Ridiculous HistoryCLASSIC: How did Fido become the default name for dogs?
If you're like most English speakers, the first thing you think of when you hear the name "Fido" is, of course, a dog. But why? Join Ben and Noel as they delve into the story of Abraham Lincoln's favorite pooch, and how this little yellow pup became one of the first dog memes. (Also, please send us photos of your pooches. We're super into it.)
Oh, fellow ridiculous historians, is that you. We're so glad to see you. Joy, Yeah, Joy joining us for a classic episode. Look, names are tough. We talked I can't remember which show it was, but we talked about how tough it is to name a car. We know it's tough to name a pet.
And what is that? What is a toreg?
He's still on it. So look, if you are investigating like we did back in twenty eighteen, the names of dogs, you will see the name Fido show up. And Fido is not a name for people.
Sure Isn't you see it in branding for dog food and all kinds of stuff dating back to this is the beginning of advertising. I've been watching or rewatching, actually a lot of classic Looney Tunes cartoons recently. Pro tip for any Max subscribers out there. Every single one of them is on there, back from the earliest ones like the thirties, and Fido is often what they call dogs in the show you know, bugs bunny Less, You're like here, Fido. It's just kind of like a stand down, like coke is for soda or xerox is for a photocop. Sure Google for Internet search do we also have the do we have the World War Two propaganda on Max? I'm not sure. I haven't been through all of it enough to know of what they've stripped, but I'm not one hundred percent sure. I wouldn't be surprised. I know that Disney has removed a lot of the problematic Disney cartoons from you know, Disney Plus.
And we know how Fido became a default name for dogs here in the West. Spoiler it goes back to an amateur wrestler that we often bring up on the show.
Good reach out on that guy. Thanks Abe Lincoln. Let's jump right in.
Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome to the show Ridiculous Historians, and thanks for tuning in. Whether you have multiple PhDs and various specific aspects of the story of human civilization, or whether you consider yourself an armchair history enthusiast, one thing's for sure. You've probably probably met a dog.
Probably I've met at least two dogs that was the same dog, though you think so.
I think it was the same dog.
Why do you think that?
Because you showed me the pictures and I think it's the angle.
Yeah, that's weird. I'm more of a cat person. But now I've met multiple dogs in truth, and I've also heard of Abraham Lincoln.
Yes, and today's story is about the confluence of these two concepts. When we think about dogs, we always think about strange dog names too, writ And there's one thing that always baffled me when I was a kid, when I traveled abroad, I didn't understand that dogs who grow up in non English speaking countries don't speak English.
That's right.
It's a weird thing, you know. And you probably ran into dogs who spoke German when you were in Germany.
Are you teasing me, Ben?
No?
I mean like like they when they bark, they do it with like a German accent. Is that what you're saying?
Well, they wouldn't respond to commands.
There you go. Yeah, but I'll twist it around.
Also, and something that has nothing to do with this episode. I think it's hilarious the way that other languages will right the sound of a dog bark. You can look it up for yourselves, folks. I think you'll enjoy it. Oh, I forgot Hi, I'm Ben Whoa.
That was the longest preamble pre name drop opening ever. My name is NOL and just to get it out of the way and not get it out of the way. This is a cause for celebration. We'd like to welcome back with open arms, our super producer, Casey Pegram.
It's been too long, Casey, thank you so much for returning here to the States, here to the studio, here to ridiculous history.
Casey's into dogs, right, you like dogs. I'm a dog person, absolutely, Yeah, what would you say? You're more a dog person or a cat person both growing up, so I'm pretty agnostic or ambidextrous.
I got with your animal affection.
Yeah.
So it's it's interesting because we often hear of this divide between cats and dogs, and with just a brief nod to the science behind domestication, it's fascinating nol. Dogs were domesticated by people, but cats largely domesticated themselves.
Cats do everything for themselves. Man, They're persnickety little creatures who don't need us, and they will eat us when we die in our apartments, sad and alone.
