10 May: John Wilkes Booth

10 things you didn't know about John Wilkes Booth, US stage actor, born on this date in 1838 who assassinated Abraham Lincoln.

1. He was the 9th of 10 children born to the actor Junius Brutus Booth, a British Shakespearean actor, and his mistress, Mary Ann Holmes. He was named after English radical politician John Wilkes, a distant relative. His parents didn't marry until he was 13 years old, when Junius' wife Adelaide Delannoy Booth was granted a divorce in 1851.
2. As a boy, Booth was athletic and popular, skilled at horsemanship and fencing but was an average student. One of his teachers said of him: "Each day he rode back and forth from farm to school, taking more interest in what happened along the way than in reaching his classes on time."
3. He once had a psychic reading, while he was still at school. He had his fortune told by a palm reader, who told him he would have a grand life, but would die young, "meeting a bad end".
4. Not only was his father an actor, but at least two of his brothers, as well. So it was probably no surprise when Booth, too, followed in their footsteps. He made his debut on stage in 1855, aged 17 as the Earl of Richmond in Richard III. He forgot some of his lines and the audience booed. Later, he joined a Shakespearean stock company in Richmond, Virginia, where he was more successful. There, he ended up earning $20,000 a year (equivalent to about $569,000 in today's money).
5. His brother Edwin was a very successful actor and there is thought to have been more than a little sibling rivalry between them. Booth would ask to be billed as "J.B. Wilkes" so people wouldn't automatically compare him with other members of his family. Some scholars have even suggested that part of his motivation in assassinating Lincoln was to become even more famous than his brother.
6. He was 5 feet 8 inches (1.73 m) tall, lean and athletic with curly black hair. He had many female fans who wrote him adoring letters. In 1865, he became engaged to Lucy Lambert Hale, the daughter of U.S. Senator John P. Hale. She had no idea at the time how much her fiance hated Abraham Lincoln.
7. Booth was outspoken in his advocacy of slavery and his hatred of Lincoln. He was present at the execution of abolitionist John Brown in 1859, as one of a force of volunteers there to make sure nobody tried to rescue Brown. Booth stood near the scaffold and while he was pleased to see Brown dead, he did admire how bravely the man faced death.
8. The conspirators planned, initially, just to kidnap Lincoln, but Booth saw an opportunity when he found out the president was to attend an evening performance of the comedy Our American Cousin at Ford’s Theatre. He gathered his band together and outlined the plan, and the parts they would all play in it. Booth sneaked into the theatre earlier in the day to tamper with the Lock of the presidential box. He returned during the play’s third act, entered the box and shot Lincoln in the back of the head.
9. After a brief grapple with Major Henry Rathbone, one of Lincoln's guests, Booth escaped by leaping off the balustrade of the box onto the stage, yelling “Sic semper tyrannis!” (the motto of the state of Virginia, meaning “Thus always to tyrants!”) or “The South is avenged!” or both. He landed heavily and broke a bone in his leg, but nevertheless made it to his Horse, fighting off two more would be capturers on the way. Booth made his way to the Navy Yard Bridge, where he hoped to cross into Maryland, but there was a curfew in place. He was questioned by guards on the bridge, and even though he gave them his real name, they hadn't got the memo yet that a manhunt was on, and after questioning him briefly, decided he was on the level and let him cross. He stopped to get treatment for his broken leg by one Dr. Mudd, who was later arrested for being part of the conspiracy. The manhunt lasted 12 days.
10. On April 24, Booth and Herold stopped at a farm belonging to a man called Richard Garrett. Garrett apparently hadn't heard about Lincoln’s assassination and thought Booth was a wounded Confederate soldier named “James W. Boyd,” so he agreed to let him stay in his barn. This is where the cavalry caught up with him. During the fracas which followed, the barn was set on fire and Booth was shot in the neck and fatally wounded by a sergeant named Boston Corbett. Booth knew he was on his way out and uttered what he thought were some appropriate last words: “Tell mother, I die for my country.” However, he ended up living for a few more hours and his actual last words turned out to be “Useless, useless.”

Character birthday

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