HOME |
RSS | 
Neatorama presents a guest post from actor, comedian, and voiceover artist Eddie Deezen. Visit Eddie at his website.
Abraham Lincoln, our 16th U.S. president, was assassinated by John Wilkes Booth on April 14, 1865. He died the next day. Okay, what is this, a history class? Everybody knows that! But who shot Lincoln’s assassin, John Wilkes Booth? Well, let’s find out by looking into the life of one of the strangest, little-known men who had a part in United States history. Let’s look at the strange life of Boston Corbett.
Thomas Corbett was born in England in 1832. He immigrated to Boston where he became a born-again Christian. He adopted the city’s name in honor of his conversion. But Corbett wasn’t your normal convert. His religious zeal knew no bounds.
Fearing temptation by prostitutes, he used a pair of scissor to castrate himself. After which, he casually attended a prayer meeting (he did receive medical attention afterwards). Corbett had been married earlier, but his wife died in childbirth.
During the Civil war, Corbett became a Cavalry sergeant. After the 1865 assassination of President Lincoln, his unit took part in the search for John Wilkes Booth. On April 26th, his unit surrounded the barn where Booth was hiding and set it on fire. Corbett saw Booth through a crack in the barn and fired a single shot, mortally wounding him.
“Providence guided my hand,” Corbett told his commanding officer. By an odd coincidence, Corbett’s bullet had struck Booth in the same spot Booth’s shot had hit president Lincoln. When told of this, Corbett said, “What a fearful God we serve.”
His reward money for killing Booth was $1,653.84, the exact same amount as every other man in his unit.
Corbett instantly became famous as “Lincoln’s Avenger.” He was flooded by requests for autographs and cheered when he walked the streets. But fame, once hot and heavy, gradually died down.
Boston Corbett started suffering from severe delusions. He imagined John Wilkes Booth’s men were stalking him and thought he was in grave danger. He fled to Kansas.
In 1887, he was given
a job as doorman to the Kansas House of Representatives. One day he showed up waving a gun, declaring the House adjourned. Corbett was declared insane and sent to an asylum. The following year he escaped, and no one ever heard of Boston Corbett again.
He is thought to have settled and spent the final part of his life in the forests of Hinckley, Minnesota. There is no conclusive proof of this, but the Great Hinckley Fire of September 1894 lists a “Thomas Corbett” on the list of the dead or missing.
Corbett was a hatter by trade. The mercury used to cure beaver pelts is thought to have contributed to his madness.
Visit guest author Eddie Deezen at his website.
Here is a photo of President Abraham Lincoln “taken during his brief, yet memorable stint as a paranormal investigator and eliminator circa 1864.” Link -via Buzzfeed
February is American History Month and here at Neatorama, we urge those of you who live in the states to celebrate your country’s past by getting to know a little more about its history. As a result, we’ve decided to bring you a selection of little known facts about American History. While the truth behind many stories may not be pretty, it’s far better to know the facts than to celebrate through myths.
The stories of Columbus celebrate him as an all-time American hero who was a genius explorer and first convinced the world that the Earth was round, not flat. In actuality though, the Columbus myth is far greater than the reality of the man’s accomplishments. To start with, Aristotle was the first person to prove the Earth was round and he did so by showing the earth casts a spherical shadow on the moon during an eclipse. By the time Chris was born, most people had accepted this truth. It wasn’t until the 1828 biography of Christopher Columbus by Washington Irving (the same man that created The Legend of Sleepy Hollow) that this myth was born.
Columbus simply believed that the circumference of the Earth was much smaller than it actually is and that by traversing the Atlantic Ocean, he could establish a faster trade route to India and China. Essentially, his discovery of the Americas was purely based on an economic scheme.
Columbus was not even the first European visitor to the “New World,” as it is widely accepted that the Norse had made the voyage over 500 years before him. Of course, the Norse failed to mistake the new country for India (thus resulting in the title of “Indians” for the native populace) and they also failed to inform the rest of Europe that this giant mass of land happened to be sitting in the middle of the Atlantic.