Or if the size difference was reversed, they would also eat you totally.
If I told you about how my cat like brings little presents and like like just looks like they look like Satanic rituals laid out on my doorstep, like decapitated squirrels, and you know, with the guts in the shape of a pentagram and horrifying. Yeah. Yeah, and I share a bed with this thing. What am I thinking?
Colleague? And someone worked within the past, laur And Vogelbaum has the same thing with her cat. That's because you guys have indoor outdoor cats.
Well, I finally put a bell on that little bastard, and now I'm hoping to give those things a fighting chance.
See. I let my cats just be the agents of chaos they were meant to.
No, that's true, and Lincoln appreciated cats in addition to dogs, cause he referred to cats as like one of his hobbies. Yeah, but his old pal, his trusty sidekick through thick and thin, well up to a point, was an old dog.
Yeah, it was a dog. And today's episode that we're finally getting too is about this dog. It's also a way to answer a question about dog names, because when you think of a dog, you think of generic dog names, right, spot, sparky, Yeah, things like that. And I don't know about you know, but it's strange to me when I meet a dog with a person name.
Yeah, like Stephen or Ashley. I love it though. I'm a fan of it. When I first heard of a pet that was named after a human, I thought that was the most clever thing in the world.
The first one I met was neither a dog nor cat. It was a turtle, and I was so impressed. His name was Robert Lewis Stevenson.
That's great. He was a very trepidacious, explorative turtle for sure, very slowly exploring his surroundings.
He was tentative. But with dogs, there's one name that always feels like the generic, the quintessential name.
For a dog. Yeah, like a Kleenex yeah yeah, or xerox yeah, but you know for a dog, right, or Google. But for a dog, it's Fido right out here, boy here, Fido here, Fido? You ever heard that in the Looney Tunes cartoon?
Very popular in Looney Tunes and I think some Disney stuff as well. These days, Fido isn't even in the top one hundred common dog names.
They're a named Stephen and stuff.
Yeah right, They're all named George Ashcroft or something. But now, even with the popularity of Fido declining. Everybody in the English speaking world at least associates the name Fido specifically with a.
Dog like let me get a coke, you mean a soda? Right, let me see that Fido, you mean that dog like that?
And it turns out right that there's a reason for this. There is a traceable, specific reason that Fido became known world over as a dog's name, and it goes back to our boy, young rail splitter himself, Abraham Lincoln.
Yeah. Yeah, that old yellow dog we were talking about. His name was Fido, and he was a mongrel kind of a mixed breed yellow, floppy eared fellow that Lincoln just adored. And he loved to play with Fido around his home in Springfield, Illinois with his sons Tad and Willie.
Who are stories of their own, believe you me. Yeah, as he before he became president, he had several dogs and cats in his home in Illinois, and seems like the crowd favorite was Fido. At least Lincoln's favorite was Fido.
We'll get into a little bit more of the Fido lore later, but for now, in his heyday, Lincoln, before he became elected president, Fido he would walk around town. He would go get a little trim at the barber shop, and Fido would wait patiently outside for him, untied, just perfectly loyal. What's the word? Fido is short for what fidelity?
Right? The name is Latin for faithful right. And for about five years before Abraham Lincoln became president, he was a lawyer, and Fido would just follow him everywhere.
Yeah, I keep seeing mentions of Fido would even carry parcels for Lincoln in his mouth.
Yeah, and he became sort of this walking business card for Lincoln as well in town because they would see the little yellow dog and they would know that the lawyer Lincoln was around. It was about Yeah, but fame changes things, right. In eighteen sixty three, as he was preparing to move to the White House to serve as Commander in chief of the US, people started to think that Fido was maybe a little too friendly, a little too outgoing.
Not even that, maybe even a little fragile, right, because when in his hometown, you know, when the president won the election, there were you know, all kinds of all kinds of commotion, right, we had cannon fire fireworks.
