Portrait Lives: Abraham Lincoln and Did you Know?

It's Portrait Lives Wednesday!
Every Wednesday features a Portrait Lives, which is the showing of age progression in specific historical people through contemporary portraits of them. Way more fun than it sounds.

Every American knows about President Abraham Lincoln, he is widely outlawing slavery in the South and his Gettysburg Address.

Plus Lincoln was the messy hairdo master.

Assume all his ages typed below are preceded by the word 'about.' There are no pictures of Lincoln before he was 37.

aged 37

aged 51

aged 52

aged 52

aged 52

aged 54

aged 54

aged 55

aged 57

aged 57

aged 58

His Last Days: Aged 58 to 59

him with his son called Tad

He is actually holding his spectacles 

He had a slight smile

Research by Doctor Zebra suggests with probability that Lincoln was dying of cancer when he was shot.

I have one thing to say about that: Oh. My. God.
He was shot on April 14, 1865 in Ford's Theater in the head and died the following day.

Check out

Chasing Lincoln's Killer

I have read it, it's very good and easy to read so click on the picture!

Sources:
President Abraham Lincoln: http://www.civilwar.org/education/history/biographies/abraham-lincoln.html
Health and Medical History of President Abraham Lincoln http://www.doctorzebra.com/prez/g16.htm

Portrait Lives: Marie Antoinette: Part 2

Marie Antoinette has too many portraits to put in just one post.

profile at aged about 26

aged  about 28

aged about 30 with her children

aged about 32

aged about 33

aged about 36

aged about 37-8 in prison

aged about 38

her death, on her way

her death, more, Marie is like oops i stepped on your foot.

After a bad haircut, she was executed at a quarter after 12 pm in a white gown, whites are easily stained so it was never worn again.

Sources: 

My mind, 

Remembering Marie-Antoinette: The Martyr, the Whore, and the Icon: http://www.uta.edu/modl/cultural-constructions/200705/html/kilgore.html

Marie Antoinette: http://blogs.bu.edu/guidedhistory/historians-craft/marieantoinetteinthepubliceye/

It's Late Portrait Lives Wednesday! Starring Marie Antoinette: Part 1

Marie Antoinette is the most famous person of the French Revolution. As many people know she didn't survive it.  She was to the French people of her time the image and icon of unfair extravagance as some poor french people starved. The media showed her as a sickly evil harpy in newspaper pamphlets, a queen who would stoop so low as to having lesbian relationships with her ladies-in-waiting, when the truth was nothing of the kind. The truth was that the press can cause horrible things to happen to innocent people, even Marie Antoinette, a high-status French Queen who was imprisoned by her people and executed by the guillotine.

aged just a few months old

aged  about 5

aged 7

aged about 12

aged about 14

aged about 17 by Drouais

Marie, Queen of France without a crown at aged about 18

mid twenties by Gautier-Dagoty 

I thought I could do this in one post but I can't 

so stay tuned for the last part tomorrow!

I know you can't wait and are disappointed.

But here a short video about her that will make up:

and Check out

To the Scaffold: The Life of Marie Antoinette

Click on the image or go to the Scaffold!

10 Misconceptions and Facts You Don't Know About Anne Boleyn

Henry VIII

It's so easy to obsess about Anne Boleyn. She is the most mysterious and questionable wife of all of the six of Henry VIII, who is the king you might recall I wrote before (see the post here).  There are so many fascinating facts and misconceptions about her, no wonder people are interested in her. 

Here is a little summary of her: She was the 2nd wife of Henry VIII of England who left his first for Anne because she could provide him with a heir.  The Catholic Church declared his marriage to Anne void and Henry separated England from the Church and declared himself as head of the Church of England. In this Church his marriage to Anne was legal and now Henry was able to receive a legitimate heir from Anne. However Anne was not able to give him a male heir. She was executed for adultery by the King. Henry went on to have six wives.

First are the 5 misconceptions:

1. Portraits of her are without a doubt accurately showing her.  

The coin showing Anne Boleyn.

