Lincoln is enshrined in the Wrestling Hall of Fame.
The Great Emancipator wasn’t quite WWE material, but thanks to his long limbs he was an accomplished wrestler as a young man. Defeated only once in approximately 300 matches, Lincoln reportedly talked a little smack in the ring. According to Carl Sandburg’s biography of Lincoln, Honest Abe once challenged an entire crowd of onlookers after dispatching an opponent: "I’m the big buck of this lick. If any of you want to try it, come on and whet your horns." There were no takers. Lincoln’s grappling exploits earned him an "Outstanding American" honor in the National Wrestling Hall of Fame.
Grave robbers attempted to steal Lincoln’s corpse.
Secret Service did come to Lincoln’s protection, but only in death. In 1876 a gang of Chicago counterfeiters attempted to snatch Lincoln’s body from his tomb, which was protected by just a single padlock, in Oak Ridge Cemetery in Springfield, Illinois. Their scheme was to hold the corpse for a ransom of $200,000 and obtain the release of the gang’s best counterfeiter from prison. Secret Service agents, however, infiltrated the gang and were lying in wait to disrupt the operation. Lincoln’s body was quickly moved to an unmarked grave and eventually encased in a steel cage and entombed under 10 feet of concrete.
Lincoln is the only president to have obtained a patent.
Benjamin Franklin isn’t the only American political leader who demonstrated an inventive mind. After being aboard a steamboat that ran aground on low shoals and had to unload its cargo, Lincoln, who loved tinkering with machines, designed a method for keeping vessels afloat when traversing shallow waters through the use of empty metal air chambers attached to their sides. For his design, Lincoln obtained Patent No. 6,469 in 1849.
Lincoln personally test-fired rifles outside the White House.
Lincoln was a hands-on commander-in-chief who, given his passion for gadgetry, was keenly interested in the artillery used by his Union troops during the Civil War. Lincoln attended artillery and cannon tests and met at the White House with inventors demonstrating military prototypes. Although there was a standing order against firing weapons in the District of Columbia, Lincoln even test-fired muskets and repeating rifles on the grassy expanses around the White House, now known as the Ellipse and the National Mall.
Lincoln came under enemy fire on a Civil War battlefield.
When Confederate troops attacked Washington, D.C., in July 1864, Lincoln visited the front lines at Fort Stevens on two days of the battle, which the Union ultimately won. At one point the gunfire came dangerously close to the president. Legend has it that Colonel Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., a future Supreme Court justice, barked, "Get down, you fool!" Lincoln ducked down from the fort’s parapet and left the battlefield unharmed.