David Hayes Agnew ( November 24, 1818 – March 22, 1892 ) was an American surgeon.

Gerald Ford was the first Vice President selected by this method, after the resignation of Vice President Spiro Agnew in 1973 ; after succeeding to the Presidency, Ford nominated Nelson Rockefeller as Vice President.

Spiro Theodore Agnew (; November 9, 1918September 17, 1996 ) was the 39th Vice President of the United States ( 1969 – 1973 ), serving under President Richard Nixon, and the 55th Governor of Maryland ( 1967 – 1969 ).

During his fifth year as Vice President, in the late summer of 1973, Agnew was under investigation by the United States Attorney's office in Baltimore, Maryland, on charges of extortion, tax fraud, bribery and conspiracy.

On October 10, 1973, Agnew was allowed to plead no contest to a single charge that he had failed to report $ 29, 500 of income received in 1967, with the condition that he resign the office of Vice President.

Spiro Agnew was born in Baltimore, Maryland.

Agnew was raised in his father's Greek Orthodox religion, and later converted to Episcopalianism.

Agnew was drafted into the U. S. Army in 1941 and was commissioned an officer on May 25, 1942, upon graduation from Army Officer Candidate School.

In line with what would later be called Nixon's " Southern Strategy ", Agnew was selected as a candidate because he was sufficiently from the South to attract Southern moderate voters, yet was not identified with the Deep South, which might have alienated Northern centrists come election time.

As late as early 1968, Agnew was a strong supporter of Nelson Rockefeller, one of Nixon's opponents, but by June had switched to supporting Nixon.

Agnew soon found his role as the voice of the so-called " silent majority ", and by late 1969 he was ranking high on national " Most Admired Men " polls.

Agnew was known for his scathing criticisms of political opponents, especially journalists and anti-war activists.

Agnew was often characterized as Nixon's " hatchet man " when defending the administration on the Vietnam War.

Agnew was chosen to make several powerful speeches in which he spoke out against anti-war protesters and media portrayal of the Vietnam War, labeling them " Un-American ".

By some accounts, the notoriously thin-skinned President was also resentful that the self-confident Agnew was so popular with many Americans.

By 1970, Agnew was limited to seeing the president only during cabinet meetings or in the occasional and brief one-on-one, with Agnew given no opportunity to discuss much of anything of substance.

One plan to achieve this was to try to persuade conservative investors to purchase one of the television networks, and then invite Agnew to run it.

Another was to see if Bob Hope would be willing to take Agnew on as his partner in his cable television investments.

In April 1973, when revelations about Watergate began to surface, Agnew was the choice of 35 percent of Republican voters to be the next Republican nominee for President, while then-California Governor Ronald Reagan was second on the Gallup Poll.

Ten years after leaving office, in January 1983, Agnew paid the state of Maryland nearly $ 270, 000 as a result of a civil suit that stemmed from the bribery allegations.

Unlike John C. Calhoun, who resigned to take a seat in the Senate, Agnew resigned and then pleaded no contest to criminal charges of tax evasion, part of a negotiated resolution to a scheme wherein he was accused of accepting more than $ 100, 000 in bribes during his tenure as governor of Maryland.

Students of Professor John F. Banzhaf III from the George Washington University Law School, collectively known as Banzhaf's Bandits, found four residents of the state of Maryland willing to put their names on a case and sought to have Agnew repay the state $ 268, 482 — the amount it was said he had taken in bribes.

After two appeals by Agnew, he finally resigned himself to the matter and a check for $ 268, 482 was turned over to Maryland State Treasurer William S. James in early 1983.

Agnew was ordered to repay the state the $ 147, 500 in kickbacks, with interest of $ 101, 235, for a total of $ 248, 735.

Through Pinkerton, Worth arranged the return of the painting Duchess of Devonshire to Agnew & Sons in return for $ 25, 000.

On October 10, 1973, Spiro Agnew became the second Vice President to resign the office.

Had Agnew remained as Vice President when Nixon resigned just 10 months later, Agnew himself would have become the 38th President, as well as a strong candidate for the Republican presidential nomination in 1976, both of which instead went to Ford.