Columbus was actually a bit of a barbarian. In fact, he was arrested and returned to Spain after being found to be too barbaric a ruler in his role as governor of the Hispaniola colony. 23 people testified about his cruelty –which, given the time period, means he had to be a really, really bad guy. He even refused to let the natives convert to Christianity because Catholic law dictated that baptized people could not be enslaved. Studies show that there were between 250,000-300,000 people in Hispaniola, but within 56 years of Columbus’ voyage, the number was down to 500.
Also, another interesting fact, researchers believe his men were responsible for bringing syphilis into Europe and, thus, caused the deaths of as many 5 million Europeans.
The reason for his near-sainthood( literally, as the church considered turning him into a saint in the 1866) goes back even before Irving’s time. Essentially, Americans felt they needed a national hero and at a time when they resented the British rule over the colonies, he seemed like a great icon.
By the way, all those pictures you’ve seen of Chris (including the ones used here), are not accurate. There still has not been an authentic painting of Christopher Columbus discovered to have been painted by his contemporaries.
Sources: Interesting History, Wikipedia, Christian Science Monitor, Columbus in History
As you may have gathered from the bit about Columbus, Jamestown was not the first European colony in North America. In fact, the first temporary colony was created around the year 1000 and located in Newfoundland, Canada, by Norse mariners from Greenland. The first permanent colony in modern day America was actually located in St. Augustine, Florida and was set up by the Spanish in 1565.
Jamestown was merely the first British colony, and the first colony in Virginia. These settlers were the first European colonists to do one thing though –resort to cannibalism. Yes, during the exceptionally rough winter of 1609, the colonists were forced to eat their feces and their dead to keep alive. While this fact is undeniably dark, it does show the hardships these settlers went through and their dedication to survival.
Sources: PBS, 100 Things You’re Not Supposed to Know Image via Bill Barber [Flickr]
Speaking of the English connection to the new world, the famed explorer Sir Walter Raleigh is wrongly credited for two major contributions to English society. He did not introduce potatoes to England in 1586, as the veggies were first grown in Italy in 1585 and had already spread through Europe, including England) within the next year. As for tobacco, Jean Nicot (the inspiration for the word nicotine) introduced the plant to France in 1560, and it spread to England from France before Raleigh would have had a chance to bring it back to his homeland.
Also, while Raleigh was certainly a stud (see image above), he did not ever lay his coat down over a puddle so Queen Elizabeth could cross. This lovely story is yet another romantic tale of a past that never existed.
Source: Greatest Historical Myths
By now you probably know that George Washington never really did cut down the mythical cherry tree (this story came courtesy of Mason Locke Weems, a biographer that rivaled Washington Irving in presenting long-lived fabrications about their subjects). But were you aware that George Washington wasn’t actually the first president?
When you think back to history class, you may recall our first attempt at self-governance was chartered under the unsuccessful Articles of Confederation. Under this document, the first official President of the United States of America was actually John Hanson (seen at left). Hanson was actually quite a good leader and accomplished a good amount of work during his tenure, but he is poorly remembered as he led the country under the Articles of Confederation rather than the Constitution.
As for Mr. Washington, he is very well-remembered, but not for his flaws. Washington was not generally the great war hero we remember him for. He actually lost ever major engagement during the first four years of the war. He wasn’t even the great president we have been told about in our school lessons. In fact, he was the first president to get caught in a scandal when the Philadelphia Aura reported that he embezzled over $6,000 more than he was permitted to take as his salary during his term as presidency.
Sources: Wikipedia, Marshall Hall, 100 Things You’re Not Supposed to Know
Many people think that we went to war with the south over slavery and that we fought in World War II to help stop the Nazis. In reality, the goals of these wars were much less noble. The main things that led the Civil War were economic issues and slavery was only a part of these problems. When the economic tensions got too hot, the South fought for its independence and the North fought to preserve the Union. Most Northerners didn’t care about slavery all that much and many Southerners simply couldn’t afford to own slaves.
Even the reasons behind the emancipation proclamation were more political than moral. The so-called Great Emancipator, Lincoln himself, once said, “If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that.” The entire speech was merely a way to help de-motivate blacks who were fighting for the South so the North could get an advantage.
