The most interesting... and the most mysterious conspirator was Lewis Thornton Powell. They didn't even know who he was. He was hanged under the name Lewis Paine, which was one of his alias as a spy. Most of his brief life didn't come to light until more than half a century later. Some things, like his skull, didn't see the light of day until 2015! He was 21 on the day he died, and so brave, that the Union soldiers who witnessed his death spoke openly of their admiration for his poise and courage. He was born in Alabama, raised in Georgia and lived in Florida at the start of the Civil War. He was the only true "southerner" involved in the conspiracy. His father was a Baptist minister. He was very quiet and shy, with a high, soft voice that made a marked contrast with his huge size and ferocious appearance. His large family claimed that he loved animals. At 6'1 1/2" and built like an NFL linebacker, he was a physical specimen. He was also so good looking that crowds of girls flooded the courtroom every day just to stare at him, despite his slightly crooked jawline... the result of being kicked by a horse when he was 12. Little is known of his military career, but what is known and provable is frightening. He enlisted as a private from Florida at the beginning of the war, but isn't noted again until he was wounded at Gettysburg and taken prisoner. He sweet-talked a Union nurse into helping him escape, then joined the Confederate Secret Service as a spy. He remained a soldier by joining Mosby's Rangers, a military branch of the Secret Service, who's job was to terrorize people in the Shenandoah Valley and to keep lines of communication open between Richmond and New York/Canada. It was at this time that he became one of the most famous soldiers in American history, known as "The Terrible Lewis." In cavalry battles, he would slash and maim opponents; often biting off their noses or ears in a frenzy of slaughter. A century would pass before historians realized that "The Terrible Lewis" of Mosby's Rangers was the same, quiet voiced, polite young man who had been Wilkes Booth's most trusted assistant in his attempt to decapitate the government ... On his way to the gallows, he drew laughter and applause from the crowd by grabbing a hat off the head of a reporter and putting it on. The hangman whispered to him, "I want you to die fast." To which he shrugged and replied, "You know best." His last words were, "Mrs. Surratt is innocent!" Which he repeated several times, shouting it to the crowd, "Mrs. Surratt is innocent!" He did NOT die quickly. Mrs. Surratt's neck broke immediately and she never moved, but Powell took nearly 20 minutes to slowly strangle to death. Several times, his knees came up to his chest, as he fought to avoid his fate...
Conspirator Davey Herold is rather mysterious too. At the trial, his attorney described him as "having the mind of an 11 year-old." Yet one of the few things that we know about him for certain is that he was a student at Georgetown University... He may also have attempted to murder the president prior to April, 1865. Similar to Lewis Powell, it's not too difficult to detect the machinations of the Confederate Secret Service. He obtained a job as a pharmacist assistant and delivery boy at the drug store across the street from the White House and was responsible for delivering medications directly to the Lincoln family! The president's son, Willie, died of a mysterious fever that no one else in the family contracted. Then Lincoln himself collapsed and almost died on the train back to Washington after delivering the Gettysburg Address. Davey disappeared after hearing the news about the president. He never went back to the pharmacy and wasn't seen by anyone until the night of Lincoln's assassination nearly two years later. He accompanied Lewis Powell that night, then escorted Booth out of town. On the gallows, he was all shook up. He couldn't speak and trembled uncontrollably as he peed his pants...
Titanic sank on April 15, 1912. That same day saw the opening of a brand new ballpark: Fenway Park in Boston. The first pitch was thrown out by the mayor of Boston, John Francis "Honey Fitz" Fitzgerald; the grandfather of president John F. Kennedy.
I do requests. I'll do Harry Truman and JFK as I find time. This is good for me. The only students I have left are my great-grandson and you guys. Today was his second day in kindergarten. He showed me the gold star he got for doing his homework. He was so proud...
Made another pass and read and watched several more. Going to take a bit for me to watch all of them. Find it all very interesting and I like Terry's suggestion about VP in 1944.
JO'Co I am very interested in your opinion of the news media today. Probably not in this topic but I hope you might start another topic with your thoughts. I could start one but I think it would be more interesting to see your analysis.
Count me as a student. Your knowledge of history and your willingness to share it is a real godsend in a society that seems hell bent on erasing all reference to the past. My favorite teacher in 16 years of private school and college education was my 11th grade US History teacher, Charlie Eckhardt. Charlie hailed from Baltimore, somehow ended up in Dayton Ohio and at Carroll High. He was probably in his 60s. I never saw him crack a book or look at prepared notes. He would just start discussing events and people, often giving famous quotations or speech excerpts off the top of his head. Sometimes he would even attempt their voices or mannerisms as he interpreted them. He brought history alive.
There is no way in my opinion that the second shot came from the school book depository. That came from the front and not that far away.
Stole this from Facebook; I don't know if it's true, but it's funny! The US standard railroad gauge (distance between the rails) is 4 feet, 8.5 inches. That's an exceedingly odd number. Why was that gauge used? Well, because that's the way they built them in England, and English engineers designed the first US railroads. Why did the English build them like that? Because the first rail lines were built by the same people who built the wagon tramways, and that's the gauge they used. So, why did 'they' use that gauge then? Because the people who built the tramways used the same jigs and tools that they had used for building wagons, which used that same wheel spacing. Why did the wagons have that particular odd wheel spacing? Well, if they tried to use any other spacing, the wagon wheels would break more often on some of the old, long distance roads in England . You see, that's the spacing of the wheel ruts. So who built those old rutted roads? Imperial Rome built the first long distance roads in Europe (including England ) for their legions. Those roads have been used ever since. And what about the ruts in the roads? Roman war chariots formed the initial ruts, which everyone else had to match or run the risk of destroying their wagon wheels. Since the chariots were made for Imperial Rome , they were all alike in the matter of wheel spacing. Therefore the United States standard railroad gauge of 4 feet, 8.5 inches is derived from the original specifications for an Imperial Roman war chariot. Bureaucracies live forever. So the next time you are handed a specification/procedure/process and wonder 'What horse's ass came up with this?', you may be exactly right. Imperial Roman army chariots were made just wide enough to accommodate the rear ends of two war horses. (Two horses' asses.) Now, the twist to the story: When you see a Space Shuttle sitting on its launch pad, there are two big booster rockets attached to the sides of the main fuel tank. These are solid rocket boosters, or SRBs. The SRBs are made by Thiokol at their factory in Utah . The engineers who designed the SRBs would have preferred to make them a bit fatter, but the SRBs had to be shipped by train from the factory to the launch site. The railroad line from the factory happens to run through a tunnel in the mountains, and the SRBs had to fit through that tunnel. The tunnel is slightly wider than the railroad track, and the railroad track, as you now know, is about as wide as two horses' behinds. So, a major Space Shuttle design feature, of what is arguably the world's most advanced transportation system, was determined over two thousand years ago by the width of a horse's ass. And you thought being a horse's ass wasn't important? Ancient horse's asses control almost everything and.... CURRENT Horses Asses are controlling everything else.