Dates with History Midweeker
The historical joyride for a curious mind
Dates with History Midweeker — Spend a few minutes with me exploring historical snippets and fascinating facts relating to this week. 27th May 2026.
Happy Wednesday!
Not long ago, I wrote about a plucky eleven-year-old girl from Westfield, New York who, in October 1860, wrote to the then-unbearded Abraham Lincoln. Grace Bedell had seen the Republican presidential candidate’s campaign portrait and she had a suggestion for him…
“My father has just home from the fair and brought home your picture and Mr. Hamlin’s. I am a little girl only eleven years old, but want you should be President of the United States very much so I hope you wont think me very bold to write to such a great man as you are.
… I have got 4 brothers and part of them will vote for you any way and if you will let your whiskers grow I will try and get the rest of them to vote for you you would look a great deal better for your face is so thin.
All the ladies like whiskers and they would tease their husbands to vote for you and then you would be President…
When you direct your letter, direct to Grace Bedell Westfield Chautauqua County New York. I must not write any more answer this letter right off Good bye. ”
GRACE BEDELL
Lincoln took her advice. On 16 February 1861, as the president-elect’s train rolled east toward Washington for his inauguration, it made an unscheduled stop at Westfield, New York—where Lincoln stepped out and asked the assembled crowd if they could produce the small girl who had sent him the rather specific grooming advice.
When Grace Bedell was brought forward, he bent down to her and, showing off his new beard, said to her...
“You see? I let these whiskers grow for you.”
And that, I thought, was that. However, a few days later, I received an email from a reader—thank you, Cheryl from Vienna, ME—who suggested that the story didn’t end there.
It turns out that in 1860, a young lithographer in Springfield, Massachusetts—one Milton Bradley—had produced a handsome portrait of Lincoln: clean-shaven, distinguished and thoroughly presidential. It was doing a roaring trade.
That was good news because lithographs were expensive and laborious to produce. A lithographer like Milton Bradley had to draw the image painstakingly onto treated stone or a metal plate, from which hundreds of impressions could then be pulled. Once the plate was made, changing it was no simple matter.
Then Grace Bedell picked up her pen. Lincoln grew the beard. Within weeks, Bradley’s handsome, clean-shaven portrait no longer looked anything like the man on the campaign trail. His lithograph had become obsolete.
Faced with ruin, Milton turned to board games—a natural pivot, since the same lithographic press that had produced his portraits could just as easily print boards and cards.
He turned out to be rather good at it. The Checkered Game of Life sold 40,000 copies in its first year, and the Milton Bradley Company went on to give the world Candy Land, Battleship, Twister, and Connect Four.
The gaming giant Hasbro acquired the whole enterprise for $360 million in 1984. All because of a little girl’s letter.
Milton Bradley himself died 115 years ago this Saturday, 30 May 1911, aged 74.
Patrick Henry
In 1765, reeling from the debt accumulated from the Seven Years’ War, the British Parliament passed the Stamp Act, a direct tax requiring colonists to buy stamped paper for almost every kind of printed matter—newspapers, legal documents, licenses, even playing cards.
The uproar it provoked is now widely seen as one of the sparks that helped set the colonies on the path to the American Revolution.
The Brits might have got away with it but for the intervention of an up-and-coming lawyer from Studley, Virginia… Patrick Henry.
Patrick was born 290 years ago this Friday, 29 May 1736. It turned out that he would be celebrating his 29th birthday in some style. On 29 May 1765, Henry stood up in the Virginia House of Burgesses and delivered a rampaging speech against the Stamp Act.
Some members of the House grew concerned when Henry suggested that King George III might follow in the footsteps of Julius Caesar or even Charles I. But Henry was defiant. When the Speaker stood up and shouted “Treason!”, Henry retorted…
If this be treason, make the most of it!”
The speech established Patrick Henry as a leading voice for revolution. His memorable quote would be remembered as an early watchword of the coming revolution, foreshadowing his later cry of...
“Give me liberty, or give me death.”
Question of the Week
Guyana is a cooperative republic nestled between Venezuela and Suriname on the northeast coast of South America.
What was its name as a British colony prior to 1966?
And Finally…
‘Aptronym’
(noun)A person’s name that matches their job or one of their main characteristics.
CAMBRIDGE DICTIONARY
Jaime Lachica Sin was born in Aklan, the Philippines, in 1928—the fourteenth of sixteen children... which probably accounts for his renowned sense of humour.
Jaime had entered the priesthood in 1954 and risen steadily through the ranks, becoming Bishop of Jaro in 1967.
He was a strong moral voice against repression and corruption, and a pivotal figure in the peaceful ousting of the dictator Ferdinand Marcos in 1986.
In 1974, he became Archbishop of Manila and fifty years ago last Sunday, 24 May 1976, he was appointed Cardinal-Priest of Santa Maria ai Monti by Pope Paul VI in Rome.
From that point onwards, he would be addressed as Cardinal Sin.
Question of the week… answer
British Guiana.
Sixty years ago yesterday, 26 May 1966, the Union Jack was lowered over Georgetown and a new flag climbed the pole in its place.
The Golden Arrowhead—Guyana’s national flag—was raised for the first time as British Guiana passed into history and the independent nation of Guyana was born.
The colony’s recorded European history stretched back to 1499, moulded in turn by the Spanish, Dutch, French and British. African slaves were transported to work the sugar plantations and—after emancipation in 1838—indentured labourers arrived from India, Madeira, China and Portugal, creating one of the most diverse populations in the Americas.
Today, Guyana is among the fastest-growing economies on the planet, driven by offshore oil discovered in 2015. Three hundred and fifty years of colonial rule, and it turned out the real treasure was under the seabed all along.
Thank you for joining me. Enjoy the rest of the week!
Steve
CHIEF STORY HUNTER & WRITER
ATTRIBUTIONS
The bearded Abraham Lincoln: Alexander Gardner, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
Grace Bedell, 1870s: See page for author, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
Patrick Henry’s “If this be treason, make the most of it!”: Peter F. Rothermel (1812–1895), Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
Cardinal Jaime Sin: Ernmuhl, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
Guyana’s national flag—the Golden Arrowhead: Whitney Smith, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
CC BY-SA 3.0: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0
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