On this date in 1809, Abraham Lincoln, the 16th US President, was born. Even if biographies portray him as a better President or person than he actually was, I can imagine him spinning in his grave if he could see the current occupant* of the office and residence he graced.
When I was in elementary school, Lincoln’s birthday was a national holiday, as George Washington’s (22 February) was. Now we have “Presidents’ Day,**” which will be observed on Monday.
Given that he was assassinated in 1865, it’s unlikely that he mounted anything we would today recognize as a bicycle. But it’s fun to speculate on what it might’ve looked like if he had:
* —I refuse to put the name of the White House squatter current occupant in the same sentence with Lincoln. Abe doesn’t deserve that.
**—I hate the term because it implies that we are honoring all of them, including Andrew Jackson, James Buchanan, James Polk, Millard Fillmore, Andrew Johnson, William McKinley, Warren G. Harding, Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, George W. Bush and you-know-who.
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