Screaming pol politicians. Yeah, people farting.
Yeah, all of that, various noises and Fido it was spooked by this. He was not excited about this. It made him very uncomfortable and he, you know, totally kind of Withdrew.
Yeah, he was described as a frisky mongrel in a Life magazine profile of him at the time. So he did not accompany. Originally, the Lincolns to DC. Instead, they picked up a dog named Jip and two goats, Nanny and Nanco and.
Get were the goats to mow the lawn at the White House.
You know, my old co host, Scott Benjamin is all about that.
Well, there's a service here in Atlanta where you can rent a goat that'll clean up your their foliage.
Yeah, and it's not just in Atlanta. When Scott recommended to me that I, instead of repairing my lawnmower, rent a goat, I thought he was joking.
But Gott doesn't joke about stuff like that.
He doesn't really joke. He's a very sincere dude.
That's true. Shout out to Scott Benjamin or is I like to refer to him f Scott Benjamin. So, yeah, Fido stayed behind and it took a while, but the president, it was very important for him that his old trustee yellow dog Fido, had a suitable home with suitable affections and spoilage.
Right, yeah, exactly, And that's why he decided to have another person, a person he could trust, take care of Fido. Back there in Springfield, he contacted John Roll, who was a carpenter, and said, hey, you and your family, could you take care of Fido. He's a great dog. You've seen him around town. He's the one who carries parcels. They were old pals. Yeah, yeah, yeah, And so he was already familiar with Fido, but just like any helicopter dog parent. As Lincoln left to pursue the presidency, he also left behind detailed instructions for Fido's data care and spoiling and the stuff he likes. Stuff he doesn't lie.
Now, dare we say conditions?
Yes?
Yeah, yeah, additions? What were some of those? Hit us?
Whenever the role family was eating, they had to give scraps from the table to Fido. Also, he could never be yelled at or scolded for having muddy paws in the house.
This becomes a theme with Fido always having muddy pause right, and being a little too eager to hop up on people.
And they gave him some equipment too, right, give the roles some equipment.
Yeah, it was a custom couch that Lincoln himself had built because, as we know, unlike the myth of Napoleon being extra mega super short, he was just sort of an average height, maybe a little shorter than average. Lincoln was in fact quite tall, yes.
And some people have speculated is due to a condition known as Marfan syndrome. But regardless of the cause, Lincoln himself was one heck of a scarecrow. He was six feet four, very skinny, looked like you could tie a kite to him and he would fly away. And so a couch that you would buy at the store was not going to accommodate a man of his height.
His lanky frame, His legs would just be hanging off the side if he wanted to have a nice lie down, right, So yeah, I say this custom coust was made of horse hair. And it was also Fido's favorite piece of furniture. And I'm sure you had familiar smells and all that. And he made sure that the family that was taking Fido got this piece of furniture so that he could lounge around on it and feel super duper at home.
And it's tough to overstate the importance of this sofa to Fido himself, because when he was frightened, this is the sofa he hid under. When he was happy, this is the sofa he lounged upon. In a very real way, the sofa, second to Abraham Lincoln is the most important thing in the home to fight him. We mentioned earlier Lincoln's sons, right, Tad and Willy, yep, Tad Willie, and they were of course hit by this. This was their childhood dog. They're saying, oh shucks, good on Dad for being the president. But why can't fight ocus.
The end of an era? You know? But they I'm sure Dad, all honest abe explained it to the boys very gingerly, and I'm sure they came to understand. I'm speculating here a little bit. But they seemed like good boys.
You might have said, look, I can do two goats. It's the best they could do.
Well yeah, yeah, Hey, that's a good deal, though, man, one dog for two goats.
I don't know.
Dogs don't mow your lawn either. Those goats, though, apparently, were hell raisers in the UF House. The staffers did not like them because they would like not only chew up the grass like, they would chew up like everything.
