On this day in 1973, Richard M. Nixon spoke the famous words, “I am not a crook.” Many observers had begun to suspect that the President was not a shepherd’s staff, curving at the end; or the pastoral staff of a bishop or abbot, fashioned in the form of a shepherd’s staff; or a hook hung in an open chimney to support a pot or kettle; or the curved metal tube between the mouthpiece and the body of a bassoon; or a bracket or truss consisting of a vertical piece, a horizontal piece, and a strut; but this was the first official confirmation of their suspicions.