February 25, 2007
Image of the Week: Grace Bedell's Envelope
One of the stories in my new book, The Greatest Stories Never Told,
is about Grace Bedell, the eleven year-old girl who wrote to Abraham Lincoln, suggesting that he grow a beard--which he did. Grace's original letter to lincoln is is in the Burton Historical Collection at the Detroit Public Library, and I ordered a reproduction of it to use in the book. When the disk came in the mail, it contained an unexpected surprise: a scan of the envelope in which Grace sent her letter. You can see a larger version of it by clicking on the thmbnail at left.
I was specially delighted to see this, because I just recently stumbled over the phenomenon of illustrated Civil War envelopes. Starting in the 1850's, people were printing up propaganda envelopes...so your letter to a friend would be enclosed in an envelope that made clear your political leanings. Who knew?
The American Antiquarian Society in Worcester has quite a collection of these, and a short write-up on their website. I have proposed an article on this to The History Channel magazine.
My favorite part of the envelope is the phrase scrawled down the right hand side: answered. Lincoln answered Grace, grew the beard, and the rest, well, you know the rest.
Posted by rickbeyer at 09:02 AM | Comments (0)
February 21, 2007
Image of the Indetermine Time Period
I am going to try, in the coming weeks, to revive the long dormant "Image of the Week" in order to showcase some of the cool pictures I've gathered for my forthcoming book, The Greatest Presidential Stories Never Told.
This drawing captures the scene in February, 1844, when the biggest naval cannon in the world, the Peacemaker, blew up in front of a crowd of dignataries during a test firing aboard the Princeton, a navy warship. It killed six people, including the Secretary of State and the Secretary of the Navy, and would have killed President John Tyler, but for...well, I don't want to give away the whole story here. Buy the book wheen it comes out! You can click on the thumbnail to see a larger version. This image comes courtesty of the Library of Congress.
Posted by rickbeyer at 10:11 PM | Comments (0)
June 28, 2006
Inmage of the Week: Godspeed in NY
A photo from yesterday's New York Times.
The ship was making it's way to the South Street Seaport, where it will be for about ten days before sailing up to Boston. I plan to attend the openng ceremony of the Boston visit on July 14.
All this comes as we are working hard on the rough cut of the show. We just completed a first pass beginning to end, which is 55 minutes long, leaving us ten minutes or so to cut. Good thing too, 'cuz at 55 minutes it was a little slow. We've got some perking up to do.
The show, I am told, will air first quarter of next year.
Posted by rickbeyer at 09:31 PM | Comments (0)
May 03, 2006
Image of the Week: The Godspeed Sails
On April 27, The Godspeed went out for it's first sail with the crew from the Jamestown-Yorktown foundation that will take it up the East Coast this summer on a port tour. We have, of course, been following the construction of this replica 1607 ship for more than a year for the documentary Godspeed to Jamestown that Plate of Peas is producing for The History Channel, and we weren't about to miss this.
We shot on board, from a chase boat, from a nearbye mountainop, and from a helicopter. (The only thing we didn't do, in all honesty, is shoot it from a submarine!) When we got over water, the helicopter pilot announced that there weren’t any floats on the helicopter because he hadn’t expected to be going over water (where did he think the ship would be, I wonder) and that if we went down we would all die of hypothermia very quickly. With this encouraging news ringing in our ears, we commenced shooting. Luckily we stayed in the air, thus missing out on the joys of death by drowning or impact or whatever.
It was cold, but incredibly gorgeous, and the footage that Dillard Morrison shot was equally beautiful.
The ship left Rockport this morning (they had to wait out the storm) to sail to Jamestown. It will be in both New York and Boston this summer--check the Port Tour Calendar and pay a visit!
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Posted by rickbeyer at 08:23 PM | Comments (0)
April 19, 2006
Image of the Week: WZMY
WZMY interviewer Mike DiBlasi and I took pictures of each other after last night's show. He did a much better job than I did--sorry Mike! We talked about some interesting things, including the role that women played in the events leading up to the American Revolution.
Posted by rickbeyer at 04:40 AM | Comments (0)
March 14, 2006
Image of the Week: Godspeed on the move
It has been a long time since I've done an image of the week, which I guess means this would be more accurately entiled: "Image of the every once in a while," but it just doesn't flow very well.
This is picture of the Godspeed, a replica of one of the ships that brought settlers to Jamestown in 1607. It is being built at Rockport Marine, in Rockport Maine. The ship came out of doors last week, and was transported by Tom Brownell and his crew through downtown ROckport to the spot where it will be launched in a few days. We have been filming its contruction for more than a year, so this was a big day.