Have you ever hung out with a goat with their weird octopus eyes, you mean, greatest of all time? I'm flattered, nol, thank you. No, the physical.
Goat, now I have not. I'd be afraid they'd buck.
Yeah, they're weird. They can be affectionate, but they will eat or near anything.
Yeah, like you know, your fist or your heart. But that's just with their cuddingness.
Yeah. So yeah. So despite all the gestures and all the reassurances you can make, anybody who has been a parent who had to explain the loss of a pet to a child understands that it's heavy and deep stuff, whether it's just moving or whether the pet has passed away. And perhaps ridiculous historians, as you're listening, you're thinking of moments in your life when you were a child and you lost a pet or you were somehow put out of contact with it. It's very psychologically trying, and Lincoln to go with Allegedly here allegedly, Lincoln attempted to combat this by resorting to a relatively new technology at the time. Yeah, he wanted to, you know, have a nice family portrait of Fido. And we've got these images around today. It's great.
You can see them like lounging on what is it like a look throw rug kind of situation. What do we got here?
Yeah, it looks like he is on a table with a nice rug or heavy tablecloth, and he's got his paws just roguishly hanging off like he's ready to jump, but he's comfortable.
And this is back when you would have had to stand really still. Doesn't it seem like taking a picture of a dog would be challenging and best.
Yeah, it would have to be a super chill dog. Yeah, but be that as it may. Turned out, it worked, and there's a pretty good photograph of Fido, which you can find if you just google Fido, Abraham Lincoln. We did find one wrinkle to the story here, at least in terms of chronology, right.
Yeah, and this is how we start getting well, I think we can use this as a jumping off point into the kind of sad part of this story. There is a story and by the name of doctor James Cornelius, who curates the Abraham Lincoln collection at the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum, who says there are some issues with the chronology of when this photograph was taken. Original reports suggested that Lincoln himself commissioned it, and it seems maybe a little more likely that it was done in the aftermath of President Abraham Lincoln's assassination, when Fido would have been a very famous dog and some eagle eyed photog around Springfield thought it might be a hot ticket item to have photographs of the dog that they could sell to mourners.
Yeah, so you'll hear two different versions of the chronology here. You'll hear that the photo was made after the assassination or you'll hear that it was made beforehand. And regardless either way, this photo gets into newspapers and Fido the dog himself, and just the name Fido becomes universally claimed in the US and probably a little bit beyond the US as well. So this is when people start naming their own dogs Fido. Right, A kid sees a dog in the newspaper and the dog's name is Fido, and they think, I'm gonna name my dog Fido, just like President Lincoln's dog. And when Lincoln was assassinated in eighteen sixty five in the Ford Theater. This did very little to quell Fido's popularity. In fact, it added to it isn't that correct.
Yes, Ben, that's exactly right. People would line up to take, you know, to meet the presidential dog. And here here's a little bit of a breakdown of the story of this photograph, as it kind of like weaves into this part of the story. So this guy by the name of F. W. Ngmeier had a photo studio in Springfield, and according to the original story, it was in late eighteen sixty or early eighteen sixty one. There are actually three shots of Fido, one nice from the front shot and then two profile shots where he's a little bit more kind of hunkered down, like he's swimming in a he's trying to ford a stream of some kind, right.
And the exposure makes them all look radically different.
Yeah, it's true. The one from the front is very Cepia looking, and then there's another cpo looking one from the side that is very high contrast, kind of like what the background is totally white and you can't see any texture, is almost blown out. Yeah, and then the last one, which I think is by far the most successful of the photographs. Aesthetically, you can see that the wall has kind of a shaded shadow you look to it, and the dog's fur is properly exposed, and you can see the texture of the rug. And there's a lot more detail in this one.
Yeah, there's also the fur is so detailed that it almost looks like Fido might have some German shepherd in them. So ing Meyer fw Ngmeyer has also become the subject of investigation, especially by a guy named Dick Hart in his book Springfield, Illinois Nineteenth Century Photographers.
