23 Facts About Sol Bloom

Sol Bloom was an American song-writer and politician from New York City who began his career as an entertainment impresario and sheet music publisher in Chicago.

Sol Bloom served fourteen terms in the United States House of Representatives from the West Side of Manhattan, from 1923 until his death in 1949.

Sol Bloom was introduced to theater production in his early teens, then became a theater manager, staging boxing matches featuring "Gentleman Jim" Corbett.

Sol Bloom established his reputation in 1893 at the age of 23 while developing the mile-long Midway Plaisance at the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago.

Sol Bloom did not copyright the tune, which he'd conceived on a piano at the Press Club of Chicago.

Sol Bloom then rose in stature in Chicago's tough first ward among the Democratic party's bosses "Bathhouse" John Coughlin and "Hinky Dink" Kenna.

Sol Bloom soon switched his political affiliation from Republican to the Democrats' Tammany Hall, so that when Representative-elect Samuel Marx of New York's 19th Congressional District died in 1922, Sol Bloom was invited to run and won the usually Republican Upper West Side district of Manhattan by 145 votes.

Sol Bloom represented the district until his death in 1949.

Sol Bloom is of the easy-going, superficial, glad-handish type rather than a man of outstanding intellect; intensely patriotic in an emotional way despite his leaning towards internationalism.

Sol Bloom helped to pilot the original Lend-Lease Act through the committee, and introduced the Act to extend Lend-Lease for one year.

In Congress Sol Bloom oversaw celebration of the George Washington Bicentennial and presided over the US Constitution Sesquicentennial Exposition.

Sol Bloom chaired the House Committee on Foreign Affairs beginning in 1939.

In January 1946, Sol Bloom represented the US at the first meeting of the UN General Assembly in London.

Sol Bloom called his success in persuading a majority of the Assembly to allow the new United Nations organization to assume the finances of the earlier United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration "the supreme moment" of his life.

Sol Bloom was the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee from 1939 to 1947 and then again in 1949, during critical periods of American foreign policy.

Sol Bloom oversaw Congressional approval of the United Nations and of the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration, which worked to assist millions of displaced people in Europe.

Sol Bloom was a member of the American delegation at the creation of the United Nations in San Francisco in 1945 and at the Rio Conference in 1947.

In coordination with America's mainstream Jewish leadership, especially World Jewish Congress executives Stephen Wise and Nachum Goldman, Sol Bloom strongly opposed and obstructed the Hillel Kook-led Emergency Committee for the Rescue of European Jewry,.

Sol Bloom adopted the mainstream Zionist position that the only way to save the doomed Jews of Europe was for Britain to open the gates to Mandatory Palestine.

Sol Bloom urgently lobbied President Harry Truman in 1948 to immediately recognize the Jewish state of Israel, which Truman did.

Sol Bloom lost a bet with Washington Senators pitcher Walter Johnson after Johnson successfully threw a silver dollar across the Rappahannock River in Fredericksburg, Virginia.

In 1937, Sol Bloom spearheaded the writing and publication of The Story of the Constitution by the United States Constitution Sesquicentennial Commission.

Sol Bloom's wife Evelyn was a composer and singer, and their daughter Vera was an author and lyricist who provided words to the tango "Jalousie".