Thought for today - 3 December 2016

[Irene]

People are just as happy as they make their minds up to be .

~ Abraham Lincoln 

[Belatucadrus]

Abraham Lincoln the poster boy for the dangers of live theatre.

[Irene]

20 minutes ago, Belatucadrus said:

Abraham Lincoln the poster boy for the dangers of live theatre.

Source of story below:  Click HERE 

Quote

 

Relatives of the man who assassinated Abraham Lincoln are pressing for a DNA test to confirm whether he was killed soon afterwards or escaped and went on to live a further 38 years.

John Wilkes Booth, an actor, shot the 16th President of the U.S. in the back of the head while he watched a performance of Our American Cousin at a theatre in Washington on April 14 in 1865.

At the time of the assassination the American Civil War was drawing to a close and days earlier the Confederate general Robert E Lee had officially surrendered.

 

Assassination: John Wilkes Booth shoots Abraham Lincoln from behind during a performance in a Washington theatre

After the murder, Booth, a Confederate sympathiser, fled on horseback and went into hiding with fellow conspirator David Herold.

The fugitives were tracked down to a barn in northern Virginia by Union soldiers 12 days later. Booth was shot dead after refusing to surrender but Herold gave himself up. He was sentenced to death on July 6 and was hanged the very next day.

However, conspiracy theorists have claimed that the man shot in the barn was in fact Confederate soldier James William Boyd who looked like Booth.

And subsequent generations of the Booth family have told the tale of how the assassin escaped the barn and went on to live for nearly four decades in Texas and Oklahoma under assumed names.

Shot dead?: John Wilkes Booth may have escaped death and lived for a further 38 years

Now Booth's descendants want to exhume the body of his brother Edwin, one of America's greatest Shakespearean actors, to compare his DNA with that of the body lying in an unmarked grave in Green Mount Cemetery, Baltimore, Maryland, long believed to be Booth.

It is the second attempt by the remaining family of Booth to exhume his body. A request in 1995 was turned down by a judge who feared the graves of three young children beneath would be disturbed.

Joanne Hulme, 60, a Booth descendant and family historian, told the Philadelphia Inquirer: 'I'm absolutely in favour of exhuming Edwin. Let's have the truth and put this thing to rest.

'The first story my mother ever told me was the John Wilkes Booth was not killed in the barn.'

Booth,, a Confederate sympathiser, shot Lincoln on the night of Good Friday, April 14, 1865, days after hearing the news that Robert E. Lee had surrendered. He had already planned to kidnap the President after his landslide re-election the year before along with fellow conspirators David Herold, George Atzerodt and Lewis Powell.

He planned to derail the Union government by also targeting the Secretary of State William H. Seward and Vice President Andrew Johnson, who were to be assassinated by Atzerodt and Powell.

Herold would help them escape to Virginia.

On the night, however, it was only Booth who pulled the trigger, killing the President at around 10pm. He then jumped from the Presidential box onto the stage, brandishing a knife and shouted: 'I have done it, the South is avenged!'

Powell only stabbed Seward, who survived, and Atzerodt lost his nerve and went drinking instead.

Booth and Herold are believed to have fled after the killing and hid in woodlands and outhouses for 12 days until they were surrounded in Garrett farm.

But contrary to the common belief that he was shot dead, many believe he escaped the barn and lived under the names John St Helen and David E George in Texas and Oklahoma.

George committed suicide in 1903 and is said to have confessed to his true identity while on his deathbed.

 

 

[Belatucadrus]

"But apart from that Mrs Lincoln what did you think of the play ?"

[Irene]

4 hours ago, Belatucadrus said:

"But apart from that Mrs Lincoln what did you think of the play ?"

 

Mind blowing, quite a blast...