Who Broke Lincoln's Thumb?

by Ron Roy

  A woman stood behind the table with a knife in her hand. “Can I cut you a piece of cake?” she asked, smiling at Marshall.

  Marshall nudged KC. “Yes please,” he said. “Cut me off Lincoln’s left thumb!”

  Did you know?

  Did you know that Abraham Lincoln was the tallest president? He was six feet, four inches tall. He had an ax scar on his thumb, a mole on his cheek, and another scar over his right eye. He was the first president to have a beard while in office. He grew it because an eleven-year-old girl suggested it.

  Lincoln had four sons. Sadly, three of them died when they were still boys.

  The statue in the Lincoln Memorial was originally supposed to be made of bronze and twelve feet high. But the planners thought that was too small for the building. So Daniel Chester French and his workers built a much larger statue. It is nineteen feet high and carved from twenty-eight blocks of white marble. The statue weighs 120 tons—that’s 240,000 pounds! It took four years to complete.

  On the statue, Lincoln’s hands seem to form the sign-language letters A for Abraham and L for Lincoln. No one is sure whether French did that on purpose.