Trivial Trivia - taking trivia to new levels

[Joe Di Cola]

(12-23-2012 02:08 PM)RJNorton Wrote:  Joe, your prize is the wish and blessings from all of us for continued improvement, less pain, more mobility, etc. as you recover from your back operation.

Thanks,
This is the prize I need right now--especially patience! Enforced inactivity is not my cup of tea. I am looking forward to Tuesday. My daughter and son-in-law are making dinner at my house and I will be enjoying the company, stimulation, and noise of my grandsons. I see the surgeon for my 1st post-op visit on Thursday. I hope he says I can drive in another week--if not sooner.

The best of holidays to all!

Joe

[RJNorton]

At the age of 48 Lincoln purchased these spectacles. How much did he pay?

[Mark MacKenzie]

Thirty seven and one half cents?

[J. Beckert]

$6.75

[RJNorton]

Congratulations, Mark! I was beginning to think no one would get this one. You will also get the next one in case you used the same source I did.

One last Lincoln question from the same source - what is this a picture of?

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Hint #1: With regard to the source I am using here is part of a vacuum cleaner ad that is in the source. You can find the answer to the above question on the Internet; in other words you do not need to own a copy to get the answer correct.

[RJNorton]

(12-29-2012 09:26 AM)Gene C Wrote:  

(12-29-2012 04:58 AM)RJNorton Wrote:  Hint #1: With regard to the source I am using here is part of a vacuum cleaner ad that is in the source.

Yes, but how is it with pet hair? - Fido

I don't know, but it would be easy on his ears.

[RJNorton]

Hint #2: The article that is the source of the photo of the item was written by Stefan Lorant for Life Magazine.

[Mark MacKenzie]

Roger, I just happened to open "Wit and Wisdom of Abraham Lincoln" to the page that detailed the amount paid for the glasses. It quoted Lincoln as saying, he "kinder needed them."

Is that item a tie tack?

[RJNorton]

It's called a stock. I had never heard of this term and neither had my wife. I looked it up, and a stock was a single band worn around the neck with the ends tied up in a bowlike configuration. Lincoln paid $1.25 for the one in the picture I posted, and he was wearing it at Ford's Theatre.

The article is here.

[Mark MacKenzie]

Roger, I just purchased, at the astounding price of $ 7.00, the book "Lincoln HIS LIFE IN PHOTOGRAPHS" by Stefan Lorant.
Lorant was a Hungarian immigrant who had been in the United States for less than a year when he published this book. He began research when his son asked who this Lincoln person was.

In this book, the last Gardner images are dated April 9, 1865. He also includes the photo of Lincoln and Tad where Tad is leaning on the small table as taken on the same date. Weren't these photos later proved to have been taken in February not April? Conclusively? I want to know if the Tad photo was days or months before he lost his father.

[RJNorton]

Mark, I also have that book and you are right. According to Lincoln's secretaries, John Hay and John Nicolay, the actual last photographs were taken on the White House's south portico by photographer Henry F. Warren of Waltham, Massachusetts. This information is stated in their Complete Works of Abraham Lincoln.

Also, Matthew Wilson's diary states that the Gardner photographs were actually made on Sunday, February 5, 1865. Wilson was a portrait painter who had accompanied Lincoln to Gardner's studio to provide a model for a portrait Wilson painted afterwards. Lloyd Ostendorf also notes that Gardner's gallery was selling these to the public prior to April.

The "April date error" in Lorant's book is also in a lot of the earlier books. I think most of the recent books have it right, though.

[L Verge]

I should have enlarged that photo, then I might have recognized it as a stock. That was a common form of gentlemen's neckwear during the 19th century. I believe that Booth preferred cravats. Rick Smith is my authority on men's neckwear.

Loved that article, by the way. Three years ago, we had a year-long exhibit on Remembering Mr. Lincoln to commemorate his birthday at Surratt House. (It was slightly disturbing to the Confederate spirits there, but they behaved themselves.) One of the things that the children loved most was a life-sized, foam core "statue" of Mr. Lincoln. In front of the statue, we affixed Lincoln's size 14 foot prints to the floor (courtesy of a member who happens to own original drawings made for a subsequent pair of Lincoln's boots).

We then had a sign that asked, "Can you measure up to Mr. Lincoln?" and another that said, "Can you fill Mr. Lincoln's boots?" The kids had a grand time taking turns to see how they did. Most of them could fit both of their shoes in just one Lincoln foot print. These two activities then led into a brief discussion of other ways that they should emulate Mr. Lincoln.

As former teacher HerbS will tell you, "You gotta hook 'em before you can reel 'em in!"

[ReignetteC]

(12-29-2012 01:34 PM)RJNorton Wrote:  It's called a stock. I had never heard of this term and neither had my wife. I looked it up, and a stock was a single band worn around the neck with the ends tied up in a bowlike configuration. Lincoln paid $1.25 for the one in the picture I posted, and he was wearing it at Ford's Theatre.

The article is here.

Roger,

"The Art of Tying the Cravat," published by Brooks Brothers in 1921, provides a fascinating history of "Stocks."

"Stocks were first introduced as military costume about the commencement of the eighteenth century. Choiseul, minister of war under Louis XV, presented them to the troops in lieu of the Cravat.

"These stocks were made of black horse-hair, tolerably hard, moderately wide, and were only injurious when fastened too tightly. In many regiments, the officers wishing the men to appear healthy, obliged them to tighten the stock so as almost to produce suffocation, instead of allowing them more nourishing food, or treating them with more kindness; or, in short, of giving them an opportunity of acquiring that health, the appearance only of which was produced by the tightened stock.

"The Stock has ever since formed a part of military costume. Invention has been racked to diversify it as much as possible; and as appearance alone was consulted, each change has rendered it more injurious; it has been transformed into a collar as hard as iron, by the insertion of a slip of wood which, acting on the larynx, and compressing every part of the neck, caused the eyes almost to start from the spheres, and gave the wearer a supernatural appearance often producing vertigoes and faintings, or at least bleeding at the nose. It rarely happened that a field-day passed over without surgical aid being required by one or more soldiers, whose illness was only produced by an over-tightened Stock. As the same kind of Stock was used for necks of all sizes, whether long or short, thin or thick, it rendered the wearer, in many cases, almost immovable; he was scarcely able to obey the order, "right face-left face," and was entirely prohibited from stooping.

"Stocks have lately been much improved, and these objections no longer exist. The best Stocks for general use are made of whalebone, thinned at edges, with a border of white leather, which entirely prevents that unpleasant scratching of the chin so produced by the whalebone penetrating the upper part."

URL=http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/580/stocku.jpg/][/URL]

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[RJNorton]

Thank you, Reignette! The phrase, "You Are Never Too Old To Learn Something New" sure applies to me regarding a stock. I had never heard of this before.

[BettyO]

Reignette, Thanks so very, very much!

It's so very grand to have a fellow "Victorian Fashionesta" on the board! Laurie Verge and I have for many long years loved the social history, fashion and language of the period! I for one feel that in order to know one's subject one has to also study the clothing, manners, language and social history of the period.