Inscription Found in Lincoln’s Watch
This week, the history world was abuzz with the news of family lore confirmed. An inscription that was rumored to have been in Abraham Lincoln’s pocket watch was proven true.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A gold watch owned by Abraham Lincoln bears a message marking the start of the U.S. Civil War, but the president never knew of the “secret” inscription uncovered on Tuesday at the National Museum of American History.
The engraving, by watchmaker Jonathan Dillon, is dated April 13, 1861, and reads in part: “Fort Sumpter was attacked by the rebels” and “thank God we have a government.”
The museum said it agreed to open the watch to find out if the message really was there after it was contacted by the watchmaker’s great-great-grandson, Doug Stiles of Waukegan, Illinois.
The American Civil War began when Confederate troops opened fire on Fort Sumter in Charleston, South Carolina, on April 12, 1861.
Forty-five years later, Dillon the watchmaker told The New York Times that he was repairing Lincoln’s watch when he heard that the first shots of the Civil War had been fired.
Dillon said he unscrewed the dial of the watch and used a sharp instrument to mark the historic day on the president’s watch. He told the newspaper that, as far as he knew, no one had ever seen the inscription.
“Lincoln never knew of the message he carried in his pocket,” Brent Glass, director of the National Museum of American History said in a statement. “It’s a personal side of history about an ordinary watchman being inspired to record something for posterity.”
Lincoln was elected the 16th president of the United States in November 1860. In the lead up to the Civil War, South Carolina and six other states seceded from the Union before Lincoln’s inauguration in March 1861.
(Reporting by JoAnne Allen; Editing by Patricia Zengerle)
Does this make you want to go verify all of Grandpa or Grandma’s old stories to see if they were true? You never know what little piece of history you might unearth.
1800s, history | Comments (3)Dolphins: From Navy Recruits to Artists
Humans have had a long fascination with dolphins. Their intelligence has been both studied and put to work. We all know about various marine shows at theme parks, but did you know that the US Navy employed dolphins during WWII for particular missions. I believe they also have some dolphins among their ranks to this very day. Below, is a “dolphin badge” that was connected with service on a submarine. Of course, this was for the people. Dolphins were never presented with such insignia as they had no use for it.
Recently, an interesting observation was made about the dolphins at Sea World’s dolphin cove. Have you seen the video about Dolphin Bubbles? It is certainly not your typical exercise of dolphins pressing buttons underwater. This is a behavior that they originated themselves. The phenomena was featured on ABC’s World News with Charles Gibson recently.
It is interesting to note that it appears that the females are more interested in playing with bubbles than the males are. Maybe the females are more detail oriented, or maybe it is just a coincidence and has more to do with the individuality of the dolphins, and the majority being female is just an accident.
The dolphins now have their very own website at http://dolphinbubbles.com. Sea World Orlando has made the videos available to be watched all around the world. Of course, this will probably inspire many people to come and see this for themselves. I wonder, as intelligent as they are, if the dolphins will notice a big surge in folks looking at them through their underwater observatory and will decide to “change it up” and do something different just to mess with people. The other question I have is if one dolphin did it by accident and taught others, or if this is something dolphins do naturally and humans are just noticing now? I guess we won’t know that for awhile, but maybe we should not analyze it and just enjoy the show.
wwii | Comment (0)