When Ellis died, the painting went for sale at Christie ’ s in London in 1876, where it was bought by the Bond Street art dealer William Agnew for the then astronomical sum of 10, 000 guineas.

* October 10, 1973: Vice President Spiro Agnew resigned

# " Rip It Up " ( R. Agnew, Cadena ) – 2: 10

** October 10, 1973: Spiro Agnew resigns as Vice President of the United States due to corruption while he was the governor of Maryland.

The catchy single, " One Toke Over the Line ," peaked at # 10 (# 5 in Canada ), garnering notice from Spiro Agnew for what he saw as its subversiveness.

10, Ton Koopman, Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra & Choir, Michael Chance, Paul Agnew, Klaus Mertens, Antoine Marchand 1998

" Many Democrats opposed to segregation then crossed party lines to give Agnew the governorship by 82, 000 votes.

In June 2008, Lord Provost Denis Agnew, groups of school children, and local community groups celebrated the completion of a £ 163, 000 project to improve seven kilometres of towpath on the Forth & Clyde Canal from Bowling Harbour to Whitecrook.

In letters home soldiers had called the original valley " The Valley of Death ", and Tennyson's poem used the same phrase, so when in September 1855 Thomas Agnew put the picture on show, as one of a series of eleven collectively titled Panorama of the Plateau of Sebastopol in Eleven Parts in a London exhibition, he took the troops '— and Tennyson's — epithet, expanded it as The Valley of the Shadow of Death with its deliberate evocation of Psalm 23, and assigned it to the piece ; it is not the location of the famous charge, which took place in a long, broad valley several miles to the south-east.

Agnew married her on May 27, 1942.

However, during the riots that followed the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., in the spring of 1968, Agnew angered many African American leaders when he stated in reference to their constituents, " I call on you to publicly repudiate all black racists.

During the ensuing general election campaign against Vice President Hubert Humphrey — which took place against a backdrop of urban riots and anti-Vietnam War demonstrations, culminating in the violent confrontations at the Democratic convention in Chicago — Agnew repeatedly hammered the Democrats on the issue of " law and order ".

He also inspired a fashion craze when one entrepreneur introduced Spiro Agnew watches ( a take off on the popular Mickey Mouse watch ); conservatives wore them to show their support for Agnew, while many liberals wore them to signify their contempt.

Nixon would have liked to replace Agnew on the Republican ticket in 1972 with John Connally, his chosen successor for ' 76, but he realized that Agnew's large conservative base of supporters would be in an uproar, so he reluctantly kept him as his running mate.

When John Ehrlichman, the President's counsel and assistant, asked Nixon why he kept Agnew on the ticket in the 1972 election, Nixon replied that " No assassin in his right mind would kill me " because they would get Agnew ( as President ).

Agnew died unexpectedly on September 17, 1996, aged 77 at Atlantic General Hospital, in Berlin, Maryland, in Worcester County ( near his Ocean City home ), only a few hours after being hospitalized and diagnosed with an advanced, yet to that point undetected, form of leukemia.

* Spiro Agnew biography on U. S. Senate website

* FBI files on Spiro Agnew

Calhoun was the first vice president in U. S. history to resign from office, doing so on December 28, 1832 ( Spiro Agnew did so in 1973 ).

* The police — a Detective Sergeant Agnew of the Gloucestershire Police, Paedophile and Pornography Unit-inform Messenger that child pornography has been downloaded from the Internet at some terminal located on campus.

Although the pictures he acquired via the Internet turn out to be not very explicit, Douglass, on being confronted by Agnew, commits suicide by hanging himself in the toilet — in a way that seems to have been meticulously planned.

In the same year Morgan Stanley merged with Shuman, Agnew & Co. Morgan Stanley served as lead underwriter for the IPO of Apple Computer, Inc. on December 12, 1980.

* Alan Smithee was used as the name of the director of The Elusive David Agnew, a special feature on the Doctor Who: The Invasion of Time DVD release.

In the months leading up to Nixon's 1969 speech, his vice-president Spiro T. Agnew said on May 9, " It is time for America's silent majority to stand up for its rights, and let us remember the American majority includes every minority.