After John Hinckley Jr. fired six shots at President Ronald Reagan outside the Washington Hilton on March 30, 1981, the president quipped, “I forgot to duck.”

Almost every witness agreed President Lincoln never said a word after John Wilkes Booth shot him on April 15, 1865, but, six decades after the event, one self-proclaimed witness claimed the president asked him a question.

In the 1930s, Jacob Soles of Pennsylvania, told local reporters he was one of the soldiers who carried the injured president from Ford’s Theatre to his deathbed across the street at Petersen House. He claimed Lincoln whispered, “Where are they taking me?”

The same black silk pall cloth covered the coffins of two assassinated presidents — Abraham Lincoln and James Garfield.

Source: The Smithsonian Book of Presidential Trivia

Abraham Lincoln was the first president to be depicted on film. He was featured in two films in 1915 — D.W. Griffith’s blockbuster Birth of a Nation and a silent film titled Battle Cry for Peace.

In the second film, the part of Lincoln was played by Billy Ferguson, who was a young call boy at Ford’s Theatre on the night Lincoln was assassinated.

When John Wilkes Booth encourages you to go into acting, you do it. Little Joseph Hazelton, a program boy at Ford’s Theatre, wound up in Hollywood.

A character actor for 68 years, he appeared in Oliver Twist with Lon Chaney.

He was interviewed in 1933. Listen here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3SvKPACbx_U

And, check out his Internet Movie Data Base profile here: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0371979/?ref_=fn_al_nm_1

Mr. Hazelton is buried at Hollywood Forever Cemetery in Los Angeles.

It’s a sure bet President Lincoln’s two secretaries John Hay and John Nicolay weren’t sending any Valentines to the first lady 149 years ago today.

Mary Lincoln always considered the two secretaries snobbish, and she was at least partly correct. They did look down on her.

The rift between the president’s wife and his secretaries flared after Mary Lincoln convinced her husband to replace the White House formal dinners the secretaries favored with less expensive and more inclusive public receptions.

The secretaries privately referred to the boss’ wife as “the hellcat” and “her satanical majesty.”

Maybe charm is a familial trait. Oscar Winner George Clooney and President Abraham Lincoln are distant relatives. The connection is Lincoln’s birth mother Nancy Hanks.

The fun-loving Clooney would fit right in. As a young woman, before her marriage to Thomas Lincoln, Ms. Hanks was known as an adventurous young woman who pushed the borders of proprietry.

She excelled at wrestling, which was a popular sport for both men and women on the American frontier at the turn of the 19th century.

Source: Ancestry.com

Abraham Lincoln was born on this day in 1809 — the same day and the same year as evolutionist Charles Darwin.

While Darwin was born to a wealthy doctor and financier in Shrewsbury, England, the future president was born to a farmer in a Hodgenville, Ky., log cabin. Lincoln was the first president born outside the 13 original colonies.

Darwin and Lincoln never crossed paths, but Darwin, an avid abolitionist, cheered Lincoln’s anti-slavery efforts in his letters to friends, and Lincoln’s law partner William Herndon wrote that Lincoln was impressed by the concept of evolution.

Source: Smithsonian.com

Staffers in the Lincoln White House sometimes called the chief executive the “old tycoon.”

It was a bastardization of the Japanse word “taikun,” which referred to Japanese military leaders.

They were among the first to use the word to describe an American leader, but the use spread. Soon, American business leaders were routinely referred to as “tycoons.”

John Wilkes Booth died on the front porch of the Garrett family’s farm in rural Port Royal, Va., nearly 149 years ago. Now that spot is a weed-covered median strip on busy Route 301.

Tourists tramp over mud and sticker bushes to see the spot where President Lincoln’s assassin was shot by a Union officer. Bus drivers warn visitors to beware of the speeding cars as they exit tour buses.

The tobacco barn where Sgt. Boston Corbett shot Booth on April 26, 1865, stood downhill from the house then. Now, cars zip between the site of the tobacco barn and the spot where the house stood, because the northbound traffic lanes cross the old farm.

Source: John Wilkes Booth’s Escape Route tour, sponsored by The Surratt Society at surrattmuseum.org

Abraham Lincoln was the first successful presidential candidate to have his mug on a campaign button.

A then-new tintype process allowed inexpensive reproduction of photographs on buttons.

Lincoln’s 1860 buttons show a clean-shaved candidate, but his reelection buttons show a bearded one.

It’s not known how much the photos helped get out the vote for Lincoln. He once told a crowd, “If I were two-faced, would I be wearing this one?”