TRIVIA:
QUOTES:
CHUCKLES/BELLY
LAUGHS & GROANERS
TRIVIA:
Presidential
Trivia this week (Abraham Lincoln & William Howard Taft)
Abraham
Lincoln
* Lincoln
was seeing the play "Our American Cousin" when he was shot.
* Lincoln
was the first president to wear a beard while in office.
* Lincoln,
Nebraska was named after Abraham Lincoln.
* Abe Lincoln's
mother, Nancy Hanks Lincoln, died after drinking milk from a relative's
dairy cow that had eaten the poisonous snakeroot plant, thus rendering
its milk toxic.
* A plot
was developed to steal Lincoln's body, so a secret society to guard his
tomb was formed.
* During
the Civil War, telegraph wires were strung to follow the action on the
battlefield. But there was no telegraph office in the White House, so Lincoln
went across the street to the War Department to get the news.
* Lincoln
was the tallest president. He was 6 feet and four inches tall.
* Lincoln
once had a dream right before the fall of Richmond that he would die. He
dreamt that he was in the White House, he heard crying and when he found
the room it was coming from he asked who had died. The man said the President.
He looked in the coffin and saw his own face. A week later Lincoln died.
* Lincoln
was shot on Good Friday.
* Robert Todd Lincoln
arrived too late to stop three seperate presidential assassinations.He
met his father, President Abraham Lincoln, at the theatre after John Wilkes
Booth had fired the shot. He went to a Washington train station to meet
President Garfeild, arriving only minutes after he was shot. And, he traveled
to Buffalo, New York to meet President Mckinly, but got there after the
fatal shot had already been fired.
* Lincoln
had a cat named "Bob," a turkey named "Jack," and a dog named "Jib."
* He was
the first president to be photographed at his inauguration. John Wilkes
Booth (his assassin) can be seen standing close to Lincoln in the picture.
* Lincoln
was the only president to receive a patent, for a device for lifting boats
over shoals.
* Lincoln's
brother, half-brothers, and brothers-in-law fought in the Confederate Army.
* Abraham
Lincoln was shot while watching a performance of Our American Cousin at
Ford's Theatre in Washington, D.C. The same play was also running at the
McVerick Theatre in Chicago on May 18, 1860, the day Lincoln was nominated
for president in that city.
* Lincoln's
favorite sport was wrestling.
* Lincoln
worked as a deck hand on a Mississippi flatboat.
* Lincoln
had a substitute fight for him during the Civil War. Not a paid substitute
as some might think. When J. Summerfield Staples, the son of an army chaplain,
heard that Lincoln felt that the president should be fighting in the war
(but couldn't because of all his duties), Staples volunteered to fight
as a substitute. Both he and his father survived through the war, and returned
home to Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania. If one traveled to the cemetery there,
they would find a headstone that reads:
J. Summerfield Staples
A private of
Co. C176 Reg. P.V.
Also a member of
the
2, Reg. D.C. Vol.
A substitute for
Abraham Lincoln
died
Jan. 11, 1888
Aged 43 yrs,-4
mos. & 27 days
* Lincoln
had a wart on his right cheek, a scar on his thumb from an ax accident,
and a scar over his right eye from a fight with a gang of thieves.
* Abraham
Lincoln grew his beard out of the suggestion of an 11 year old girl.
* John Wilkes
Booth's brother once saved Abraham Lincoln's son's life.
* Abe Lincoln
is the U.S. president most frequently portrayed in films.
* The contents
of his pockets on the night of his assassination weren't revealed until
February 12, 1976. They contained two pairs of spectacles, a chamois lens
cleaner, an ivory and silver pocketknife, a large white Irish linen handkerchief,
slightly used, with "A. Lincoln" embroidered in red, a gold quartz watch
fob without a watch, a new silk-lined, leather wallet containing a pencil,
a Confederate five-dollar bill, and news clippings of unrest in the Confederate
army, emancipation in Missouri, the Union party platform of 1864, and an
article on the presidency by John Bright.
* He was
named after his grandfather.
* Lincoln
and his wife held seances in the White House. They had great interest in
psychic phenomena.
* Lincoln
loved the works of Edgar Allan Poe.
* Abraham
Lincoln was the first president to be born outside of the original thirteen
colonies. He was born in Kentucky.
* Called
two-faced by a rival, Lincoln responded, "If I had another face, do you
think I'd wear this one?"
* Lincoln
was shot at twice before John Wilkes Booth killed him. Both times were
while he was on his way to the Soldier's Home and Lincoln joked about them
and ordered that they not be publicized.
William
Howard Taft
* Taft is
the only President to also serve as Chief Justice in the Supreme Court.
* Taft was
the first president to throw the first baseball of a season.
* He was
the first president to own a car. He had the stables converted into a four-car
garage.
* William
H. Taft is one of two presidents who is buried in the Arlington National
Cemetary.
* Taft was
the last president to have facial hair.
* He called
the White House "the loneliest place in the world."
* His funeral
was the first to be broadcast on the radio.
* Taft was
our heaviest president, weighing 332 pounds. He once got stuck in the White
House bath tub, so a new one was installed, big enough to hold four grown
men!
* William
Howard Taft was a seventh cousin twice removed of Richard Nixon and a distant
relative of Ralph Waldo Emerson.
* Taft was
tone deaf. Taft needed to be nudged when anyone was playing the national
anthem because he was tone deaf.
* Taft's
nickname in high school was "big lub."
* Taft never
wanted to be president. He wanted to be the Chief Justice of the Supreme
Court, but his wife wanted to be the first lady. She talked him into running
for office. He finally got his wish in 1920 when he was appointed Chief
Justice.
* Taft fractured
his skull in a carriage accident at age 9.
* Taft kept
a cow on the White House lawn to supply him with fresh milk. He was the
last president to do so.
* His middle
name was after his grandmother Sylvia Howard.
QUOTES:
"The ability to quote is a serviceable substitute
for wit."
-Somerset Maugham
If you pick up a starving dog and make him
prosperous, he will not bite you; that is the principal difference between
dog and man.
-Mark Twain
"The nearest way to glory - a shortcut, as
it were - is to strive to be what you wish to be thought to be."
- Socrates
"The most absurd and reckless aspirations have
sometimes led to extraordinary success."
- Vauvenargues
"Too many people overvalue what they are not
and undervalue what they are."
- Malcolm Forbes
"Here's something to think about: How come
you never see a headline like 'Psychic Wins Lottery'?"
-Jay Leno
"I don't care how much you and your cat love
each other, if you were one inch smaller than the sweet little kitty,
he'd eat you in a heartbeat."
-Tom Gard