Here's another shot. Videographer Dillard Morrison captures the action as the Godspeed begins its journey.
The ship will be making a port tour up the East Coast this summer. If you want to see what it looked like a year ago, check out the entry from April 4 last year.
Posted by rickbeyer at 07:18 PM | Comments (0)
February 20, 2006
Outside Inside
1) Outside: We got coned. A prank...don't know by who. Cones were there on Sunday morning. Somebody (a friend of our son?) went to a lot of trouble. Cops took them away.
2) Inside: Cat on a hot tin monitor. Is she responding to her master's image? No. She just likes the heat.
Posted by rickbeyer at 04:37 PM | Comments (0)
November 21, 2005
Image of the Week: Christmas Truce
A story in the news that the last surviving veteran of the World War I "Christmas Truce" died today. Here's an excerpt from the Retuers wire story:
LONDON (Reuters) - The last known surviving allied veteran of the Christmas Truce that saw German and British soldiers shake hands between the trenches in World War One died Monday at 109, his parish priest said.
Alfred Anderson was the oldest man in Scotland and the last known surviving Scottish veteran of the war.
"I remember the silence, the eerie sound of silence," he was quoted as saying in the Observer newspaper last year, describing the day-long Christmas Truce of 1914, which began spontaneously when German soldiers sang carols in the trenches, and British soldiers responded in English.
I write about the Christmas Truce in my new book. Some people think it is a myth, but it really happened--and many of the soldiers involved took photographs of themselves with the enemy to prove it,like the picdture at right from the Imperial War Museum.
It was early in the war, and the message of "hate your enemy" hadn't quite been drilled into the two armies. Soldiers came out of the trenches to exchange toasts, trade cigarettes and liquor, even play soccer games. The men themselves were as surprised as anyone at the sudden outbreak of peace. "Most peculiar Christmas I've ever spent, and ever likely to" wrote one British soldier. "Fancy a German shaking your flapper...and then a few days later trying to plug you" said another. One German soldier wrote in delight about a soccer game played between the two armies: "We Germans really roared when a gust of wind revealed that the Scots wore no drawers under their kilts."
The next day, they got back to the important business of killing each other.
Posted by rickbeyer at 12:37 PM | Comments (0)
November 10, 2005
Image of the Week: My TV
I appeared on not one but two interview shows last night on WZMY-TV in Derry New Hampshire. At 7:30 I was interviewed briefly by Eric Schiener on the program "My TV Now." (See it here) Then after a quicknap (sprawled out on a couchin their conference room) I did a longer interview with Mike Deblasi, on a program called "My TV Prime."
WZMY-TV is a new station, taking over from the old WNDS. It appears as Channel 18 on many Boston area cable systems.
Posted by rickbeyer at 11:18 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
October 30, 2005
Image of the Week: Typical American
We have a teacher from France staying at our house as part of an exchange program, and he took this picture of me outside Lexington High School because he was struck by how “typically American” I looked, and he wanted to share that with his family. So here I am in all my typical Americaness.
Patrick—that’s his name--has a very good sense of humor, with a definite edge. He’s quite blunt—in a charming French fashion. When I showed him my first book (I do love saying that), he looked at the title and said: “The Greatest Stories Never Told—a bit pretentious, no?’ When he saw the picture on the jacket of the second book he said: “It makes you look far more important than you do in person.” It’s always good to have people who will tell you the truth.
Posted by rickbeyer at 08:28 AM | Comments (1)
October 06, 2005
Image of the Week: Group Photo
A photo taken yesterday after the taping of "The Literati Scene with Smoki Bacon and Dick Concannon". From left to right, Joanna Datillo, (co-host) , Santo Aurelio ("How to Say it and Write it Correctly") Rick Beyer, Smoki, John Sears (Former mayoral candidate, sitting), Brenton Simons ("Witches, Rakes and Rogues)", Anthony Doerr ("About Grace"), and Dick Concannon. For more on the taping of the show, check out the previous entry.
Posted by rickbeyer at 10:33 PM | Comments (0)
September 08, 2005
Image of the Week: Battle of the Luxury Liners
A surprising number of historical events featured in my books have taken place on September 14, my daughter's birthday. Or, perhaps, I notice the date because it is her birthday. That is the day, for instance, that Francis Scott Key saw the "rockets' red glare" at Fort McHenry.(He was there to see it because of three drunken redcoats.)It is the day President Garfield died (shot by a lawyer, killed by his docters). And it is the day that the Battle of the Lusury Liners took place...two converted luxury liners, disguised as each other (!), that fought a gun battle in 1914, a battle that resulted in one of the ocean liners sinking the other!