Prior to World War II, the majority of Americans were not only uninterested in the plight of the Jews in Germany, but many even supported the forced sterilization of the mentally incompetent, crippled or criminally-inclined. Many states also banned interracial marriages as an effort to prevent the tainting of the races. At least 10,000 Americans were forcefully sterilized, many after being labeled with such vague properties as “sexually wayward,” “depressed,” “deviant,” or “bad girls.”
As a matter of fact, America played a crucial role in Hitler’s rise to power and his efforts to create a “master race.” After funding a number of eugenics scientists in America, The Rockefeller Foundation helped create the entire German eugenics program and they even funded work by the infamous Josef Mengele worked before he went to Auschwitz.
Fortunately for us, the researchers believed Americans were not ready to support any “final solutions,” which is why our eugenics program largely stopped at the forced sterilization stage and negligent medical care for the “unfit,” whereas the German program extended into unbelievable horrors. Of course, if the U.S. eugenics scientists hadn’t come up with so many scientific studies and so much research to back their claims, Hitler would have never been able to convince the rational German public to follow his plans.
Sources: Interesting History, HNN
Regardless of your opinions on medicinal marijuana and the war on drugs, most people will agree that heavier drugs are not exactly great substances and shouldn’t be easily accessible to the general populace, particularly kids. A little over a century ago, public opinion was quite different and even companies like Bayer were producing opium products. In fact, Bayer invented heroin. These “medical breakthroughs” were even promoted for use on children.
So what would it take for the government to actually illegalize a drug in a time period like this? Racism. The first drug law in America was enacted in San Francisco and prohibited the use of opium in opium dens. The city claimed that they enacted the law because “many women and young girls, as well as young men of respectable family, were being induced to visit the Chinese opium-smoking dens, where they were ruined morally and otherwise.” Of course, using the drug outside of a Chinese opium den was ok.
Sources: Wikipedia on Drug Prohibition, Wikipedia on Heroin History
I know you Neatorama readers are a smart breed, so many of you probably already know these facts and others. What’s your favorite little known history bit?
We all know the tired old legends and facts – George Washington ‘fessed up to chopping down a cherry tree; Abraham Lincoln lived in a log cabin; JFK had an affair with Marilyn Monroe; Bill Clinton had some laundering issues with a Gap dress. But there’s more than meets the eye with the Presidents – here are a few lesser-known facts about each of them. And in case you’re wondering about the weird math, Grover Cleveland was President for non-consecutive terms (the only President to ever do so, actually), so he technically counts as Presidents #22 and #24.
1. George Washington indulged in luxuries such as leopard-skin blankets for all of his horses.
2. John Adams and Thomas Jefferson died on the same day – July 4, 1826, which just so happened to be the 50th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.
3. Thomas Jefferson attributed his long life (he lived to the age of 83, which was pretty long in the tooth for the early 1800s) to his daily habit of cold foot baths.
4. James Madison is the shortest president to date, standing just 5’4”. His stature didn’t go unnoticed – John Quincy Adams’ wife once described him as “a very small man in his person with a very large head.”
5. James Monroe once chased William H. Crawford, his secretary of the treasury, out of the White House with a pair of red hot tongs from the fireplace. Crawford gave Monroe a list of people he wanted considered for “political patronage,” and when Monroe informed Crawford that his list was not needed or wanted, Crawford called the President “a damned infernal scoundrel.” When he brandished his cane at Monroe, Monroe went for the tongs.
6. John Quincy Adams didn’t have such a great relationship with his three sons. When one of them failed to make the top 10 in his class at Harvard, JQA wrote to him and said that he felt “Nothing but shame and sorrow in your presence.” That was his namesake, John, who later became an alcoholic, as did brother George. George later committed suicide.
7. Andrew Jackson was nearly assassinated. A man named Richard Lawrence decided that Jackson was the only thing keeping him from inheriting the British throne and tried to shoot him as Jackson was leaving the Capitol. The gun misfired. Lawrence came prepared with a backup gun, drew it, and fired again. It also misfired. Legend has it that about this time, Jackson started beating his would-be killer with his cane. Davy Crockett was one of the men who helped disarm Lawrence.
8. Martin Van Buren didn’t relish his days in the White House, to be sure. He once said, “As for the presidency, the two happiest days of my life were those of my entrance upon the office and my surrender of it.” It didn’t stop him for running for a second term (he didn’t achieve it).
