Lincoln looks good in Christmas; 10 cool facts about the 16th President

Abraham Lincoln, one of the most revered Presidents in American history, is well known across the globe for many things. From poverty to the presidency, the self-educated and self-taught lawyer is the author of the Emancipation Proclamation and the Gettysburg Address. His skill in steering the country through four-years of bloody Civil War, preserving the Union, and signing the 13^th Amendment (freeing African-Americans forever in America) ranks right up there too.

However, here are some much lesser known facts about the 16^th President you may not be aware of.

Lincoln was just nine years old when his mother, Nancy Hanks Lincoln, died of what settlers called the “milk-sick.” It was later discovered that the milk she drank was tainted after cows digested the “poisonous white snakeroot.” Lincoln also had an older brother, Thomas, who died in infancy, and an older sister, Sarah, who died giving birth to a stillborn baby.

Lincoln’s home, located at the corner of Eighth and Jackson Streets in Springfield, Illinois, is the only home he ever owned. He bought it for $1,500 in 1844. After his assassination in 1865, his son Robert Todd Lincoln eventually sold the home to the state of Illinois for one dollar with two stipulations: never charge anyone to tour the home and take good care of it. It eventually became a National Park in 1972, one of only two National Parks in Illinois. Tours, which attract at the very least 350,000 visitors annually, are still free of charge.

Lincoln, who lived the majority of his life clean-shaven, began growing a beard just a few months before he left for the White House. His decision to grow facial hair began with 11-year-old Grace Bedell of Westfield, New York, who sent Lincoln a letter in October of 1860 suggesting he “would look a great deal better” because “all the ladies like whiskers and they would tease their husbands to vote for you and then you would be President.” Lincoln arrived in Washington in February of 1861 as the first U.S. President with a beard.

In Lincoln’s day, anyone could walk into the White House unattended and sit in one of two waiting rooms to speak to the President. Lincoln, in the face of great criticism, reserved time twice each week to meet with the general public to listen to their grievances. “I tell you that I call these receptions my ‘public opinion baths,’” Lincoln said.

Lincoln, who once rescued a squealing pig in knee-keep mud, indulged in his youngest children – Willie and Thomas “Tad” Lincoln – and allowed them to have two pet goats (Nanny and Nanko) that roamed freely in the White House, or the Executive Mansion as it was known back then. Lincoln was fond of animals in general and had a weakness for stray cats, which he regularly brought home.

Lincoln loved thunderstorms, and despite being advised against it, would sneak off by himself and roam the streets of Washington while the skies overhead poured down with rain through flashes of lightning and claps of thunder.

Lincoln, still our tallest President at six feet, four inches, is also the only U.S. President to receive a patent. He designed a flotation system that would allow boats that had gone aground to become buoyant again by way of inflating air chambers fastened to the sides of vessels.

Lincoln was invited to the dedication of the new National Cemetery in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania as a polite afterthought – local authorities thinking he would be too busy to attend. Despite an illness that would soon be diagnosed as smallpox, Lincoln attended the ceremony reserved for November 19, 1863, just over four months following the Battle of Gettysburg. Edward Everett, a U.S. governor and senator from Massachusetts, was the featured speaker and spoke for nearly two hours. Lincoln followed with a brilliant summary of just 272 words that the world would come to know as the Gettysburg Address. “I should be glad, if I could flatter myself that I came as near the central idea of the occasion in two hours, as you did in two minutes,” Everett said.

Lincoln, the first U.S president to be assassinated, had a Confederate five-dollar bill in his pocket the night he was assassinated. He had signed legislation creating the U.S. Secret Service just hours before the assassination.

The last direct decedent of Lincoln, his great-grandson Robert Todd Lincoln Beckwith, who had no children, died in 1985.