Abraham Lincoln (1809 - 1865)

Refresh this page to see various historical events that occurred during Abraham's lifetime.

In 1809, in the year that Abraham Lincoln was born, on March 4th, James Madison was inaugurated as the fourth President of the United States. Madison ended his inaugural address with "gratitude towards people in the past who had done so much for the United States, and wished the best for the future of this young thriving country".

In 1815, Abraham was only 6 years old when on February 3rd, the first commercial cheese factory was founded in Switzerland. The first employee of the factory was a man named Loris Federspiel and his title was “Käse Schneidemaschine” - "Cheese Cutting Machine". His job was to taste the cheese to see if it was aged enough to sell.

In 1838, Abraham was 29 years old when on January 11th in New Jersey, Samuel Morse and two others first publicly demonstrated Morse's new invention - the telegraph. Patented by Morse in 1837, the electrical telegraph used a code developed by him and his assistant, Samuel Vail, and sent a message two miles. In 1844, Morse broadcast from Washington DC to Baltimore Maryland the message "What hath God wrought" and the telegraph took off.

In 1849, he was 40 years old when on March 4th, a Sunday, Zachary Taylor became the 12th US President. However, he refused to be sworn in on a Sunday - the Sabbath - so he was inaugurated the following Monday.

In 1865, in the year of Abraham Lincoln's passing, on September 26th, Champ Ferguson, a Confederate guerrilla, became the first person to be convicted of war crimes arising from the Civil War. (There was only one other person convicted of war crimes in the Civil War.) He was found guilty by a U.S. Army tribunal on 23 charges arising from the murder of 53 people. On October 20, he was hung.