Since we’ve already given you facts about Mt. Rushmore and the Statue of Liberty, we thought we’d move on to another great symbol of America – the Lincoln Memorial. Here are 8 facts about the Lincoln Memorial to make you sound smarter at parties.
1. The Lincoln Memorial was dedicated in 1922 and was attended by Lincoln’s only living child, Robert Todd Lincoln. The photo above is Lincoln with William Howard Taft and Warren G. Harding. They’re lucky they weren’t shot at the event. Robert was present or nearby at the assassinations of his father, Garfield and McKinley.
Strangely enough, Edwin Booth (brother of John Wilkes Booth) once saved Robert Todd Lincoln from serious injury on a train platform. Those Lincolns love weird coincidences. Robert wasn’t an awesome guy. He had his mother committed to a psych ward in 1875 to take control of the family finances. His family lineage eventually died out in 1985.
2. The main influence was the Temple of Zeus in Olympia, Greece. For architecture nerds, that’s the Doric order. The temple had a big statue of Zeus, which was one of the Seven Wonders of the World. It was eventually destroyed by conquerers, floods and landslides. That show Life After People says the Lincoln memorial will eventually rot and collapse 150 years after people disappear. Or whatever that show is about.
3. The profile of Robert E. Lee is supposedly hidden in Lincoln’s hair.
4. The sculptor of Lincoln’s statue was Daniel Chester French. He was friends and neighbors with Ralph Waldo Emerson. He also designed the Pulitzer Prize gold medal.
5. There is also a rumor that Lincoln’s hands in the sculpture are doing sign language for the letters “A” and “L.” French was familiar with sign language, as he had a deaf son, and Lincoln once signed federal law legislating that Guallaudet University (a school for the deaf) had the authority to grant college degrees.
6. When Dr. Martin Luther King Jr gave his famous “I Have A Dream” speech there in 1963, police appreciated the location since the the monument is surrounded by three sides by water so any ‘incident’ could have been easily contained.
7. Forrest Gump once gave a speech there, but nobody could hear him. He did, however, find Jenny. She would eventually die of AIDS.
8. The big spoiler in Planet of the Apes is that Mark Wahlberg returns to Earth, he looks up at the Memorial and sees Ape-raham Lincoln.
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