9. William Henry Harrison. His death is the reason we have firm plans in place for the presidential succession. Harrison served just 31 days, 12 hours and 30 minutes of his presidency; he died of pneumonia and septicemia and was the first American President to die in office. At the time, no one was sure if the Vice President should become President or would merely be Acting President. It was decided that since Harrison’s VP John Tyler took the Oath of Office, he would retain the title for the duration of Harrison’s original term.
10. John Tyler married a girl 30 years his junior (Julia, pictured) and began courting her just three months after his wife’s death. His youngest daughter – the fifteenth Tyler child – was born when Tyler was 70.
11. James K. Polk never vacationed, kept long hours and was always all business. He accomplished much during his presidency, including a victory in the Mexican-American War, founding an independent treasury, opened the Naval Academy, issued the first postage stamps, opened the Smithsonian Museum and oversaw the groundbreaking for the Washington Monument, and expanded the United States further west. He also died just three months after leaving office – most historians agree that he basically worked himself to death.
12. Zachary Taylor was a big fan of chewing tobacco and had no problems with spitting his chaw juice out on the White House carpet if a suitable urn wasn’t available.
13. Millard Fillmore met Queen Victoria in 1855. She promptly declared that Fillmore was the handsomest man she had ever laid eyes upon. He was also the last member of the Whig Party to be President.
14. Franklin Pierce was a rather tragic figure. His first two sons died in childhood – one at birth and one at the age of four. Young deaths were not uncommon at the time, but it caused his wife to become a bit overprotective of their third and last son, Bennie. Two months before Pierce took office, he and his family were traveling in a train that derailed and then slid down an embankment. The only fatality? Eleven-year-old Bennie.
15. James Buchanan is the only president who never married. He was engaged once, but it ended pretty badly – her parents convinced her that Buchanan wasn’t good enough for her, so she broke it off. She then took ill and died soon after. Buchanan wrote a letter to her father and asked to be allowed to follow after her coffin at the funeral; her father had it returned to sender.
16. Abraham Lincoln was notoriously messy. Legend has it that his office was a terrible mess and that he kept an envelope in his desk that said, “When you can’t find it anywhere else, look into this.”
17. Andrew Johnson was a tailor and absolutely loved his job. In fact, when he was governor of Tennessee, he took time out of his busy schedule to custom make a suit for a local blacksmith.
18. Ulysses S. Grant’s grandson, Ulysses S. Grant III, graduated sixth in his class at West Point Academy in 1903. The best student that year? Douglas MacArthur.
19. Rutherford B. Hayes didn’t actually win the presidential election – he lost to Samuel Tilden by about 250,000 votes. But the vote tallying was a mess and a bunch of the electoral votes were in dispute, so the Electoral Commission was quickly formed to determine the outcome. They obviously found in favor of Hayes, leaving Tilden supporters to dub Rutherford “Rutherfraud,” “His Fraudulency” and “His Accidency.”
20. James A. Garfield was shot on July 2, 1881, but he didn’t die until September 19. Most historians agree that the doctors who poked and prodded and used rather strange and unsanitary measures to try to “save” him are probably the ones that actually killed him.
21. Chester A. Arthur was a clotheshorse and was the first president to hire someone to attend to his wardrobe. He reportedly had more than 80 pairs of pants.
22. Grover Cleveland had a secret operation to remove a tumor in his mouth while he was president. He boarded a yacht headed upstate as if it were a fun diversion, but while he was tucked away from the public eye, doctors removed the tumor from his upper palette. No one knew about the incident until 24 years later, when one of the doctors who performed the surgery finally spilled the beans. You can now visit the tumor at the Mutter Museum in Philadelphia, which has an exhibit dedicated to the event.
23. Benjamin Harrison was the last president to wear a beard.
24. William McKinley’s wife had epileptic seizures on a fairly regular basis. He responded to them by arranging his handkerchief over her head – the darkness seemed to help – and carrying on as if nothing out of the ordinary were happening.
25. Theodore Roosevelt was a big fan of food. He drank about a gallon of coffee a day and would sometimes eat a dozen hard-boiled eggs for breakfast.
