One day during his tenure as chief of President Franklin D. Roosevelt's Works Progress Administration (WPA), General Somervell was confronted with a "sit-down" strike; union members took over a public building and refused to leave.

After police had tried and failed to end the strike, Somervell found a more effective (and more peaceful) solution: he locked each of the building's bathrooms -- and went home with the keys. Six hours later, the strike was over.