Abraham Lincoln is the only US president to hold a patent.
In 1849 he patented a device to float riverboats over shoals; it never went into use.
More amazing facts
- 1848 The Communist Manifesto and the California Gold Rush began within weeks of each other: gold was found at Sutter's Mill on 24 January 1848, and Marx and Engels's manifesto came out in London that February.
- 1848 · 1860 Phineas Gage carried around the iron rod that had gone through his head.
- 1849 · 1850 Chopin's heart lies apart from his body, in Warsaw, in a jar of alcohol, probably cognac.
- 1849 Dostoevsky was sentenced to be shot and reprieved at the last moment.
- 1850 · 1861 China's Taiping Rebellion (1850–1864) overlapped with the American Civil War and cost an estimated 20–30 million lives — many times more.
- 1850 · 1856 The father of genetics failed his exam to become a science teacher, more than once.