Winfield Scott Hancock (1824 – 1886) was a career U.S. Army officer and the Democratic nominee for President of the United States in 1880. He served with distinction in the Army for four decades, including service in the Mexican-American War and as a Union general in the American Civil War. Known to his Army colleagues as "Hancock the Superb", he was noted in particular for his personal leadership at the Battle of Gettysburg in 1863. His military service continued after the Civil War, as Hancock participated in the military Reconstruction of the South and the Army's presence at the Western frontier. After the Civil War, Hancock's reputation as a soldier and his dedication to conservative constitutional principles made him a quadrennial Presidential possibility. This nationwide popularity led the Democrats to nominate him for President in 1880. Although he ran a strong campaign, Hancock was defeated by Republican James Garfield by the closest popular vote margin in American history. Following the election, Hancock carried on as commander of the Division of the Atlantic, and was elected president of the National Rifle Association in 1881. (more...)

The Macintosh Classic was a personal computer manufactured by Apple Computer. Introduced on October 15, 1990, it was the first Apple Macintosh to sell for less than US$1,000. Production of the Classic was prompted by the success of the Macintosh Plus and the SE. The Classic was very similar to its predecessors but, due to limited technological advances, it used the same 9-inch (23 cm) monochrome CRT display, 512×342 pixel resolution, and its performance was hampered by the same 4 megabyte (MB) memory limit of the older Macintosh computers. Nevertheless, the Classic featured several improvements over the Macintosh Plus, which it replaced as Apple's low-end Mac computer. It was up to 25 percent faster than the Plus and included an Apple SuperDrive 3.5" floppy disk drive as standard. The Classic was an adaptation of Jerry Manock and Terry Oyama's Macintosh 128K industrial design, as was the earlier Macintosh SE. Apple released two versions that ranged in price from $1,000 to $1,500. Reviewers' reactions were mixed; most focused on the slow processor performance and lack of expansion slots. The consensus was that the Classic was only useful for word processing, spreadsheets and databases. (more...)