Apparently, the word googol was coined by nine year-old Milton Sirotta, nephew of mathematician Edward Kasner.
The always interesting Lincoln Plawg compares reports on administration battles between the Rumsfeld-Cheney hawks and the Powell doves to the tussles between Hopkins and Ickes in the FDR administration. “FDR’s purpose was, I suspect, not (or not wholly!) narcissistic, to see courtiers squabble over the place closest to him; but rather to give him cover — and to demonstrate to the various sections of the Democratic Party that their views were represented at the highest level.”