Before the Civil War. Before the beard. Before becoming the most quotable president in U.S. history… Abraham Lincoln tried to invent something.

In 1849, Lincoln filed for and received a patent. He’s still the only U.S. president who can say that. Not for a law. Not for some boring government tool. He invented a device to help boats unstick themselves when they got stranded on sandbars.

Here’s the issue: back then, riverboats were everywhere. But rivers are full of shallow spots. And when you’ve got a 200-ton paddleboat dragging cargo and it hits a sandbar, your options are: (1) unload everything and push, or (2) spaz and cry.

Lincoln proposed option (3).

He came up with a system of inflatable bellows (big air chambers strapped beneath the boat). When the boat got stuck, the crew would inflate the bellows, and boom. The boat would rise just enough to float free. Kind of like giving your ship temporary floaties. Pretty sick in theory.

Lincoln carved a prototype out of wood himself. You can still see it at the Smithsonian. Patent No. 6,469. It’s a weird little model, but it came with some serious ambition. And paperwork.

So… did it work?

Not really.

The idea was clever. But in practice, it was complicated. Getting giant air chambers under a full-size riverboat and inflating them midstream was easier said than done. The tech wasn’t there. The logistics were chaos.

It never went to market.

No boats were retrofitted. No shipping companies signed on. Lincoln’s idea stayed in the file cabinet. Just another forgotten invention, except it had his name on it.

He could’ve just kept doing law stuff. Could’ve stuck to debates and speeches. But Lincoln saw a problem and thought, I’ll figure it out. So he did. He drew up a design, carved a model, and sent it to the patent office.

Sure, it never got built. But it says everything about the kind of guy he was. He saw problems and tried to fix them.

The guy who saved the Union once tried to save a stuck boat with a balloon system he whittled in his free time. Honest Abe was the man. 

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The Burj Khalifa in Dubai is the tallest building in the world. It’s 2,717 feet tall. That’s over half a mile straight up.

It’s so tall that time actually changes depending on where you are in the building. If you watch the sun set from the ground, then take the elevator to the top, you can watch it set again.

Not a metaphor. You physically see the sun dip below the horizon… then ride the elevator and catch an encore.

That’s how high it is. The Earth curves away from you at the bottom faster than the sun drops past your line of sight at the top. Dubai law even had to account for it. During Ramadan, people on the top floors are supposed to break their fast a few minutes after the people at ground level.

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