When Abraham referred to his mother, he was speaking about his step-mother, Sarah Johnston Lincoln. His bio mom Nancy Hanks Lincoln died when he was just nine years old. His step-mother took charge of the household and made it possible for the young Lincoln to have time to read and study, as he had very little formal schooling. He once wrote, “all that I am I owe to my angel mother” Sarah outlived her step-son, sad to say.
When informed he’d been assassinated, she said “Ah knowed they’d kill him!”
Tom Hanks is descended from a great-uncle, or something like that, of Nancy Hanks.
A further thing about Winston Churchill: he had a passion for exotic animals / birds, and kept a small menagerie of them at his residence. About halfway through World War II, he took a fancy to have a live duck-billed platypus brought from Australia to Britain – he had always wanted to see a live platypus; and reckoned that exhibiting the creature up and down the country, would be good for morale. The feat was attempted: sadly, the ship carrying the platypus came under enemy fire on the last leg of its voyage, and the creature died owing to the consequent stress.
There are for sure, various ways in which Churchill was less than admirable; but he was undeniably, a “card”.
I’ve had no success trying to give, here, a link; but Googling “Winston Churchill platypus” yields assorted “hits” with various recountings of the tale.
This deserves another surprising fact about a historical figure: in Northanger Abbey, Jane Austen has her rather tomboyish heroine enthuse about playing baseball. That’s some sixty-odd years earlier than the Civil War.
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And his great-great grand nephew owned the New York Mets.
Things I learned today – I had already known that baseball is believed to have evolved from an English game called “rounders.” In reading the “History of Baseball” article on Wikipedia, I see that there are also documented references to a game specifically called “baseball,” in England, as far back as 1744. (It sounds like that version of “baseball” was likely a regional variant of rounders.)
And Bob Weir, of the Grateful Dead, is a Bohemian Grove member.
The Roman Emperor Tiberius kept a stable of young boys at his villa on Capri. Known as his “minnows,” their job was to swim naked underwater and nip at his naughty bits whenever he was in the mood for a skinny dip.
Ew! 
A six-year-old Theodore Roosevelt is captured in a photo of Abraham Lincoln’s funeral procession through the streets of New York City.
“Parthenope Nightingale” sounds like the pseudonym of a Victorian pornographer.
TR (called “Teedie” by his family when he was young) was a very sickly kid. His image as a robust outdoorsman is legitimate, but it derived from a conscious choice to make up for the fact that much of his youth was spent inside in bed.
As an asthmatic in an era before effective treatment, young Roosevelt had a hard time breathing. One of the treatments was to give him a big cigar to smoke, for…reasons.
Imagine an asthmatic, weezing 8 year old trying to smoke a stogie!
Theodore’s first wife and his mother died on the same day, eleven hours apart from each other, in the same house. I can’t imagine the pain he went through.
It was Valentines Day.
Theodore Roosevelt did not immediately run for a second term in his own right because he’d pledged earlier that he wouldn’t (he had acceded to the presidency through the death of William McKinley). He soon realized this was a huge mistake, and his dissatisfaction with the Taft administration led him to form a third party and run again in 1912. This split the Republican vote and gave the election to Woodrow Wilson.
Roosevelt would almost certainly have been the Republican candidate in 1920 (and won in a landslide) had he not died in his sleep on 6 January 1919.
Roosevelt’s running in 1912 relegated poor President Taft to a third place finish in the election, the only president to suffer such an ignominy.
I think Americans will know this (but let me know if it’s news to you), but I was surprised to discover that the maiden name of Eleanor Roosevelt was… Roosevelt. She was a niece of Theodore.
Taft was delighted when he was appointed Chief Justice of the United States, and later said he couldn’t even remember when he was President. He was the only man ever to have held both offices. He was also the first US President to be buried at Arlington National Cemetery.
Taft was such a stickler for protocol that when someone suggested he issue a statement offering his condolences upon the sinking of the Titanic, he replied “Is there a precedent for it?”
Theodore was an uncle to Franklin too. Franklin and Eleanor were kissin’ cousins.
Franklin was not a nephew of Theodore, but much more distantly related. Franklin and Eleanor werefifth cousins once removed. Eleanor was a member of the Oyster Bay branch of the family, and Franklin of the Hyde Park Roosevelts. Their common ancestor, Claes Martenszen van Rosenvelt, died in 1742.