She rescued Einstein from a manhole

 WASHINGTON – Ruth Huzzard, 104, likes to tell the story of how she came to the rescue of a familiar face while going to the store in Princeton, N.J., in the late 1940s.

"As I came along, I said, 'Boy, there's a man down in a manhole,' and I went closer and I discovered it was [Albert] Einstein," she said in a recent interview. "He was walking along the street, and he stepped into this manhole. I helped him out, brushed him off, and took him back to his home."

Huzzard, who had never met the famous scientist before, said Einstein was shaken but not hurt in the mishap.

"No wonder he fell in the hole," she quipped. "He always had his head in the clouds."

Huzzard is one of several centenarians featured by Willard Scott on NBC's "Today" show who've had encounters with famous people over the past century.

A photo of John Handler as a young man in New York.

Future pres as a boss
One hundred-year-old John Handler's first boss in the early 1920s was a pleasant, fun-loving fellow who went on to become the 32nd president of the United States, Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

"Everyone liked him," Handler remembers. "He liked a good joke. You could hear him laughing. Not dirty jokes. He was very upright."

At the time FDR was in charge of Fidelity & Deposit Co. of Maryland's New York office. Handler went to work for the company after dropping out of school and brought bonds to Roosevelt for his signature.

"He was a nice man, very nice," Handler said. "He was very generous, too. When Christmas came, he gave me a Christmas present. It was money. It was about five or 10 dollars. I only made $12 a week there. Five dollars was a lot of money."

Another centenarian, 100-year-old Albert DeSerio, a retired New York diamond setter, lucked into a date with Gypsy Rose Lee, the famous burlesque dancer, back about 1940.

"I went to her show, and I wanted to see her with the fan dancing," DeSerio remembers. "So I said, 'Are you going to take the fan off?' She smiled at me, and I went behind the stage, you know, and she took a liking to me, and I gave her my telephone number, and she said she'd call me, and she called me. That's it." 

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U.S. actress and burlesque entertainer Gypsy Rose Lee is seen dressing for her role as one of the "Floradora Girls" on July 19, 1939.Â

Well, not quite.

"I took her out to dinner," he said. "I took her to the [Grand Central] Oyster Bar, you know, and we had a drink over there, and then we went around to a restaurant and walked around. She wanted to see New York, you know, and I showed her all around New York."

And?

"She was a wonderful person, you know," DeSerio said. "She had a good personality, that's all I know. She was a very fine woman, very, very nice woman, that's all. Very nice to speak to her, you know, and that was it. I think she went to New Orleans after that."

DeSerio never saw her again.

If you know of a centenarian who's had a brush with history over the past century, please tell us a little bit about it in the comments section below and be sure to fill in your return e-mail address so we can get back to you for more details.