This fall, Hollywood threw its support behind Honest
Abe. With the release of the new biopic “Lincoln,” America’s 16th
president is now a box office draw. As Steven Spielberg’s film hits the
big screen, explore 10 things you may not know about Abraham Lincoln
.
1. Lincoln is enshrined in the Wrestling Hall of Fame.
The Great Emancipator wasn’t quite WWE material, but thanks to his long
limbs he was an accomplished wrestler as a young man. Defeated only once
in approximately 300 matches, Lincoln reportedly talked a little smack
in the ring. According to Carl Sandburg’s biography of Lincoln, Honest
Abe once challenged an entire crowd of onlookers after dispatching an
opponent: “I’m the big buck of this lick. If any of you want to try it,
come on and whet your horns.” There were no takers. Lincoln’s grappling
exploits earned him an “Outstanding American” honor in the National
Wrestling Hall of Fame. 2. Lincoln created the Secret Service hours before his assassination.
On April 14, 1865, Lincoln signed legislation creating the U.S. Secret
Service. That evening, he was shot at Ford’s Theatre. Even if the Secret
Service had been established earlier, it wouldn’t have saved Lincoln:
The original mission of the law enforcement agency was to combat
widespread currency counterfeiting. It was not until 1901, after the
killing of two other presidents, that the Secret Service was formally
assigned to protect the commander-in-chief. Abraham Lincoln circa 1846.3. Grave robbers attempted to steal Lincoln’s corpse.
Secret Service did come to Lincoln’s protection, but only in death. In
1876 a gang of Chicago counterfeiters attempted to snatch Lincoln’s body
from his tomb, which was protected by just a single padlock, in Oak
Ridge Cemetery in Springfield, Illinois. Their scheme was to hold the
corpse for a ransom of $200,000 and obtain the release of the gang’s
best counterfeiter from prison. Secret Service agents, however,
infiltrated the gang and were lying in wait to disrupt the operation.
Lincoln’s body was quickly moved to an unmarked grave and eventually
encased in a steel cage and entombed under 10 feet of concrete. 4. John Wilkes Booth’s brother saved the life of Lincoln’s son.
A few months before John Wilkes Booth assassinated Lincoln, the
president’s oldest son, Robert Todd Lincoln, stood on a train platform
in Jersey City, New Jersey. A throng of passengers began to press the
young man backwards, and he fell into the open space between the
platform and a moving train. Suddenly, a hand reached out and pulled the
president’s son to safety by the coat collar. Robert Todd Lincoln
immediately recognized his rescuer: famous actor Edwin Booth, brother of
John Wilkes. (In another eerie coincidence, on the day of Edwin Booth’s
funeral—June 9, 1893—Ford’s Theatre collapsed, killing 22 people.) 5. Lincoln is the only president to have obtained a patent.
Benjamin Franklin isn’t the only American political leader who
demonstrated an inventive mind. After being aboard a steamboat that ran
aground on low shoals and had to unload its cargo, Lincoln, who loved
tinkering with machines, designed a method for keeping vessels afloat
when traversing shallow waters through the use of empty metal air
chambers attached to their sides. For his design, Lincoln obtained
Patent No. 6,469 in 1849. 6. Lincoln personally test-fired rifles outside the White House.
Lincoln was a hands-on commander-in-chief who, given his passion for
gadgetry, was keenly interested in the artillery used by his Union
troops during the Civil War. Lincoln attended artillery and cannon tests
and met at the White House with inventors demonstrating military
prototypes. Although there was a standing order against firing weapons
in the District of Columbia, Lincoln even test-fired muskets and
repeating rifles on the grassy expanses around the White House, now
known as the Ellipse and the National Mall. Edwin Booth, brother of John Wilkes, as Hamlet in 1870.7. Lincoln came under enemy fire on a Civil War battlefield.
When Confederate troops attacked Washington, D.C., in July 1864, Lincoln
visited the front lines at Fort Stevens on two days of the battle,
which the Union ultimately won. At one point the gunfire came
dangerously close to the president. Legend has it that Colonel Oliver
Wendell Holmes Jr., a future Supreme Court justice, barked, “Get down,
you fool!” Lincoln ducked down from the fort’s parapet and left the
battlefield unharmed. 8. Lincoln didn’t move to Illinois until he was 21.
Illinois may be known as the Land of Lincoln, but it was in Indiana that
the 16th president spent his formative years. Lincoln was born in a
Kentucky log cabin in 1809, and in 1816 his father, Thomas, moved the
family across the Ohio River to a 160-acre plot in southern Indiana.
Lincoln did not migrate to Illinois until 1830. 9. Poisoned milk killed Lincoln’s mother.
When Abraham was 9 years old in 1818, his mother, Nancy, died of a
mysterious “milk sickness” that swept across southern Indiana. It was
later learned that the strange disease was due to drinking tainted milk
from a cow that had ingested poisonous white snakeroot. 10. Lincoln never slept in the Lincoln Bedroom.
When he occupied the White House, the 16th president used the current
Lincoln Bedroom as his personal office. It was there that he met with
Cabinet members and signed documents, including the Emancipation
Proclamation.