26. William Howard Taft is the only man, thus far, to have been the leader of both the Executive and Judicial branches of government. He became Chief Justice eight years after his term as President ended and considered this the highlight of his career – “I do not remember that I was ever President,” he once said.
27. Woodrow Wilson was one of the few Presidents to endure dating while acting as Commander in Chief. His first wife died of Bright’s Disease in 1914, and by 1915 he was dating his would-be second wife, Edith Boling Galt. As you might expect, the media followed them around mercilessly and reported on their dates. The Washington Post once typoed that President Wilson “spent most of his time entering Ms. Galt.” Whoops. Since they meant to write “entertaining,” that entire newspaper was recalled. Wilson also signed off some of his letters to Galt as “Tiger.”
28. Warren G. Harding loved gambling and once lost an entire box of White House china in a game.
29. Calvin Coolidge’s son is probably the only fatality to occur at the White House because of the White House. He was playing a game of tennis with his older brother and developed a blister on his big toe. The blister became infected and Cal Jr. died of blood poisoning within days.
30. Herbert Hoover wrote a book called Fishing For Fun – And To Wash Your Soul. An excerpt: “Association with the placid ripples of the waves and the quiet chortle of the streams is soothing to our ‘het-up’ anxieties.”
31. Franklin Delano Roosevelt was driven around in a hand-me-down Cadillac that previously belonged to Al Capone. After Pearl Harbor, the Secret Service decided that the limo FDR was tooling around in wasn’t safe enough. Capone’s car was outfitted with a ton of armor since he was so commonly targeted, so it was deemed safe enough for Roosevelt.
32. Harry S Truman. The “S” in Harry S Truman doesn’t stand for anything. His parents argued over whether it should stand for “Shippe” or “Solomon,” his paternal and maternal grandparents respectively, and so it was just left as “S.”
33. Dwight D. Eisenhower desperately wanted to play professional baseball. Later in life, he said that “”not making the baseball team at West Point was one of the greatest disappointments of my life, maybe my greatest.”
34. John F. Kennedy’s 1935 yearbook named him “Most likely to become President.”
35. Lyndon B. Johnson. For two hours and eight minutes after JFK’s assassination, we had no President. LBJ was sworn in on Air Force One in Dallas at Love Field Airport; he is the only President to be sworn in on Texas soil. He was also the first President to be sworn in by a woman.
36. Richard Nixon always wore a coat and tie – even when he was at home by himself, according to one biography.
37. Gerald Ford is the only President who also had a modeling career. He was in Look magazine in 1939 and was on the cover of Cosmopolitan in 1942. He’s also the only President to ever tackle a future Heisman winner – when he played football for the University of Michigan Wolverines, he tackled University of Chicago running back Jay Berwanger, who won the first-ever Heisman Trophy the following year. 
38. Jimmy Carter is the only President to file an official report to detail a UFO sighting. He claimed he and several members of his Lion’s Club saw a UFO hovering about 900 yards away from them in Georgia in 1969.
39. Ronald Reagan was a notorious doodler and wasn’t immune to entertaining himself during “boring” meetings by doing such. Those are his scribbles to the left.
40. George H.W. Bush was awarded an honorary knighthood by Queen Elizabeth II in 1993. He’s just the third President to receive the honor – the other two were Eisenhower and Reagan.
41. Bill Clinton. There’s a statue of Clinton playing golf in Ballybunion, Ireland.
42. George W. Bush is the only U.S. President to have an MBA.
43. Barack Obama’s brother-in-law is the head men’s basketball coach at Oregon State University.
Archie McPhee is known for its weird stuff, but this is really weird. I’m sure Freud himself would have something to say about it. But hey, if fruity Austrian psychoanalysts on a stick aren’t for you, there’s always cherry-flavored Marie Antoinette severed heads, orange-flavored Abe Lincoln heads, blueberry-flavored Will Shakespeares and cola-flavored Vladimir Lenins. I love Archie McPhee.
Hey, I like Abraham Lincoln as much as the next person. Not only was he one of our greatest presidents ever, he was a fascinating man. But let’s be honest… you probably don’t need this. No one really needs this. It’s beyond creepy. Then again, it might be a great companion piece for Napoleon’s hand.
