Nelson Rockefeller Sworn in as 41st Vice-President -- December 19, 1974

Before a certain orange failed businessman/reality show buffoon became President of these United States on January 20, 2017 (mercifully evicted from office on January 20, 2021), the last New Yorker to serve in high office was Nelson Aldrich Rockefeller -- or Rocky.

Scion of one of the richest and most famous families on Earth, Nelson Rockefeller was a four-term Governor of New York State, first elected in 1958 before resigning in late 1973. A year later, however, Rocky was "called to serve" as Vice-President by President Gerald Ford.

Rockefeller's journey to the Vice-Presidency remains the most dramatic in history. In the 1960s, while Governor, he ran for the Republican presidential nomination multiple-times -- and lost. His presidential dreams were squashed, in large part, by his divorce and subsequent re-marriage to "Happy", this at a time when divorce was more a political liability than it is now. Bored as Governor, his presidential dreams dashed, Rockefeller finally quit as Governor to return to a private and luxurious life.

But history wasn't done with him yet. The Watergate scandal subsumed the country and the presidency of Richard Nixon. In 1973, just a couple of months before Rockefeller quit as New York Governor, Nixon's Vice-President Spiro Agnew resigned in a bribery scandal. Agnew was replaced as VP by Gerald Ford, a genial Congressman from Michigan. And then, even more dramatically, in August 1974, Nixon quit as president under threat of impeachment and removal from office. Ford became president and, just like Nixon before, he needed a VP -- and so he called Rocky.

This special report of his swearing-in late 1974 is amazing, a glimpse at an extraordinary moment in time as the last New Yorker to become Vice-President takes office. Rocky's time at the top would be brief -- in 1976, Ford would dump him from the presidential ticket and Rocky would retire from politics completely. He returned to NYC, lived in his Upper East Side townhouse, and died in 1979 while banging his secretary -- oh, no, sorry, "working on his memoirs."

Enjoy.