Stephen Douglas was a great debater, but Abraham Lincoln was the Great Emancipator

Back from vacation and ready to bring more history funny to you. Today's topic: presidential hair.

Now, of course there are some very obvious presidential 'dos that spring to mind, even above and beyond the conventions of the day (powdered wigs aren't funny if everyone's wearing them - if it were the 1790s, you'd be wearing one too, smart-ass). James K. Polk and his egregious mullet are clearly way up there, and of course there's also the glorious mane of Andrew Jackson. But those, to me, pale next to this photo I found on a stereoview in the Library of Congress, depicting Abraham Lincoln circa 1860 with some truly wacky hair.

I think I saw this guy drinking PBR at Barcade the other night.

Were he young and alive today, no doubt this Abe would be an avid fan of Sufjan Stevens, from whom I get the quote in this post's title.

FDR: Fireside Freestyle!

I don't anticipate that I'll be posting every day going forward, but since I'm taking a nice, long, well-deserved vacation next week, I'm happy to dig into my back catalog of history fun to get this blog nice and padded.

And I might as well take the opportunity to tell you why this blog exists. I grew up obsessed with presidential trivia, majored in history in college, and now I work in a ...related field. Often, I've found hilarious images or bits of trivia that beg to be shared. Et voila. Here it is. How often I post will largely depend on how many funny things I find at work, which will depend on what I'm working on at any given time.

In the meantime, enjoy the first installment of what I intend as a regular feature: an awesome histcore video. What is histcore? Well, it's a term I made up to describe any rap song about history. Mostly these appear to be done by high school kids for class projects. Many of them are nothing short of genius.

Maybe it's not wise to lead off with the very best one ever, but I will anyway:



Whoever these guys are, I hope they got an A.

Status Quo is Latin for "the mess we're in"

Via the American Presidents blog, which is possibly my favorite blog on the entire Intertubes: The Ronald Reagan Presidential Library can't locate or account for roughly 80% of the artifacts in its 100,000-item inventory.

There are a billion and one Reagan jokes I could make here, and they are ALL completely disrespectful and tasteless. While I am probably way more irreverent than the folks over at American Presidents, I do have to draw a line somewhere, and I think Alzheimer's jokes are well on the wrong side of that line. I'm sure the joke was much funnier as you imagined it in your head, anyway.