LOOKING BACK 1945: Lincoln's chair reappears
Last week, I wrote about how the chair that Abraham Lincoln may have used using the Gettysburg Address ceremony disappeared from Gettysburg College. This week, the rest of the story…. For years, Gettysburg College had displayed a rocking chair believed to have been the one Abraham Lincoln used as he sat on the platform during the dedication of Soldiers’ National Cemetery where he delivered his Gettysburg Address. At some point in the 1920’s, it disappeared from the collection. No one knew who had taken it or how and no big deal was made of its loss. Then on April 7, 1945, the Gettysburg Times reported, “The little old rocking chair that Abraham Lincoln is reputed to have used on the platform in the National cemetery November 19, 1863, when he delivered his deathless Gettysburg Address, has come back to the Read more…
LOOKING BACK 1920's: Lincoln's chair vanishes
On November 19, 1863, thousands of people gathered in Gettysburg for the dedication of Soldiers’ National Cemetery. The keynote speaker of the event was Edward Everett. As his speech continued on and on, people standing in the crowd had to sit or risk their legs buckling. On the stage, the speakers had chairs to rest on until their time to speak came. President Abraham Lincoln sat in a rocking chair between Everett and Secretary of State William Seward. “Mr. Lincoln sat on the platform all the time in a rude, little stiff-backed chair, hard, and uncomfortable, but he hardly ever moved,” Dr. Henry Jacobs recalled in the Gettysburg Times in 1923. He had been a young boy in the audience at the dedication. When Everett had finished his two-hour speech, the president stood up from his rocker, walked to the Read more…
Ex-LAPD detective believes his father committed the Black Dahlia murder
The Black Dahlia murder case is one of the famous unsolved murders from Hollywood, but does it finally have a solution? Steve Hodel, a former LAPD homicide detective thinks his father committed the murder. It doesn’t come as too big a shock to him. His father, George Hodel, was a prime suspect in the 1947 murder. He was eventually booked in 1949 for incest and child molestation. Hodel recently spoke to a Pasadena audience explaining the evidence he had against his father. Elizabeth Short was one of the many young women who came to Hollywood looking to be an actress. In January 1947, the 22-year-old woman was murdered in Leimert Park in Los Angeles. Her body had been sliced in half at the waist and drained of blood. It was a gruesome killing that attracted a lot of attention then Read more…
Has part of Amelia Earhart's plane been found?
It’s been nearly 76 years since Amelia Earhart disappeared without a trace…except now some possible traces are beginning to emerge. Earhart was the first female pilot to fly solo across the Atlantic for which she received the Distinguised Flying Cross. She set a number of other flying records until she disappeared over the Pacific Ocean on July 2, 1937 during an attempt to fly around the world. Before her Lockheed Model 10 Electra disappeared, she was heading toward Howaland Island. No trace of her was found and her fate remains one of the great historical mysteries. Last year, five pieces of glass that fit together to form a small jar that resembled the ones that held Dr. Berry’s Freckle Ointment were found on the island of Nikularoro. The ointment was used to fade freckles in the 1930’s. Earhart had freckles Read more…
Mystery of the Hindenburg fire solved
When the Hindenburg burst into flames over Lakehurst, N.J., on May 6, 1937, so did the dreams of large-scale air travel by dirigible. A recent article in the UK Guardian called the Hindenburg “the Concorde of its day – able to cross the Atlantic in about three days, twice as fast as going by sea.” Since then, the Hindenburg has become nearly as famous as the Titanic, in part because of the mystery that surrounds the cause of the fire and also because of the pictures and movie clips that exist of the disaster. People are still curious about it even 76 years later. My 11-year-old was even talking to me about it recently. Now a group of researchers have said that they know how the Hindenburg caught fire. Jem Stansfield, a British aeronautical engineer at the South West Research Read more…
Trying to read the unreadable book
I just finished a thriller called The Voynich Cypher by Russell Blake. I enjoyed the story, but it made me curious about the Voynich Manuscript. It turns out that it exists and is considered one of history’s great mysteries. It has been called the most-unreadable book in the world. Wilfrid Voynich purchased a manuscript in 1912. It dates back to the early 15th Century probably from Northern Italy. It is 240 pages (some of the pages are missing) of illustrations and a text written in an undecipherable language. Some researchers have noted that it has similarities to herbal manuscripts of the time, which were used like medical reference books. The most of the plants in the Voynich Manuscript don’t match known plants. For centuries, cryptographers have attempted to decipher the text with no luck. Codebreakers from WWI and WWII also Read more…
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