indoors before authorities later determined that the public wasn’t in danger.
Nearly three dozen other people were either transported to hospitals or treated at the scene, Harris County Sheriff Ed Gonzalez said. Hours after the leak began, Gonzalez said the area was still unsafe for investigators to enter and that officials may not be able to get inside until Friday.
The plant is operated by Pemex, Mexico’s state-owned oil company, and located in the suburb of Deer Park.
Adrees Latif / REUTERS
Gonzalez said the gas release happened during work on a flange at the facility, which is part of a cluster of oil refineries and plants that makes Houston the nation’s petrochemical heartland.
Pemex said in a statement that investigations were underway and that operations had been “proactively halted” at two units with the aim of mitigating the impact.
Local officials issued a shelter-in-place order but lifted it hours later after air monitoring showed no risk to the surrounding community, Deer Park Mayor Jerry Mouton said.
The chief meteorologist at CBS Houston affiliate KHOU-TV, David Paul, said the wind was calm Thursday night.
Hydrogen sulfide is a foul-smelling gas that can be toxic at high levels.
“Other than the smell, we have not had any verifiable air monitoring to support that anything got outside the facility,” Mouton said.
Television news crews showed multiple ambulances and emergency vehicles at the scene. Gonzalez had originally posted on the social platform X that one person was transported to a hospital by helicopter, but officials later said at a news conference that no one was airlifted.
The leak caused the second shelter-in-place orders in Deer Park in the span of weeks. Last month, a pipeline fire that burned for four days forced surrounding neighborhoods to evacuate.
2024 Nobel Peace Prize goes to Japanese group for anti-nuclear weapons work
Using night mode on your phone can help capture photos of the northern lights. Here’s how to turn it on.
At least 2 killed, several injured when Texas Pemex plant leaks hydrogen sulfide
2024 Nobel Peace Prize goes to Japanese group for anti-nuclear weapons work
Using night mode on your phone can help capture photos of the northern lights. Here’s how to turn it on.