Illinois may be known as the Land of Lincoln, but it was in Indiana that the 16th president spent his formative years. Lincoln didn’t move to Illinois until he was 21. Night attack on Fort Stevens, while President Lincoln was there, on July 11, 1864.Ĩ.
Legend has it that Colonel Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., a future Supreme Court justice, barked, “Get down, you fool!” Lincoln ducked down from the fort’s parapet and left the battlefield unharmed. At one point the gunfire came dangerously close to the president. When Confederate troops attacked Washington, D.C., in July 1864, Lincoln visited the front lines at Fort Stevens on two days of the battle, which the Union ultimately won. Lincoln came under enemy fire on a Civil War battlefield. Although there was a standing order against firing weapons in the District of Columbia, Lincoln even test-fired muskets and repeating rifles on the grassy expanses around the White House, now known as the Ellipse and the National Mall.ħ. Lincoln attended artillery and cannon tests and met at the White House with inventors demonstrating military prototypes.
Lincoln was a hands-on commander-in-chief who, given his passion for gadgetry, was keenly interested in the artillery used by his Union troops during the Civil War. Lincoln personally test-fired rifles outside the White House. Inside Theodore Roosevelt's Gilded Age UpbringingĦ. (In another eerie coincidence, on the day of Edwin Booth’s funeral-June 9, 1893-Ford’s Theatre collapsed, killing 22 people.) Robert Todd Lincoln immediately recognized his rescuer: famous actor Edwin Booth, brother of John Wilkes. Suddenly, a hand reached out and pulled the president’s son to safety by the coat collar. A throng of passengers began to press the young man backwards, and he fell into the open space between the platform and a moving train. John Wilkes Booth’s brother saved the life of Lincoln’s son.Ī few months before John Wilkes Booth assassinated Lincoln, the president’s oldest son, Robert Todd Lincoln, stood on a train platform in Jersey City, New Jersey. Lincoln’s body was quickly moved to an unmarked grave and eventually encased in a steel cage and entombed under 10 feet of concrete.Ĥ. Secret Service agents, however, infiltrated the gang and were lying in wait to disrupt the operation. Their scheme was to hold the corpse for a ransom of $200,000 and obtain the release of the gang’s best counterfeiter from prison.
In 1876 a gang of Chicago counterfeiters attempted to snatch Lincoln’s body from his tomb, which was protected by just a single padlock, in Oak Ridge Cemetery in Springfield, Illinois. Secret Service did come to Lincoln’s protection, but only in death. Grave robbers attempted to steal Lincoln’s corpse. As for those broadcasters who bandied around the word “monster” in regards to Mark Henry? They missed the point. Even fans in the front row seemed uneasy in the looming presence of the former Olympic power lifter. Had nagging injuries not slowed him, Henry may have depleted an entire roster. So be grateful that Henry chose 2011 to construct what he called his “Hall of Pain” out of the broken bones of fallen opponents like Kane, Big Show and Randy Orton. Watch Mark Henry's World Heavyweight Title win on WWE Network The Streak? A few digits less impressive. Had the powerhouse from Silsbee, Texas, spent the last decade behaving the way he did in fall 2011 then WWE history would look a lot different.
Some WWE fans were critical of the fact that it took Mark Henry 15 years to embrace his status as the squared circle’s most intimidating figure.