Elena LaVictoire's Library tagged history →  View Popular

The historians ranked Richard Nixon at 27^th, only two places behind Jimmy Carter. Without Watergate, he probably would have made it into the teens. Whatever you think about him, he did achieve some notable foreign policy accomplishments.

Lyndon Johnson comes in 11^th, right behind Ronald Reagan. His enormous domestic accomplishments, especially in civil rights, outweigh his blundering of the Vietnam War by these historians. I’m not so sure he should be that high.

Lincoln was tall, thin and lanky, with long arms, large hands and feet, and loose joints.  His chest was sunken in.  Now, one of our greatest presidents may have looked a little strange, towering over his fellow Americans, but some physicians can be downright strange in their obsessive speculations about what caused Lincoln’s unique appearance.  In a 1964 no longer available JAMA article, a physician made the case President Lincoln had Marfan syndrome, a genetic disorder which includes the features above along with eye and heart defects.  Others since have had their own ideas.

Some think he may have had a genetic disorder called multiple endocrine neoplasia type 2b (MEN2B), which causes cancers in thyroid and adrenal glands, along with a Marfan-like external appearance.  They cite his asymmetrical face and bumpy lips, along with having three sons who died before age 20 who may have inherited the same disorder.

One-third of his known bloodline relatives have been found to have another inherited disease called spinocerebellar ataxia type 5, which affects coordination, causing an unsteady, clumsy gait.  Lincoln was noted to have a clumsy walk.

The 2007 book Lincoln’s Melancholy dissected the president’s lifelong struggle with depression, including his learned coping mechanisms.

So what does this mean today?  Seems to me it shows a great man who overcame his disabilities to lead our nation in a time of crisis.

HODGENVILLE, Kentucky —  The first of four new pennies chronicling Abraham Lincoln's rise from a small Kentucky cabin are being put into circulation to honor the 16th U.S. president's 200th birthday.

The coin's front is unchanged but the reverse depicts a tiny log cabin, representing the one-room dwelling where Lincoln was born near Hodgenville, Kentucky.

The one-cent piece is being unveiled by the U.S. Mint as part of Lincoln's bicentennial celebration Thursday near his birthplace.

The remaining coins will be released later this year and show other phases of Lincoln's life: a young man reading while sitting on a log during his formative years in Indiana; Lincoln the state legislator speaking at the Illinois capitol; and the unfinished dome of the U.S. Capitol.

In the three years following the implementation of Roosevelt's policies, wages in 11 key industries averaged 25 percent higher than they otherwise would have done, the economists calculate. But unemployment was also 25 percent higher than it should have been, given gains in productivity.

Meanwhile, prices across 19 industries averaged 23 percent above where they should have been, given the state of the economy. With goods and services that much harder for consumers to afford, demand stalled and the gross national product floundered at 27 percent below where it otherwise might have been.

"High wages and high prices in an economic slump run contrary to everything we know about market forces in economic downturns," Ohanian said. "As we've seen in the past several years, salaries and prices fall when unemployment is high. By artificially inflating both, the New Deal policies short-circuited the market's self-correcting forces."