{"id":255917,"date":"2023-04-14T10:50:38","date_gmt":"2023-04-14T14:50:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/?p=255126"},"modified":"2023-04-14T10:50:38","modified_gmt":"2023-04-14T14:50:38","slug":"the-secret-plot-to-hold-abraham-lincolns-dead-body-for-ransom-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/2023\/04\/14\/the-secret-plot-to-hold-abraham-lincolns-dead-body-for-ransom-2\/","title":{"rendered":"The secret plot to hold Abraham Lincoln\u2019s dead body for ransom"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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In the 1800s, counterfeiting became extremely common, and the one person acknowledged as America\u2019s greatest counterfeiter was Benjamin Boyd. Boyd used to work for a Chicago syndicate run by James \u201cBig Jim<\/em>\u201d Kinealy. However, Abraham Lincoln\u2019s legislation to arrest counterfeiters resulted in Boyd being sentenced to prison in 1876. With Big Jim\u2019s top man gone, his business was in a wrecked state. He had to do something to get Boyd freed from prison. Out of the blue, a bizarre plan arose: steal Abraham Lincoln\u2019s<\/a> body, bury it in the Indiana dunes, and then ask for $200,000 for ransom along with the pardon and freedom of Benjamin Boyd. To execute this plan, Kinealy hired a bartender, Terrence Mullen, and a counterfeiter, Jack Hughes. The two decided to pull off the heist on election night when no one was in town. There was also very minimal security at Lincoln\u2019s grave, which meant the chances for the plan to go wrong were significantly less.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Why did the US government amass a billion pounds of cheese?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

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The year was 1981, and President Ronald Reagan had a cheese problem. Specifically, the federal government had 560 million pounds of cheese, most of it stored in vast subterranean storage facilities. Decades of propping up the dairy industry\u2014by buying up surplus milk and turning it into processed commodity cheese\u2014had backfired, hard. The Washington Post<\/em> reported that the interest and storage costs for all that dairy<\/a> was costing around $1 million a day. \u201cWe\u2019ve looked and looked at ways to deal with this, but the distribution problems are incredible,\u201d a USDA official was quoted as saying. \u201cProbably the cheapest and most practical thing would be to dump it in the ocean.\u201d Instead, they decided to jettison 30 million pounds of it into welfare programs and school lunches through the Temporary Emergency Food Assistance Program. But the surplus was growing so fast that 30 million pounds barely made a dent. By 1984, the U.S. storage facilities contained 1.2 billion pounds, or roughly five pounds of cheese for every American.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Note<\/strong>: This is a version of my personal newsletter, which I send out via Ghost, the open-source publishing platform. You can see other issues and sign up here<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

America\u2019s first plane bomber, and his intended victim<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

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As Daisie prepared for a trip to Anchorage, Jack hatched a new plan. A plan that would remove from his life the two things that he believed were keeping him down\u2014a lack of money, and his mother\u2014no matter the cost. After buying the requisite equipment, Jack sat down in the basement of his home and got to work. He assembled twenty-five sticks of dynamite, a timing device<\/a>, an Eveready six-volt \u201cHot Shot\u201d battery and two dynamite caps into a compact time bomb. He wrapped the bomb up, packed it inside Daisie\u2019s heavy Samsonite suitcase, and loaded the case into the trunk of her Chevrolet sedan. Then Jack and Gloria drove Daisie to the airport. It was November 1, 1955. After saying goodbye to Daisie at the gate, Jack and Gloria stopped for a snack at the airport coffee shop\u2014but not before Jack bought an insurance policy on Daisie\u2019s life from a vending machine at the terminal, a common practice in a time marked by frequent air crashes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Andy Baio on what it’s like to be colorblind<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

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For some people, colorblindness is a serious liability that closes doors on career dreams. It\u2019s hard to become a pilot, train conductor, or pathologist if you can\u2019t differentiate colors in critical instruments, signals, or tissue samples. For others, it seriously impacts their day-to-day ability to do their jobs, like surveyors spotting flags, doctors looking at skin conditions, or electricians looking for colored wires. But for me, it\u2019s just a lifelong series of unnecessarily confusing interactions, demonstrating that the world wasn\u2019t designed<\/a> for people like me. There are an estimated 350 million colorblind people in the world. About 8 percent of men, roughly 1 in 12, have some form of color vision deficiency. My mom\u2019s color vision is even worse than mine, which is very unusual: only about 0.5 percent of women globally are colorblind, about 1 in 200. I\u2019ve had a lot of conversations about my colorblindness with people who aren\u2019t colorblind. (Pro tip: when you meet a colorblind person, don\u2019t repeatedly point to things and ask what color they are.) It seems like the very idea of colorblindness is hard for them to visualize.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Nazi scientists behind America’s aerospace dominance<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

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Long before the fall of Berlin at the end of World War II, American military intelligence had begun planning to steal advanced Nazi technology. The German state was renowned for its technological prowess, and its propaganda extolled the country\u2019s development of \u201cwonder weapons\u201d like the V-2 missile and ME-262 jet fighter. The Americans intended to obtain this technology with the goal of developing a military advantage over Japan, which could speed along a victory in the Pacific. There were two major components<\/a> to the American\u2019s efforts: the Field Information Agency Technical (FIAT), which centered around agents capturing technical data from research sites across Germany, and Operation Overcast, which involved hunting down and capturing the most important members of the Nazi scientific establishment. Operation Overcast\u2019s targeting was guided by the so-called Osenberg List, a Gestapo document which, on Hitler\u2019s orders, cataloged the most important scientists and engineers to the Nazi war effort. A copy of the document had been insufficiently flushed down a toilet at Bonn University.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What it’s like to drive a tractor-trailer as a single mother<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

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In Indiana, a few hours south of the facility where Jess had driven her first truck, cornfields gave way to lone motels and fast-food chains. \u201cWhat\u2019s more American than gas stations and strip malls?\u201d Jess asked. Flecks of rain spattered the windshield, and the sky ahead was fearsome gray. Glancing off the road for a few seconds at a time, Jess scrolled her phone for tornado warnings. Did I know, she asked, that breweries and soda companies halt all other production to bottle water during national emergencies? Also: Drivers who ship the syrup for Coca-Cola need a HAZMAT license because it contains flammable material<\/a>. For a few years, Jess shipped mostly produce, which gave her unique and disturbing insight into our nation\u2019s food systems. \u201cThese apples,\u201d she said, showing me one she\u2019d had in her truck for two weeks, \u201care last year\u2019s apples. The onions you buy in a grocery store have been in a warehouse for a year.\u201d Bananas are stored at 56 degrees if they\u2019re green, 57 if they\u2019re yellow. Don\u2019t ask about the chicken in fast food.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Buster Keaton’s most amazing stunts<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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Some of Buster Keaton's most amazing stunts

[full video, HD, Don McHoull: https:\/\/t.co\/0O13dVd2yO<\/a>]https:\/\/t.co\/4pnhsJpplH<\/a><\/p>— Massimo (@Rainmaker1973) April 14, 2023<\/a><\/blockquote>