The famous portrait of her

This is not true. Almost all of her portraits are debated and it is not even known if any of them actually portray her. The most famous painting is anonymous and is thought to be a copy of a lost original. It is the one pictured on the right. The only surviving official likeness of Anne is the badly damaged 1536 metal coin of her inscribed 'most happi'. Here are some of speculated portraits of her.

2. Anne Boleyn had an extra finger and in fact it was said by a contemporary she had "on her right hand six fingers."

This claim can be written off as a rumor by her political enemies because when her body was found in the Chapel of St. Peter Ad Vincula it showed no deformities. 

3.  Anne was guilty of adultery.
Some have protested this, but the overwhelming evidence says to the contrary.

4. Anne was Henry's one true love.
Though it is a romantic theory, Henry VIII chose to be buried with the 3rd wife, his 'one true love.'

5. Anne Boleyn was ugly.
She was not ugly but just pretty. She had a long neck and dark hair and beautiful eyes she knew how to use.

Here are the facts about Anne you don't know:

1. Anne had a pet dog called Urian.
Urian was a greyhound which Anne had a brought from France.


2. Thomas Wyatt wrote a poem about her, here is a excerpt.
'Who list her hunt, I put him out of doubt,
As well as I may spend his time in vain.
And graven with diamonds in letters plain
There is written, her fair neck round about:
Noli me tangere, for Caesar's I am,
And wild for to hold, though I seem tame.'

3. Anne was feisty.
Enough said.

4. Princess Mary, later bloody Mary hated Anne and Anne hated her.
Here is a quote by the Spanish Ambassador that mentions their relationship:
'Your Majesty must root out the Lady and her adherents.... This accursed Anne has her foot in the stirrup, and will do the Queen and the Princess all the harm she can.  She has boasted that she will make the Princess her lady-in-waiting, or marry her to some varlet.' 

5. Anne Boleyn was mother of Queen Elizabeth I, often called the virgin queen.

Elizabeth I

If want more check out 
The Lady in the Tower: the Fall of Anne Boleyn by Alison Weir! Click on the Image.

Anne Boleyn

Sources:
-Lives of the Queens of England by Agnes Strickland
-Could the Real Anne Bolyen Come Forward: http://onthetudortrail.com/Blog/2011/02/07/would-the-real-anne-boleyn-please-come-forward/
-The Rise and Fall of Anglican Schism
 http://archive.org/stream/riseofschism00sanduoft/riseofschism00sanduoft_djvu.txt
-http://englishhistory.net/tudor/monarchs/boleyn-poems.html
-http://englishhistory.net/tudor/annedesc.html
-Notices of the Historic Persons Buried in the Chapel of St. Peter Ad Vincula by Doyne Courtney Bell

Suicide Bomber to Kill Hitler by Embrace; Last Man You'd Expect

After Axel von dem Bussche witnessed the killing of 3,000 Jews, sore and traumatized, he was a high-ranking German soldier who joined the resistance. Most Germans would kill Jews without blinking an eye. Justice must have been Axel's major purpose after he experienced his horrible event or appears to have been writing this injustice.

Thinking of Justice: Axel

Known by the code name/nickname "Count 9," blond and blue eyed, he was the ideal person to kill Adolf Hitler. No one would suspect him...and no one ever would. Yet, he must of also hated Hitler and maybe himself, too. He hopped to kill himself while he killed the German Dictator. He planned with a resistance group headed by Claus von Stauffenburg who actually was eventually hanged.  The group planned for Axel to set off to grenades in his pocket while he jumped or 'pounced' on Hitler while the leader inspected new uniforms. But this was not to be because the rails that brought the new uniforms in were destroyed by the Allies' bombings. He volunteered to take part in another assassination attempt of Hitler. Unfortunately for him and Hitler, he was wounded and disabled, losing a leg and three fingers. He had to be in a long hospital stay and a member of the Resistance warned him of the coming an upcoming July 20 Plot, which caused him to be questioned by the S.S., however not really suspected of anything. Because of the courageous silence of Axel's involvement by the other conspirators in the Resistance, he was not be executed by the Nazis as many others were, though always guilty that he had survived when many others had died.