But the problem is that apparently between eighteen sixty and eighteen sixty one, Ingmeier wasn't didn't have a photography studio. He was actually working as a minister in the Baptist faith. I guess that was his weekend job. And then he was also a sewing machine salesman.
Yeah, he was selling sewing machines and probably preaching on the side as well. He ran a bunch of ads in various papers for his sewing machine agency. But he didn't even start paying for a photographer's license until eighteen sixty two.
I'm sorry, a photographer's license.
Uh huh. It was a different time.
That seems yeah.
Wow. Well also it's a really new technology, so you probably it's a new technology. You probably them just spitballing here. Man. You probably have to have some sort of training.
Safety training. They got those flash bulbs. They can take your eye out of burn your fingers a bit best.
I mean, new technology is always a pain. Have you ever watched videos of someone attempting to start a model t It's crazy? You can break your arm.
Well, I just would like to You got to like pull it like a lawnmower.
You have to crank it. Yeah, yeah, you have to starting a chair a crank.
Oh okay, that's crank.
And if it gets cantankerous, it will fly back with such force that will break.
Your fork kick at you. Wow.
So probably I would like to think take it a photograph was not that dangerous or didn't have that possibility for danger, But you had to have some training. And what you brought up here is really important because we're looking again at the timeline. So that's eighteen sixty two, right.
That's right. That is allegedly when he began to pay for this license and installments I'm imagining, and that's that's ten dollars total for the license, which was you know, a pretty penny back in eighteen sixty.
Two, and he first ran an ad for his photography business in October of eighteen sixty four because there were a lot of soldiers passing through nearby Camp Butler. It's important to say that this chronology of the license and the advertisements, this chronology does not prove that Ingmar did not take those pictures of this pooch in eighteen sixty or eighteen sixty one, but it calls it into question, you know, that's right.
And this is all from a fantastic post, you know, speculating on this chronology, because again a lot of this stuff is just that speculation, but it comes from a pretty solid source, the guy by the name of doctor James Cornelius, who's the curator of that Abraham Lincoln collection at the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum. So if anyone knows he got to know.
Yeah, he's the leading expert. Literally, he sold a matched set Ingmar that is, sold a match set of four photos with identical back marks, which are think of it, likenk. You may have seen your parents do this. Writing on the back of a photograph with the name and date, the time or description.
Yeah, yeah, like like a time code that you would see cameras these days. Actually, well not so much, but like they used to be when you get the prints, maybe that annoying little watermark in the bottom left hand corner that was the time and the day. There's something kind of similar, if not more analog at play here.
Right, yeah, exactly. And in this book that we mentioned by Heart, there's this match set of four photographs that Ingmar sold with these back marks, and in the Heart book they're dated back to eighteen sixty five and eighteen sixty six. The fotographs are the following. A hillside tomb in Oak Ridge Cemetery, a photograph of Lincoln's old home. Photograph of a horse known as Old Bob, which I think is a cool horse name.
Is that the same as old Robin? Is that short for it? Because I've seen it both ways? You have two horses, because Rob could be short for Bob, could be short for Robin, Bob could be short for yeah, yeah, because Robin is I don't know. The photograph that I'm seeing is actually captioned President Lincoln's horse Old Robin.
It's gotta be the same horse, because I've seen the same photograph and then I'm looking at the description from doctor Cornelius. So maybe doctor Cornelis is just so familiar with him that he calls him old Bob, Oh Bob. Yeah, he's spent a lot of time researching this.
Also in the photograph, might maybe they were more formal, you know, that was the that was the horse's Christian name. But if you were familiar, you could call him old Bob.
But most importantly, that fourth photograph is the high quality profile snap a fighto.
