MetaFilter posts tagged with lincoln

"Did I make it? Is everybody pleased?"

mrducts — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 12:52:25 -0800

"Did I make it? Is everybody pleased?" (SLYT)

The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History

Hargrimm — Sat, 17 Oct 2009 13:13:51 -0800

"Promoting the Love and Study of American History." The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History has many resources on its website, including over 50 free lecture podcasts, a collection of war letters throughout history, a Lincoln bicentennial page, and a new John Brown exhibition. There are also subject pages for 8 'eras' of American History, under "History by Era" on the top menubar, as well as extensive materials for teachers of history (maps, primary sources, quizzes, links).

Breaking Lincoln News

CunningLinguist — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 21:13:38 -0800

Breaking Lincoln news: possible last photo of the 16th President surfaces on same day a hidden message is discovered secreted in his pocket watch.

Vampire Lincoln meets Zombie Platypus

BuddhaInABucket — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 09:41:55 -0800

The Official Creebobby Comics Archetype Times Table

Presidential Portraits in Cupcakes

Taken Outtacontext — Sat, 14 Feb 2009 05:16:25 -0800

To celebrate both St. Valentine's Day and Presidents Day, the Smithsonian American Art Museum invited artist/baker Zilly Rosen to create a duo portrait of Barack Obama and Abraham Lincoln in cupcakes in the museum. The construction of the portrait is being broadcast live on the Net. And, if you're in the area, the deconstruction (that is, the eating) of the portrait begins around 5pm EST today.

A nation of nonbelievers

0bvious — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 11:40:35 -0800

"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

Washington to Obama

Glibpaxman — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 14:09:04 -0800

America has come a long way. There is the official version of history or the peoples' version. There are artifacts and rankings. They had some quirks and were occasionally men of their time. If you prefer audio or visual references those are available as well. Common knowledge has it that one GW was our first President but the title of first is under dispute. 230 years later another GW is making a run for worst. That is also under dispute by the nations best brains. For better and worse, the story of the Presidency is the story of America.

New hope for Marfan syndrome

francesca too — Sat, 10 May 2008 12:07:32 -0800

New hope for a deadly disease. Marfan syndrome strikes 1 in 5000. Did Lincoln have this disease? Previously discussed here.

America the Godly

digaman — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 13:32:10 -0800

One nation under God. The "bold conservative" GOP Congressman Paul Broun from Georgia is intent upon removing a vexing comma from that phrase in the Pledge of Allegiance, which was amended in 1954 when President Eisenhower was moved by a sermon by one Reverend George M. Docherty on the need to defend America from the "militantly atheistic communism that has already enslaved 800 million of the peoples of the earth, and now menaces the rest of the free world."

Rediscovered photos from Lincoln's second inauguration

wowbobwow — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 07:39:18 -0800

"New" photos emerge of Lincoln's second inauguration The Library of Congress has discovered new photographs taken in 1865 at Abraham Lincoln's second inauguration. For years they were filed under President Grant's archive, mislabeled into obscurity. Incidentally, this week will be the grand opening of Lincoln's summer "cottage" in northwest DC.

The Lincoln Douglas monuments

nax — Sun, 07 Oct 2007 08:40:36 -0800

During the 1858 senatorial campaign, Abraham Lincoln and Stephen A. Douglas faced each other in a series of seven official political debates. The first debate took place in this north-central Illinois town on August 21. Lincoln-Douglas debate monuments are a cottage industry, providing work for sculptors famous (scroll down) and unsung. Some of them are harder to find than others, buried between the little league field and the local VFW hall. Others are tourist attractions aimed to bring life to Illinois historic towns.

the cupboard, the cupboard.

hama7 — Tue, 21 Aug 2007 18:47:34 -0800

The Cupboard.

Is this a portrait of young Abraham Lincoln?

edverb — Mon, 12 Feb 2007 09:38:14 -0800

Is this a portrait of young Abraham Lincoln?

Whatever Floats Your Boat

kirkaracha — Fri, 05 Jan 2007 09:42:10 -0800

Buoying Vessels Over Shoals. In 1849, Abraham Lincoln was awarded Patent No. 6469 (drawing and large TIFF files of pages 1, 2, and 3 of the actual patent) for a device for raising stuck riverboats off sand bars. The model he submitted with the patent application is at the National Museum of American History; who made the model is a bit of a mystery. Lincoln is the only United States President to hold a patent. (Other Lincoln-related patents, including the patent for Lincoln Logs.)
[via History Now's timeline of 19th-century inventions.]

Disenthralling America

digaman — Tue, 26 Sep 2006 06:25:58 -0800

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" anger^TM.

More Electable the Hillary

sourbrew — Thu, 14 Sep 2006 12:45:05 -0800

Barrack Obama is being urged by former political opponent Dan Hynes to run for president in '08 in a most eloquent open letter.

I challenge you to a duel

caddis — Mon, 24 Apr 2006 16:16:47 -0800

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.

Lincoln's ailment

beagle — Sun, 29 Jan 2006 08:55:05 -0800

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.

Edmund Wilson and American culture

matteo — Thu, 25 Aug 2005 19:21:27 -0800

"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)

"To attract today's generation, glass boxes and yellow labels may not be enough".

matteo — Sat, 16 Apr 2005 07:44:43 -0800

"Calling it a museum is really a misnomer". The Abraham Lincoln Presidential Museum opens today in Springfield, Ill., with a silicone Lincoln posing in the rotunda and Tim Russert introducing mock TV attack ads from the campaign of 1860. In the Union Theater, an abolitionist roars "Lincoln was no friend of the black man" as hologram cannons boom to signal the start of the Civil War. Strobe lights flash; the plush seats jerk and rumble like a ride at Universal Studios. When Atlanta burns, the air feels hot. This is history, Hollywood style: A $90-million look at Honest Abe's life and times — with special effects created by the "Jurassic Park" and "Terminator 3" team of Stan Winston Studios (link with sound).

Gay Abe?

three blind mice — Mon, 20 Dec 2004 12:49:46 -0800

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.

the death of lincoln

sunexplodes — Wed, 09 Jun 2004 15:41:31 -0800

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.

matteo — Mon, 07 Jun 2004 11:14:54 -0800

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

Hard Drinkin' Lincolns

Ogre Lawless — Tue, 27 Apr 2004 14:15:12 -0800

The Association Of Lincoln Presenters. Santarchy be damned, I want to go bar-hopping with these guys.

The Gettysburg Address

Ogre Lawless — Thu, 18 Dec 2003 10:55:42 -0800

In the War Between The States, no finer words were ever spoken than those by Abraham Lincoln on 19 November 1863 at the consecration of a cemetery in rural Pennsylvania for the over 50,000 who died in the three worst days of battle in a wretched civil war. The speech is often included in US history books and collections of influential American speeches as one of the strongest examples of presidential oratory ever given. Is it any wonder, then, that it should inspire modern art?