I discovered this World War I headshaker completely by accident while searching for another. It is featured in my new book The Greatest War Stories Never Told, which comes out in just six weeks!
Here's an interesting tidbit that doesn't make the book. The drawing is inaccurate in its depiction of the number of funnels for each ship. THe Carmania, in the foreground, did have two funnels, but since was disugising itself as the Cap Trafalgar, it added a third fake funnel. Likewise, the Cap Trafalgar, in the bacgkround, actually dismantled one of its three funnels in the hopes that it would look like the Carmania.
For a larger version of the picture (so you can actually see the funnels) go to Image of the week page.
Posted by rickbeyer at 04:41 PM | Comments (0)
May 05, 2005
The First Computer Bug: A real bug!
Whenever I come across a particularly fascinating story, I like to file it away for future reference. This is is a gem that some people know about, but many others do not. After it came up in conversation last week, I thought I would post it.
The very first computer bug was, in fact, a bug: a fried moth discovered blocking the contacts on a relay in a Mark II computer at Harvard in 1945. With an eye to posterity, perhaps, the woman who found it pasted it into the computer log. Her name was Grace Murray Hopper, and her tale is a fascinating one in its own right. For more on all of this, check the Image of the week page.
Posted by rickbeyer at 01:23 PM | Comments (2)
April 29, 2005
Image of the Week: Davy's Death
This picture came in the mail this morning from the Library of Congress. Its one of the last pictures to come in for my forthcoming book, and also one of my favorites. Its a drawing of Davy Crocketts final moments at the Alamo. For more on its historical signifigance, check out the Image of the week page.
Posted by rickbeyer at 12:17 AM | Comments (0)
April 20, 2005
History Weekend/Image of the Week
Members of The Gloucester Hornpipe and Clog Society playing at the Beyer familys 4th semi-annual Patriots Day Colonial Costume Party, which we held last Saturday. We live in Lexington Massachusetts, the town where the American Revolution began. Every other year (or thereabouts) my wife Marilyn and I and invite our friends to come over in costume to celebrate Patriots Day and the events of April 19th, 1775. We turn off the lights and light the candles, serve colonial era food and drink, and listen to period music. For more on the party and the music, check out the Image of the week page.
We also got up at 3:30 AM on Monday,(Patriots Day), put on our costumes, grabbed our lanterns, and walked to Lexington center for the annual reenactment of the Battle of Lexington.
Believe it or not, thousands of people come to this pre-dawn event every year, and you have to get there well before 5 AM to have any chance of getting a decent view. It is amazingly emotional, from the moment when you first catch a glimpse of the redcoats marching down the main street of Lexington toward the green, where a few dozen ragged militamen nervously await. You can feel the tension rise as the British officers shout at the colonials to disperse, and the colonials, scared, unsure, and awed by the wave upon wave of scarlet ranks, start to backpedal. Then, as happened 230 years ago, a shot rings out, no one knows from where. Suddenly fire breaks out from both sides, the British soldiers charge, and the war that will lead to American independence has begun. The re-enactment is done so well it takes your breath away.
I did end up doing the booksigning at the Waldenbooks later that day in costumeit was fun!
Posted by rickbeyer at 07:53 AM | Comments (0)
April 04, 2005
Image of the Week: Godspeed
This is an image from the documentary production side of my life. Plate of Peas is doing a program for about the contruction of a replica of the Godspeed, one of the three ships that carried colonists to Jamestown in 1607. It follows another Jamestown documentary we produced for The History Channel last year, Secrets of Jamestown. For more info check out the Image of the Week page.
Posted by rickbeyer at 08:20 AM | Comments (0)
March 29, 2005
Image of the Week: Korean Cover
This gave me a huge kick when I saw it: the cover of the Korean edition of the book, with everything (including my name) translated into Korean. I don't have a hardcopy yet, although I'm dying to see one.
Posted by rickbeyer at 08:29 AM | Comments (0)
March 19, 2005
Image of the Week: George Patton
I've just added a new feature to the site called Image of the Week. Since historical photos, drawings, maps etc. are a huge part of the books and documentaries I create, I thought it would be fun to share some of them on the site. This one is a picture of World War Two General George Patton taken some 30+ years earlier. I'd love to hear any comments anyone has about it.
Posted by rickbeyer at 08:33 AM | Comments (0)