
Lincoln Assassination Eyewitness on 1956 Episode of I’ve Got a Secret - barredo
http://laughingsquid.com/lincoln-assassination-eyewitness-on-1956-episode-of-ive-got-a-secret/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+laughingsquid+%28Laughing+Squid%29&utm_content=Google+Reader
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JangoSteve
This is amazing, I had never even connected the two points of data in such a
way as to realize that someone alive when Lincoln was president would still be
alive when TV is on the market.

Aside from the intense tobacco ads (the big banner and the participation
gift), I find it interesting that they were playing for the amount of $80.

Accounting for inflation, that's around $650 in today's dollars. Meanwhile
these days, game shows play for a top prize usually around $10k to $1mil per
episode. I guess in 1956, TV itself was enough to keep people entertained and
tuned in. I wonder if 50 years from now, they'll be playing for people's lives
or something equally crazy to keep jaded video audiences tuned in.

~~~
burgerbrain
Actually, there are still plenty of gameshows around where people play for
(generally) sub-thousand dollar prizes. Cash Cab
(<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cash_Cab>) comes to mind. $50 payouts on that
show are actually surprisingly common, although that is considered doing
poorly.

I suspect that the perception of the cash prize size is related to the
perceived commitment the contestant has to put forward. So they are fairly
large on shows the contestant has to go out of their way to be a part of, but
low on shows where the contestant just happens to "stumble upon" the contest.

~~~
JangoSteve
That's a very good point, and Cash Cab is sweet. Also, I was under the
impression that the people guessing in that gameshow were celebrities. Are
there any game-shows today that play for sub-thousand-dollar prizes with
celebrities?

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kbutler
It's interesting to note links to historical events by very young observers.

The last of the civil war widows passed away only a few years ago (2008). As
young women, they married octogenarian civil war veterans - and continued
receiving the widow's pension for decades...

[http://www.radiodiaries.org/transcripts/OtherDocs/civilwar.h...](http://www.radiodiaries.org/transcripts/OtherDocs/civilwar.html)

<http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/16/national/16widow.html>

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maudie_Hopkins>

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xefer
I'm reminded of this:

"Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., who had served on the bench
into the nineteen-thirties, had in his long lifetime shaken hands with John
Quincy Adams and also our new incumbent, John F. Kennedy."

"Old Country" by Roger Angell. The New Yorker; September 11, 2006

[http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2006/09/11/060911ta_talk_an...](http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2006/09/11/060911ta_talk_angell)

~~~
strait
He lived long enough into the era where his speech or interview could have
been filmed. I couldn't find anything on YouTube; perhaps he was too frail by
the 1930's to be doing such things.

I like finding these old film clips featuring performances from ancient
legends.

Thomas Edison (born 1847)
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ftii6D68Veo&feature=relat...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ftii6D68Veo&feature=related)

Sir Ian Hamilton (born 1853) <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AlRruY4WRjw>

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siglesias
I know this is what is referred to in Midnight in Paris as "Golden Age
Thinking," but I can't fight the feeling when I see television programs and
interviews in the 50s and 60s that the level of "popular" discourse was much
higher then than it is now. That is, interviewees of all ages are much more
well spoken, articulate, and informed. I can't imagine the panel of American
Idol judges (much less the audience) being able to drill down so quickly to a
historical event like that, or even care to take a serious crack at it. Am I
off?

Ex, a 60s era CBS documentary on rock--fair from and to both sides:
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oSq1ca__cRA>

~~~
neonscribe
Did you notice the last word spoken by the host Garry Moore was "withal",
meaning "nevertheless". Can you imagine a game show host using the word today?

~~~
jerf
Yes. Or rather, the temporally-updated equivalent. Withal sounds erudite
because _now_ it's dead, and a sign of sophistication to know the word at all.
Much less so then, albeit perhaps not zero.

The problem with some modern game shows isn't vocabulary. It isn't even
necessarily spectacle _qua_ spectacle, because if they could have done it and
afforded it in the 50s their shows would have been bigger, too. Humans haven't
changed in the past 60 years. The problem with modern game shows is something
more like they have more resources than they know what to do with, competing
against ten other shows with the same "problem". I'm not convinced there's a
good argument for modern people being more relatively degenerate than people
of old... the set of which, I would remind you, _really does_ include actual,
factual people who considered combat to the death fit entertainment.

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hugh3
"But apart from that, Mr Seymour, how was the play?"

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hook
I think Matt Damon has a time machine.

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hugh3
The Matt Damon looking guy is fifties game show fixture Bill Cullen:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Cullen>

and he looks less Matt Damonish in higher resolution.

~~~
pyre
He looks more like Drew Carey at that resolution.