And you know these look like ben These look like the kinds of postcards you would buy at a gift shop for like the Grand Canyon or President Abraham Lincoln's boyhood home or what have you. Right, Yeah, So the theory here is that no, these photos were not commissioned by Lincoln himself during his life. They were done as a kind of get rich quick scheme by this guy Ingmeyer when Lincoln's death brought droves of mourners and people paying their respects to Springfield.
So why do we believe doctor Cornelius's a version of the events. Well, that's primarily because he has matched times and dates into a single unified chronology, and the story about Lincoln commissioning the photographs actually comes to us through John Roll primarily. And you can't really We're not saying role is lying, but it's very easy for him to be mistaken. You can't really blame someone for getting the details of a dog picture a little bit off, you know, decades and decades later.
I have heard of worse historical blunders, my friend.
Right, So doctor Cornelius finds a kicker a nail in the chronological coffin. Here he says that if the Lincoln boys, Tad and Willie had a photograph of Fido in the White House, why does it not have that same back mark, the mark that Ingmeier used to distinguish his photographs, right, why doesn't have one from eighteen sixty to eighteen sixty one. The thing is, the one surviving copy today is identical to the images from eighteen sixty five in both the label and the back mark that indicates the provenance of the photo. If someone took a photo of Fido for the boys in eighteen sixty one, why would it have needed the label President Lincoln's Dog. You can find the family's photo album today in the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library Museum or apple Plum. That's the acronym that is, that's a literal mouthful of word salad. Yeah, but you can you know, you can find the photo album today and it doesn't have all of the photos. About half of them are missing, but the other half are in the Lincoln Financial Foundation collection in Fort Wayne, Indiana. And so to Cornelius, to doctor Cornelius, all of this evidence points to the photo being taken in eighteen sixty five.
I think had some good detective work there from the good doctor.
I agree. He is the Sherlock Holmes of Abraham Lincoln Dog Photos. Dog photos. Yeah, guys, you might be saying, look, I get it, the dog picture was probably made in six not sixty one. But for Pete's sake, for Fido's sake, can't you just let me enjoy a cute picture of a doggo?
Yeah? I mean seriously, it was like one of the original dogo memes. But also, you know, we really did spend a lot of time talking about those pictures. I'm fascinated by the whole the mystery of it. And then when things make their way into official accounts, that then proved to not be the case. But this story does take an interesting turn. Dare I say, a pretty sad turn for old Fido.
Yeah, yeah, you're right. So obviously it's a national tragedy when Abraham Lincoln is assassinated and it turns out that Fido also met an unfortunate end. In eighteen sixty six, about a year after Lincoln's assassination, Fido, again very much a dog of the people, never met a person he didn't like. Fido is walking along, minding his own business, and he sniffs across somebody who appears to be sleeping on the sidewalk.
I thought you were going to say, sniff's a crotch of someone who appeared to be sleeping on the side.
Possibly both. I bet you. I bet you if you if a friendly dog met Union, didn't move, the first thing you would do is sniff your body.
He wants to be sure if you're cool. But this guy was not cool, As it turns out, there's a couple of accounts of the story, conflicting accounts. We'll go with the most sensationalized, depressing account, which is that first that is, which is that this intoxicated gentleman, this roused about this. This kind of delinquent guy woke from his drunken stupor and stabbed the dog, you know, to death with a knife.
In a panic, right attacked. Yeah, well the yeah.
And I've even seen it was even written up that it was more malicious that he was just like in his drunken rage. Should probably read that when actually it was a letter that came from the caretaker of the dog.
Yes, in nineteen fifty four, John Roll, the caretaker of Fido himself, laid the following information to Time magazine.
Okay, so more of an interview than a letter, But here we go. I didn't realize this came so late in the game. He must have been quite old.
So you can see how he could get some facts wrong. Yeah.
So, but the way he tells it is a little bit more. This is the most malicious account of this guy. He says, quote, we possessed the dog for a number of years until one day the dog, in a playful manner, put his dirty paws. There's dirty paws again upon a drunken man sitting on the street curbing, which I think that means like whittling, and in a drunken rage, thrust his knife into the body of poor old Fido. So Fido, just a poor yellow dog, met the same fate as his illustrious master assassination.
