Bizarre History (24 page)

In 1859, the United States minted a new coin, which has just about always been known as the Indian-head penny. Unfortunately, there’s no Indian on it. The engraver, James B. Longacre, modeled Lady Liberty wearing a “feather bonnet.”

Thomas Jefferson once introduced a compromise bill in Congress that would have barred slavery in all future states admitted to the Union. It could very well have prevented the Civil War; unfortunately, it was defeated by a single vote.

Strange? Yes. True? I hope so. In April 1939, Japanese Prime Minister Fumimaro Konoye’s hemorrhoids kept him from attending an important Cabinet meeting with his Minister of Foreign Affairs, which led to a misunderstanding about a US peace proposal that may have contributed to Japan’s entry into World War II.

British POWs in World War II were allowed care packages, and in many of these packages were games of Monopoly with secret silk maps hidden between the boards of the game, real money, a small compass, and even some tiny files.

Junius Booth, father of John Wilkes Booth, sent a death threat to President Andrew Jackson in 1835.

The whole Salem, Massachusetts, witch fiasco of 1692 (where more than 150 people were arrested, nineteen were hanged, and one man was crushed to death under heavy stones) wasn’t the only witch activity during colonial times in the United States. Where Salem quickly dissolved into one of the most famous cases of mass hysteria, in other colonies, cooler heads usually prevailed.

Pennsylvania only had one witch trial, and it occurred on December 27, 1683. Two old Swedish women had been accused of witchcraft, but it seems only one stood trial. The proof against Margaret Mattson, known as the Witch of Ridley Creek, was circumstantial to say the least. The first witness testified that he heard that twenty years ago Mattson bewitched several cows. Another witness reported that his mother told him Mattson had bewitched her cow. A third also talked of bewitched animals, although he also threw in a story about a friend’s wife being threatened by an apparition sent by the accused.

Thankfully, William Penn, founder of Pennsylvania and the Attorney General, presided. His intelligence and sense of fairness prevailed, especially when, because of some confusion (Mattson didn’t speak English), Mattson confessed to being a witch. Penn asked her, “Art thou a witch? Hast thou ridden through the air on a broomstick?” Mattson said, “Yes.” Some accounts of this event say that, thinking quickly, Penn announced that there was no law against riding on broomsticks, and he ordered her discharged. But because of the confession, the jury came back with this ruling: “Guilty of having the Common Fame of a Witch, but not Guilty in manner and Forme as Shee stands Endicted.” (The jury should have been found guilty of gross misuse of the English language.) In other words, she was guilty of being called a witch but not guilty of actually being one. She was released on bail.

Two-time president Theodore Roosevelt decided in 1912 that he wasn’t done with national politics, so he challenged his successor, William Howard Taft, for their party’s nomination. On October 14, 1912, as Roosevelt was about to step into a car that would take him to a campaign rally in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, John F. Schrank went up to him and shot him in the chest at point-blank range. Now, because of a boxing injury, Roosevelt’s eyesight was poor, so he usually wrote his speeches on small sheets of paper with large words and spaces to help him see it better. Hence, his speech manuscripts were often quite thick, and the speech he was to give that day saved his life. The bullet passed through the speech as well as his steel eyeglasses case (both of which were in Roosevelt’s coat pocket) before lodging in his chest. Without the speech impeding the bullet’s progress, the missile would have hit his heart. Undaunted, Roosevelt continued on to the rally and gave his ninety-minute speech in his bloody clothes. He began his speech thusly: “Friends, I shall ask you to be as quiet as possible. I don’t know whether you fully understand that I have just been shot; but it takes more than that to kill a Bull Moose. But fortunately I had my manuscript, so you see I was going to make a long speech, and there is a bullet—there is where the bullet went through—and it probably saved me from it going into my heart. The bullet is in me now, so that I cannot make a very long speech, but I will try my best.”

After a short convalescence, Roosevelt resumed his campaign. He lost the nomination to Taft, but ran as part of the brand-new Bull Moose Party. Taft and Roosevelt both lost in a four-way contest to Woodrow Wilson.

Okay, not
that
Booth and not
that
Lincoln. In an interesting coincidence of history, Abraham Lincoln’s son Robert was once saved from serious injury by John Wilkes Booth’s brother, Edwin.

Edwin was an actor like his brother; however, while John was known as a competent-if-not-inspired actor, Edwin was perhaps the finest Shakespearean actor of the nineteenth century. The two brothers were not close. Edwin was a Unionist and staunch Lincoln supporter. When he told his brother he had voted for Lincoln’s reelection, Edwin wrote, “He expressed deep regret, and declared his belief that Lincoln would be made king of America; and this, I believe, drove him beyond the limits of reason.” Another reason for the rivalry between the brothers was that Edwin was perhaps the most famous actor of his day and John was struggling as an actor. A recent book by Nora Titone called
My Thoughts Be Bloody
asserts that this intense rivalry between brothers led the younger one to kill Abraham Lincoln.

The incident between Lincoln’s son and his assassin’s brother happened on a train platform in Jersey City, New Jersey. And although the exact date of the incident is not known, it probably took place in late 1863 or early 1864—in the midst of the Civil War. Robert Lincoln wrote of the incident in a letter to the editor of
The Century Magazine:
“The platform was about the height of the car floor, and there was of course a narrow space between the platform and the car body. There was some crowding, and I happened to be pressed by it against the car body while waiting my turn. In this situation the train began to move, and by the motion I was twisted off my feet, and had dropped somewhat, with feet downward, into the open space, and was personally helpless, when my coat collar was vigorously seized and I was quickly pulled up and out to a secure footing on the platform. Upon turning to thank my rescuer I saw it was Edwin Booth, whose face was of course well known to me, and I expressed my gratitude to him, and in doing so, called him by name.”

Edwin Booth didn’t know who he had saved that day until months later, when he received a letter from a friend who heard Robert Lincoln relate the story. It gave Edwin some comfort after the assassination, knowing he had saved the president’s son, even as his brother took the president’s life. After the assassination, Edwin retired from acting for about a year and worried that he would never be able to perform again. However, when he once again took to the stage, he received a prolonged standing ovation.

SIDE NOTE:
Robert Todd Lincoln, the only one of Lincoln’s children to survive into adulthood, seems a bit lost in the shadows of history due to his famous father. However, he was President James Garfield’s secretary of war, minister to England under President Benjamin Harrison, and also president of the Pullman Car Company. The Republican Party even briefly considered him a potential presidential candidate.

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