TV appearance of Lincoln assassination witness

In 1956, 96-year-old Samuel Seymour appeared on a game show called I've Got A Secret...his secret was that he saw Lincoln's assassination when he was five years old.

That blew my mind. (via devour)

Spielberg's Abe Lincoln movie

It's called Lincoln and will be a collection of the talents of Steven Spielberg (director), Daniel Day-Lewis (plays Lincoln), Doris Kearns Goodwin (wrote the book), and Tony Kushner (screenplay).

It is anticipated that the film will focus on the political collision of Lincoln and the powerful men of his cabinet on the road to abolition and the end of the Civil War.

Gladstone's voice

William Gladstone was very nearly Abraham Lincoln's exact contemporary, both born in 1809 (Lincoln was 10 months older), only he was born in Liverpool, not Kentucky. He was a legendary orator and liberal lion, like an approximation of Lincoln and Ted Kennedy. He served as a member of parliament for almost 50 years, including as Prime Minster four times, before retiring in 1894. (Could you imagine if Lincoln had lived until 1894?)

He also had a great nickname: G.O.M., for "Grand Old Man." His Tory counterpart Disraeli called him "God's Only Mistake."

In 1888, a recording was made of Gladstone's voice on a phonograph cylinder and sent to Thomas Edison. So even though we don't have Lincoln's voice, we have Gladstone's. This is a section of the text he read:

The request that you have done me the honour to make - to receive the record of my voice - is one that I cheerfully comply with so far as it lies in my power, though I lament to say that the voice which I transmit to you is only the relic of an organ the employment of which has been overstrained. Yet I offer to you as much as I possess and so much as old age has left me, with the utmost satisfaction, as being, at least, a testimony to the instruction and delight that I have received from your marvellous invention. As to the future consequences, it is impossible to anticipate them. All I see is that wonders upon wonders are opening before us.

Via Max Deveson at the BBC.

Update: Lainey Doyle tips me that the audio link above is most likely of a recording misattributed to Gladstone. There have been a few disputed Gladstone recordings. Either:

1. Edison hired an actor to re-record Gladstone's lines
2. Gladstone sent someone else to read for him

and Edison either:

1. passed it off as Gladstone's voice anyways or
2. collectors later falsified it or got confused.

Anyways, the following clip has been put forward as a more credible candidate for being an actual recording of octogenarian Gladstone (reading the same text, which if true throws doubt on the whole "he sent somebody else to read it" theory):

Actually, I can imagine this scenario:

1. Gladstone records his voice
2. Edison's unhappy with the quality, asks Gladstone to re-record it
3. Gladstone sends a friend to tell Edison to sod off,
4. Edison says, fuck it, let's loop it, who knows what Gladstone sounds like anyways

Clearly, Kate Beaton needs to draw this comic.

In Love With A. Lincoln

The link o' the day is this illustrated Maira Kalman tribute of Abe Lincoln, in which she realizes she's falling in love with him and wonders about his reaction to Frida Kahlo's self-portrait.

Punk Abe Lincoln

Another photo of Lincoln taken a couple months before he died, featuring a surprisingly contemporary hairstyle.

Abe looks downright rebellious in that photo. (via flickr blog)

Earliest Abe Lincoln photo?

The Kaplan Daguerreotype of Abraham Lincoln is purported to be the earliest known photo of the 16th President, taken in the early 1840s when he was in his early 30s. The young man in the photo doesn't bare an obvious resemblance to a photo taken of Lincoln a few years later but the forensic evidence is compelling.

Numerous accounts have revealed that Lincoln underwent a noticeable change in his physical appearance beginning in January 1841 as a result of a grave emotional crisis. This coincides with his reported failure to go through with his scheduled marriage to Mary Todd, leaving her literally waiting for him at the altar. (They were married the following year.) This emotional crisis, just one of a series of such episodes to plague him throughout his life, was the cause of Lincoln losing a considerable amount of weight.

Dreaming of Honest Abe

Someone keeps having dreams about Abraham Lincoln.

And then he hugs me and I think, 'Abe Lincoln hugged me. He smells like Old Spice.' I ask him who he supports in the election, and he smiles and says, "Believe it or not you're the first person who's asked me that this year; of course I support Barack. These so called Republicans remind me of Copperheads." And then he laughed sort of sad a deep ha ha ha laugh and I woke up.

The Copperheads were a group of Union Democrats who opposed the Civil War engineered by Lincoln's Republican administration. An anti-Lincoln pamphlet produced by the Copperheads -- titled Abraham Africanus I. His Secret Life as Revealed Under the Mesmeric Influence. Mysteries of the White House. -- brings to mind the ham-fisted attempt to characterize Barack Obama as a Muslim and terrorist.

Has Abe Lincoln been discovered in the

Has Abe Lincoln been discovered in the background of a pair of photographs taken right before the Gettysburg Address?

The new photos are enlarged details from much wider crowd shots; they were discovered by a Civil War hobbyist earlier this year in the vast trove of Library of Congress photographs digitized since 2000, and provided to USA Today. They show a figure believed to be Lincoln, white-gloved and in his trademark stovepipe hat, in a military procession.

The funny thing is, if you look at a similar photograph of Lincoln taken shortly after his speech, there are at least three men seated around him who are wearing stovepipe hats. The photographic evidence alone is not compelling. "Paging Errol Morris. Would Errol Morris please come to the information desk. Thank you."

Timelapse video of a map showing Civil

Timelapse video of a map showing Civil War battles and movements...four years of war in four minutes. The video was produced by Harvest Moon Studio for the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum.

Historical rankings of US presidents. Honest Abe

Historical rankings of US presidents. Honest Abe is number one with a...well, he's just #1. George W. Bush comes in at a respectable 22nd, just behind Bill Clinton. (via fakeisthenewreal)