ABC:LHS #088   July 4, 1863...

...is the day that the Confederacy knew their days were numbered. At Gettysburg, Philadelphian General George Gordon Meade stopped Pickett's charge and sent Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia back south licking their wounds. On the same day, Philadelphian and Confederate General John Clifford Pemberton surrendered Vicksburg to Ulysses S. Grant after a 47-day siege. The two men, who had briefly roomed together at West Point, will always be remembered for that famed day. 

BBB:LHWS #057-3   Jef Lee Johnson...

...played with everyone from Aretha Franklin to McCoy Tyner, primarily because he sounded like no one - except for the comparisons to Lonnie Johnson and Jimi Hendrix. 

BBB:LHWS #057-2   Winston Samuels McGinnis...

...was a Jamaican singer with a moderately successful career until he backed Desmond Dekker on the worldwide hit "Israelites." He became an accountant in New York City while the reggae that he had helped create took over the music world. 

BBB:LHWS #057-1   Rudolph Hennig...

...was a German born master of the cello who was the Philaldelphia Orchestra's first cello soloist after he had already been painted by Thomas Eakins. A century after his death, his portrait was again in the news. 

BBB:LHWS #057    Three More LHW Musicians

ABC:LHS #087-5   Rev. William Smith...

...was a Scottish-born Anglican who impressed Benjamin Franklin with his ideas about higher education and set up the skeleton and backbone of what became the University of Pennsylvania today, but he made few friends and is little remembered today

ABC:LHS #087-4  Hilery Baker...

...was a German immigrant who became two-term mayor during the time when the city was also the nation's capital. He established the first city police force and was the first "Officer Down" in the city's history.

ABC:LHS #087-3 Alexander Murray...

... came from a family that was part of the Scottish diaspora to the New World after the Jacobite Rebellion in the early 1700s. Born in Maryland, he was a ship's captain before he was out of his teens and rose to become a Commodore in the Navy. By the time he retired, he was a battle-hardened veteran with years at sea.

ABC:LHS #087-2 Thomas Godfrey...

...was one of the New World's first native inventors. While working as a glazier, he was intrigued by the reflection and refraction of light through a shard of glass. This led to his invention that made life on the seas easier and safer, and saved thousands of lives in the process. 

ABC:LHS #087-1

The concept of "celebrity corpses" to attract customers to a cemetery was nothing new. People had been digging up other people for years for legal, political, religious, scientific, and other reasons, so why not for commerce? Many transportable cadavers have made interesting journeys to their final resting places.