After a test flight nearly ended in
disaster at the start of the Civil War,
Professor Thaddeus Lowe recovered his balloon and headed back North. Recognizing the potential use of air vehicles in the war, he managed to get an invitation to the White House in order demonstrate the capabilities of balloons in the war effort.
[more inside]
posted by nomadicink
on Dec 30, 2010 -
12 comments
"The government of the United States is in no sense founded on the Christian Religion."
~
George Washington / "I do not find in Christianity one redeeming feature."
~
Thomas Jefferson / "The Bible is not my book, nor Christianity my religion."
~
Abraham Lincoln / "A just government has no need for the clergy or the church." ~
James Madison / "I believe in an America where religious intolerance will someday end... where every man has the same right to attend or not attend the church of his choice." ~
John F. Kennedy / "We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus --
and nonbelievers." ~
Barack Obama
posted by 0bvious
on Jan 20, 2009 -
270 comments
Keith Olbermann's Edward R. Murrow
* moment:
A Textbook Definition of Cowardice. MSNBC's host excoriates Bush, FOX News host Chris Wallace, and the media for its response to former president Clinton's "
tantrum" [still being discussed
here].
Note: Don't just read the transcript. Watch the video, because Olbermann's use of visuals adds greatly to the power of his presentation. No matter which side of the red/blue-state divide you're on, students of politics and media will be reviewing this clip for years to come as a little cultural watershed -- if only a consummate example of "Democrat" angerTM.
posted by digaman
on Sep 26, 2006 -
169 comments
Abraham Lincoln, duelist? Hamilton and Burr were not the only prominent
duelists in US history.
In the early morning hours of September 22, 1842, a young Abraham Lincoln crossed the Mississippi River at Alton, IL on his way to a small island where he would engage in mortal combat with a political adversary. Lincoln had used his sarcastic wit to write anonymous letters to the editor lampooning a political rival, James Shields. Some of his friends joined in and perhaps went a little too far, including suggestions of Shields' inadequacies with the ladies. One of these friends included Lincoln's future wife, Mary Todd. Shields demanded a duel and Lincoln defined the parameters of the duel - broadswords in a pit.
posted by caddis
on Apr 24, 2006 -
46 comments
Poor old Abe. He had an
impressive medical history,
as previously discussed. Will we ever figure out all his ailments? As an explanation for "his especially clumsy gait," one theory claims that he had
Marfan's Syndrome (with
good company). But now researchers are leaning more toward a new theory, that a gene-linked disorder called
ataxia. But Lincoln also suffered from depression which could have been
heriditary, for which he took
"little blue pills" that gave him mercury poisoning, which could explain his insomnia, tremors and rage attacks, gait,
and more. Of course,
we also suspect that he was
in the closet.
Lincoln's DNA will continue to be a growth industry, at least until somebody can get hold of a sample of the old guy and figure him out for sure.
posted by beagle
on Jan 29, 2006 -
34 comments
"When I read his work, I forgive him all his sins". Edmund Wilson
disliked being called a critic. He thought of himself as a journalist, and
nearly all his work was done for commercial magazines, principally Vanity Fair, in the nineteen-twenties; The New Republic, in the nineteen-twenties and thirties; The
New Yorker, beginning in the nineteen-forties; and The New York Review of Books, in the nineteen-sixties. He was
exceptionally well read: he had had a first-class education in English, French, and Italian literature,
and he kept adding languages all his life. He learned to read German, Russian, and Hebrew; when he died, in 1972, he was working on Hungarian.
Edmund Wilson and American culture.
(more inside)
posted by matteo
on Aug 25, 2005 -
12 comments
Lincoln Outed. It's a subject that has been
discussed before (hopefully not here), but in "The Intimate World of Abraham Lincoln," to be published next month by Free Press, C.A. Tripp, a psychologist, influential gay writer and former sex researcher for Dr. Alfred C. Kinsey, tries to resolve the issue of Lincoln's sexuality once and for all. The author,
who died in 2003, two weeks after finishing the book, subjected almost every word ever written by and about Lincoln to minute analysis. His conclusion is that America's greatest president, the beacon of the Republican Party, was a gay man.
posted by three blind mice
on Dec 20, 2004 -
57 comments
the death of lincoln. Originally from June 1865. "The murder of President Lincoln aroused a feeling of regret deeper than was ever before known in our history. Men and papers who had opposed his policy and vilified him personally, now vied with his adherents and friends in lauding the rare wisdom and goodness which marked his conduct and character." Hmmmm... sounds familiar.
posted by sunexplodes
on Jun 9, 2004 -
36 comments
The Suicide’s Soliloquy August 25, 1838, the Sangamo Journal, a Whig newspaper in Springfield, Illinois, carried an unsigned poem, thirty-six lines long. It stands out for two reasons: first, its subject is suicide; second, its author was most likely a twenty-nine-year-old politician and lawyer named
Abraham Lincoln.
Historian Doris Kearns Goodwin relates how
historians regard a broken off engagement to Mary Todd as the trigger to
his famous depression, but it was his perceived failure as politician, she maintains, that fed Lincoln's
"black dog". (For his depression,
Lincoln probably took "blue mass", a drug prescribed to treat "hypochondriasis," a vague term that included
melancholia). Lincoln's medical history file is
here
posted by matteo
on Jun 7, 2004 -
12 comments
Giuseppe Garibaldi, who united Italy in the 1860s,
was asked by Lincoln to lead the army during the US Civil War. Garibaldi said he would if Lincoln officially declared that the aim of the war was to end slavery. Lincoln replied that he couldn't at that time, and so Garibaldi
moved on to other things. But what if Giuseppe had gotten involved? The Papacy would clearly
have denounced the North (indeed, the pope was the only world leader to recognize the Confederacy). The French hated him; the English loved him. Had he led the Federal troops, would France have jumped in on the side of the South? Would England have then jumped in on the Union side to counter? A whole different world history, perhaps, hanging on a yes/no question.
posted by ewagoner
on Aug 12, 2003 -
12 comments
A Murder Mystery by Abraham Lincoln "
In the neighborhood of William's residence, there was, and had been for several years, a man by the name Fisher, who was somewhat above the age of fifty; had no family, and no settled home ......His habits were remarkably economical, so that in impression got about that he had accumulated a considerable amount of money." In 1846, Lincoln, a fan of Poe, wrote about a case that he had defended in Illinois.
posted by riley370
on Apr 12, 2001 -
0 comments
