Weird History: 6

Another Briquette In The Wall

What do you get when you combine the American inventor and America’s car manufacturer? Would you believe a charcoal briquette?

Thomas Edison and Henry Ford are credited with making from sawdust and glue from Ford’s factory floor and Edison’s creative brilliance—barbeque fuel. They made it all right, but they got the idea from someone else—Ellsworth B.A., Zwoyer, who invented, designed, and patented the original briquette in 1897.

What Comes Around

President John Adams and his wife, Abigail, traveled home from Philadelphia to Braintree, Massachusetts, they went through Newark, New Jersey, and the town celebrated his arrival.

But not everyone enjoyed seeing him. A Republican, Luthor Baldwin out of a pub, half-drunk, half-stupid, took in all the commotion along with a 16-gun salute. Hearing the salute and knowing Baldwin’s hatred for the president, another patron from the pub came up to him saying, “There goes the president, and they are firing at his ass.” To which Baldwin said, “I don’t care if they fire through his ass.”

In saying that, he was arrested under the new Alien and Sedition laws (similar to the Patriot Act) for uttering seditious words lending to defame the President and Government of the United States.

Baldwin was fined, paid all court costs, and sent to a federal jail until he made financial amends. This took him eight years. Supposedly, he never said anything about Adams ever again.

On a side note: Civil War Union General, Lew Wallace (1827-1905) gained his greatest fame, not on the battlefield but as the author of the novel: Ben Hur—A Tale of Christ.