Sources:
Gedenstksttatte Deutscher Widerstand: Biographes: Axel Frediherr von dem Bussche: http://www.gdw-berlin.de/en/recess/biographies/biographie/view-bio/bussche/
Der Spiegal: Died: Axel Frediherr von dem Bussche: http://www.spiegel.de/spiegel/print/d-9274438.html
Dos Bodetal Der Sagenharz: Axel Frediherr von dem Bussche-Strelthorst: http://www.bodetal.de/ihre-stadt-online/namhafte-persoenlichkeiten/axel-freiherr-von-dem-bussche-streithorst.html
The Independent UK: Obituary : Axel von dem Bussche: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/obituary-axel-von-dem-bussche-1474093.html

The Princes in the Tower that Disappeared Forever

There names were Edward and Richard and they were set for life to be important royal figures until...they disappeared. They were the only sons of Edward IV of England, the king, to survive unto adulthood. Their father died in April 1483, the eldest Edward mentioned above was now king.

The King is Dead, Long Live the King! 

A somewhat contradictory chant used when a king dies in England and another is crowned.

The young brothers arrived in London, to have Edward's coronation. The children were oblivious to their uncle's plan to be king, their uncle's name was Richard. Meanwhile, the young brothers were kept in the Tower of London before the coronation, it wasn't unusual for monarchs to be kept there.  Eventually, the coronation was postponed, though...indefinitely by their Uncle Richard.
Richard seized the throne and declared the boys illegitimate. Richard then had a coronation crowning himself Richard III.

Imagined Representation of the Princes
 by Sir John Everett Millais

But it is time, Richard may have thought to himself, to get rid of those boys once and for all. For the boys "were seen less and less [playing outside the tower] until they disappeared altogether."(Wikipedia)

We may never know what happened to those boys. In William Shakespeare's Richard III, the children were murdered by being suffocated with a pillow.  Edward was 13 around the time of his disappearance and his brother, Richard, was 9. It is sad to think such innocent children had to be "gotten rid of."

Their bodies may be the ones that were found in 1674 by workmen when remodeling the Tower of London. They were way underneath the stairs that were leading to the White Chapel in a wooden box. Supposing that these may be the Princes, King Charles II (the party king) ordered that these bones be interred in an urn in Westminster Abbey. In 1933, these bones were examined and found to be two childrens' and found to be the correct age to be the Princes'. But no carbon dating has been used on the bones and we do not know if the bones are even both of male children so they still are not totally confirmed to be Princes'.

]

Nene Hatun, a Brave Woman who Avenged her Brother's Death

She was a folk heroine of Turkey. Before her death (after the event) she said about her bravery and the event where she avenged her brothers death that:

I don't know any Turkish, but I think this monument
to her says about the event and that it took place in 1877-8 and that
she eventually died in 1955 (aged late 90s)

I did what was required. Today, if necessary, I would do the same!

Or something like that translated into English.
The story of her bravery is when her brother died after returning from the fighting against the capture of Fort Aziziye by the Russians, she vowed to avenge his death. The before attack that her brother had been involved in was and unsuccessful and the city had now been captured by the Russians. She was determined to carry out her previous vow and left her children, and took her dead brother's gun and a hatchet fought against the Russians, joining the weak attack that was lead by mostly civilian women and elderly men with only minor subsequent equipment. She displayed such bravery that she was known in Turkey and as a symbol of it. She was found after the battle ended unconscious and bloody holding her hatchet.

The picture on the right is a statue of her. I don't know what is on her back, maybe it is a child. If it is, why does she have a child on her back? Isn't she supposed to be in war? Is the moral message of this statue supposed to be that children make great shields? I don't think so.

Sources:
English Wikipedia and Russian Wikipedia