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starpilot
On a related note, the last surviving Civil War veteran (though he never saw
combat) also died in 1956.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Woolson>

~~~
splat
Interestingly, the last widow of a Civil War veteran died only three years
ago.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maudie_Hopkins>

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ck2
It's easy to forget the United States is "only" 235 years old. Columbus sailed
over TWICE as long ago.

Some countries would laugh at that
<http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=10+oldest+countries>

(added: _actually, wait a sec, Wolfram is very wrong, Portugal Italy and Spain
all existed when Columbus first sailed_ )

Mechanical steam power, automobiles, airflight, television, computers and
landing on the moon was all accomplished in that relatively tiny timeframe of
US existence.

~~~
justincormack
Italy did not exist then as a country. It was unified by Garibaldi in 1861.
Portugal is older, Spain, depends how you count it, but it was Castile and
Aragon until 1469, and Granada was reconquered in 1492...

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scottyallen
Wow, that's truly fascinating. Seeing that 5 minute clip gives me a much
better feeling for how long ago Lincoln's death really was. Deeply
understanding timelines was always my weakness when it came to history, which
is part of why high school history was thoroughly boring to me. Now I can saw,
when my parents were 5, they saw a really old guy on TV who was 5 when he saw
Lincoln shot. A lot more digestible than 1865 or 146 years ago.

~~~
matt1
Hey, just a quick plug:

I run a web app called Preceden [1], which specializes in creating
multilayered timelines. You could easily use it to plot the significant events
in your life and anyone else's to see how they overlap. Lots of teachers use
it to solve the same problem you have had; visualizing time can be very
difficult without the right tools.

[1] <http://www.preceden.com>

Edit: Just for fun, here's a timeline of the Civil War, Mr Seymour's life, the
I've Got a Secret Episode, and today's date using Preceden:

[http://preceden.com/timelines/15108-i-ve-got-a-secret---
linc...](http://preceden.com/timelines/15108-i-ve-got-a-secret---lincoln-
assassination)

~~~
alanfalcon
Very cool tool. But it appears that the "article appears on Hacker News" is
cut off.

~~~
matt1
Thanks -- FYI you can scroll over by dragging the timeline around.

Edit: Added a 25 year zoom level to the timelines, which makes this timeline
(and I'm sure others) fit better.

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cma
If you are older than 23, you have been around for more than 10% of the US's
history since the constitution was ratified. Pretty crazy to think about.

The oldest living American has been around for more than 50% of it.

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dabent
The fact that I could see an eyewitness to that event was overshadowed by the
huge cigarette ads. It reminds me of the current state of online ads, only
it's huge banners for electronic cigarettes instead.

~~~
there
i'm currently reading _the master switch_ (<http://amzn.to/qvgGrx>) which
talks about how early radio and tv were forbidden to have commercials because
they were supposed to be public services, but that programs could be sponsored
like you see in the video. in early radio, companies weren't allowed to
directly mention their products, so for example, gillette's first radio ad was
a lecture on the history of beards.

after seeing that video, i much prefer commercials to that style of sponsored
programming. when a commercial comes on, you can get up and do something else,
change the channel, or mute it. with sponsored programs, everything is so
integrated that it makes it hard to ignore.

~~~
chollida1
Non minified and non link code to the above amazon link:

<http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B003F3PKTK/>

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DanielBMarkham
Wow, this is amazing. I can't help but want to ask him questions -- what was
DC like during and after the war? How did Marylanders view the assassination
(after all, Booth hid out in MD for most of his run.) Did the huge numbers of
Union troops make a lasting impact on DC? Did his family know people on both
sides of the war? Did he see any of the heroes from war later on in his life?
Attend a speech they made or a book-signing? Did he see Grant on any of his
famous carriage rides through the city? Know anybody who had personally spoken
with any of the presidents? (Back then you could just show up at the WH and
ask for an audience.) What did he think of the many civil war reunions and
joint parades that previous fighters from both sides participated in?

You know, there's a finite number of these questions, and they can be broken
down into an ontology and recorded. You could even make such and information
system interactive, and 3D. It's a shame we don't have startups that could
record and organize this same type of information from present-day folks who
witnessed history -- like those that saw the D-Day invasion, or the Civil
Rights movement in the U.S. We are losing precious pieces of our past, and we
have tech that could make a big difference here. We spend more time worrying
about polygon counts on shooters and less time about capturing these
incredible stories that are disappearing all around us.

~~~
matt1
Similar to this idea, Steven Spielberg established a foundation called the
Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation to interview holocaust and
warcrime survivors. According to their about page, they've done over 52,000
video testimonials so far.

You can check it out on the University of Southern California's website here:
<http://dornsife.usc.edu/vhi/>

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tormentor
Its amazing we actually got to see an eyewitness of something this historical
on tv. The fact that tech had evolved this fast in this man's 96 years of life
is amazing in itself. Just imagine going from a time where you didn't have
electricity in your home to having a camera recording you. The cigarette ads
are irrelevant.

