Trivial Trivia - taking trivia to new levels

[Anita]

Thanks Eva. I was also not aware of the lady or the story. Here's her account. She left out the "kissing part".

From Agnes Elizabeth W. Salm-Salm, Ten Years of My Life (Richard Bentley & Son, 1876), pages 44-46. Available from Google Books. .

"There were, of course, plenty of newspaper reporters in our camp; and as they had not much to write about the war, they described our sports and festivals, which descriptions tempted many people to pay us a visit; and even Mr. Lincoln, or perhaps Mrs. Lincoln, could not resist . The announcement of this visit caused, of course, great excitement; and preparations were made to entertain them as well as possible. They were to stay at General Hooker’s head-quarters; but the real maitre de plaisirs was General Sickles, who had been in Europe, and who knew all about it. He wanted to introduce even some novelties of a monarchical smack, and proposed to appoint for the time of the visit some ladies of honour to attend on Mrs. Lincoln. This plan was, however, not to the liking of the American ladies, each of whom thought herself quite as sovereign as the wife of the President.

President Lincoln’s features are well known. People said that his face was ugly. He certainly had neither the figure nor features of the Apollo of Belvedere; but he never appeared ugly to me, for his face, beaming with boundless kindness and benevolence towards mankind, had the stamp of intellectual beauty. I could not look into it without feeling kindly towards him, and without tears starting to my eyes, for over the whole face was spread a melancholic tinge, which some will have noticed in many persons who are fated to die a violent death.

A German author, I think it is L. Tieck, says somewhere that one loves a person only the better on discovering in him or her something funny or ridiculous, and this remark struck me as very correct. We may worship or revere a perfect person; but real warm human affection we feel towards such as do not overawe us, but stand nearer to us by some imperfection or peculiar weakness provoking a smile. President Lincoln’s appearance was peculiar. There was in his face, besides kindness and melancholy, a sly humour nickering around the corners of his big mouth and his rather small and somewhat tired looking eyes.

He was tall and thin, with enormously long loose arms and big hands, and long legs ending with feet such as I never saw before; one of his shoes might have served Commodore Nutt as a boat. The manner in which he dressed made him appear even taller and thinner than he was, for the clothes he wore seemed to be transmitted to him by some still taller elder brother. In summer, when he wore a suit made of some light black stuff, he looked like a German village schoolmaster. He had very large ears standing off a little, and when he was in a good humour I always expected him to flap with them like a good-natured elephant.

Notwithstanding his peculiar figure, he did not appear ridiculous; he had of the humourous just as much about him as the people like to see in public characters they love. Lincoln was beloved by the Americans more than any other man; he was the most popular President the United States ever had, Washington and Jackson not excepted."

[Eva Elisabeth]

Anita, thanks for posting this account, it's fascinating to read. I'm astonished she knew the quote by Ludwig Tieck and I wonder what she would have said about Prince Charles' ears...

[Dave Taylor]

What is the significance of the number "2244"?

[J. Beckert]

The number assigned to Powell's skull?

[Dave Taylor]

(11-15-2013 07:25 PM)J. Beckert Wrote:  The number assigned to Powell's skull?

Well done, Joe. I thought I had a real tough one too.

http://www.lewisthorntonpowell.com/powellskull223.html

[Anita]

Joe and Dave- You guys are amazing. Definitely Lincoln "Jeopardy" champion material!

[L Verge]

I just ran across two trivial pieces pertaining to the Civil War era that I thought I would pass along:

Someone reminded me that some things never change. Over the past five years or so, there has been much ado about the U.S. "water boarding" some of our captured enemies. This is not a new technique.

According to Mark E. Neely, Jr. in Fate of Liberty: Abraham Lincoln and Civil Liberties, New York and Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1991, pp.110-112, "'Handcuffs and hanging by the wrists were rare, but in the summer of 1863, the army had developed a water torture that came to be used routinely.' The bureaucracy of the Lincoln administration reacted in predictably bureaucratic fashion... No one exploded in indignation and horror. No one issued a special order demanding that such practices cease. No one requested an investigation or study...No one expressed any personal outrage...there was no impulse to correct the abuse; indeed no one saw it as abuse."

The other little "oddity" does not have a citation, but supposedly "Four years after the conclusion of the war, Sgt. Gilbert H. Bates of Wisconsin marched through the defeated South carrying a United States flag. Bates, a Union veteran, made a bet with a friend that he could walk penniless from Vicksburg to Washington carrying the American flag and subsist entirely on Southern hospitality. His goal was 'to disprove the belief, held widely in the North, that disloyalty to the Union was still rampant below the Potomac and that a man could not take the Stars and Stripes onto Southern soil without being murdered.' He pulled it off successfully through a long, 1,400-mile march without one major incident along the way."

[Anita]

Laurie, More on Sgt. Bates from http://www.liveauctioneers.com/item/1799...-artillery

   

Sergeant Gilbert Bates, 1st Wisconsin Heavy Artillery, Post-Civil War CDV of the "Pedestrian Patriot"

Gilbert H. Bates (1836-1917) was a Sergeant in the First Wisconsin Heavy Artillery Regiment during the Civil War and returned to his farm in Dane County afterward. After talking with a neighbor who claimed Southerners had more hatred for the Union flag after the war than during, Bates bet him that he could walk all the way across the South carrying the flag, unarmed and without a cent in his pocket. Starting in Vicksburg, where he was given a reception by the mayor, Bates made the 1400 mile march to Washington unscathed and with great notoriety, his travels being reported in newspapers across the country. He proved not only his neighbor wrong, but also a young Mark Twain, who had written "...this fellow will get more black eyes down there among them unreconstructed rebels than he can ever carry along with him without breaking his back."

Sergeant Bates made a similar bet in 1872 that he could walk the length of England in the same manner without being insulted. He won again, and returned to America to become a fixture on the lecture circuit, giving rousing patriotic speeches and displaying his famous flag. In 1886 he joined Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show as -- of course -- their standard bearer.

[L Verge]

Anita - Thanks for putting meat on the bones of my oddity trivia. I was very impressed to see that he refuted even Mark Twain's claims about the inhospitable environment of the South.

[Eva Elisabeth]

Xmas and books go together well. Well, the most Lincoln biographies have, of course, been published in English. Which language follows? (No, it's not German!)

[Rob Wick]

According to The Global Lincoln that would be Chinese.

Best
Rob

[Gene C]

Spanish

[Eva Elisabeth]

Sorry, Gene, Rob is correct. Kudos. I see, I see, I can't use "The Global Lincoln" for trivia questions, what a pity!

Here are the top 20:

English (6894)
Chinese (217)
Spanish (121)
German (68)
Japanese (65)
French (43)
Korean (40)
Swedish (18)
Portuguese (17)
Italian (16)
Tamil (16)
Polish (15)
Russian (15)
Hindi (11)
Dutch (10)
Arabic (9)
Danish (9)
Hebrew (9)
Czech (7)
Gujarati (7)
(Source: WorldCat. Search: 'Abraham Lincoln' > 'Book' > 'Biography' > 'Non-Fiction' + all years)

Rob, you win a Chinese Lincoln biography - free choice!
Gene, you were so close and it's Xmas - the booby prize is a Spanish one. Free choice, too.

[Gene C]

Figures. It's hard to find a good Lincoln Chimichanga outside the southwest.

http://www.chimichanga.co.uk/restaurant/lincoln

[Rob Wick]

It's not a Chinese biography, but in 1931 Tarbell corresponded with Yaichi Akiyama about his Japanese biography of Lincoln, so if it's possible, I'd like to exchange my prize for that.

Best
Rob