Progressive Party (United States, 1912)
The Progressive Party was a third party in the United States formed in 1912 by former President Theodore Roosevelt after he lost the presidential nomination of the Republican Party to his former protégé, incumbent President William Howard Taft. The new party was known for taking advanced positions on progressive reforms and attracting some leading reformers. After the party's defeat in the 1912 presidential election, it went into rapid decline, disappearing by 1918. The Progressive Party was popularly nicknamed the "Bull Moose Party" since Roosevelt often said that he felt "strong as a bull moose" both before and after an assassination attempt on the campaign trail.
Tas Bull
Tas Bull was born in Sydney in 1932. His first name was a combination of Tasmania and Norway, the respective birth places of his mother and father. He grew up in a working-class household in Tasmania. His father, an electrical contractor, had been a seaman. He was raised a member of the Salvation Army. He went to sea in 1946 and became active in the Seamen's Union of Australia (SUA), then aligned with the Communist Party of Australia (CPA), which Bull joined in 1951. He left the CPA in 1959, following the suppression of the Hungarian revolution by the Soviet Union.