So that's that's the most sensationalized version. But as as we've established earlier, that may not be entirely accurate, and even today people disagree on the specifics. We're talking about this guy right who's on the street whittling his pine stick or whatever, but we haven't given him a name yet.
No, we haven't. And that's the thing about the way these kinds of stories get passed around. It's really easy to want to demonize the man who murdered Abe Lincoln's old yelled mongrel dog in the streets in a drunken rage, but a little less cut and dry when you actually realize that there was a human here with the story. Another spin on the story that you can find comes from a story in the Illinois State Journal from eighteen ninety three, and here is a quote from that that also gives some pretty pretty sad details to the end of old Fido's life, whichever way he ultimately went, whether by force or by accident. Quote, he Fido was exceedingly friendly and had a habit of showing his congeniality by depositing his muddy yellow four paws plump on the breast of any who addressed him familiarly.
Oh, and you can't yell at him for his pause.
Yeah, that's another one of Lincoln's conditions to the role family. Hm. I continue. His excessive friendliness eventually caused his death in a very unique way, and that Fido suffered the fate of his master assassination. The dog, which was a yellow fellow of moderate size, ran against Charlie Plank, who was whittling a stick with a sharp, long bladed knife. By an accidental move while the dog was expressing himself in caresses, the blade was buried deep in his body. He shot out the door like a flash and was never seen again alive. Apparently it was a week or more before they found his body a month. Yeah, behind the old chimney stack of the Universalist Church there in Springfield.
So he got stabbed and ran in fear, right, That is.
What animals tend to do when they are mortally wounded. They want to go die alone. I think a house or something.
And I think humans qualify as animals. It's true that part. Charlie Plank's story doesn't end with this murder of Fido. We know a little bit more about him. He had a couple of other encounters with law enforcement after he was Oh, we didn't mention it. He was a veteran, Yeah, that's right. He was a veteran of the Civil War. He was a member of Company G of the one hundred and fourteenth Illinois Infantry Regiment, which was considered a pretty illustrious company if I'm not mistaken. Yeah, And we know that he had been beaten and robbed by two men on North seventh Street in eighteen sixty five. We know he got in an argument with a guy named Peter Burns in eighteen sixty eight, ending the argument by drawing a revolver with small shot and shooting Burns in the shoulder. Again, it was a different time he also got He also was involved in a court case. Burns was fined at the sum of three dollars quote for using language to Charles playing calculated to provoke a breach of the peace. Language you say fighting words. Oh my goodness, I said, you wastrel, you dunderhead astrel? Is that like a wasskly rabbit. It's a wasteful or good for nothing person.
As that must have fallen out of popularity. I don't know that one.
So we know what roughly happened to Plank. He had his up seat, his downs. He had been in some legal altercations. He moved to Michigan, eventually worked as a clerk and expressman, and passed away in March of nineteen seventeen. He is buried on the grounds of the Grand Rapids Veteran Home. Now, this sounds like it's all ending on a downer, but this is that's not the case, because when we look at Fido, you know what it reminds me of. It reminds me of how Max the gorilla in South Africa grabbed such attention and locked into the zeitgeist. The photography is a relatively new medium. People love animals. There's a picture of an animal that is published and syndicated papers across the nation.
People are against stabbing animals.
Thank God, generally speaking.
Yeah, that's part of the story. I didn't know, though. I knew about Fido, and I knew he was Abe Lincoln's old yellow mongrel best friend for life. I didn't know that that kind of more melancholy part of the story. So it's interesting. But yeah, and to this day, I mean, like you said, Fido equals dog, like Xerox equals you know, photocopy.
Right right right? Or Google equals Internet.
Search you mean WebCrawler. What are you talking about Google?
What are the other ones? There's Prodigy like yeah, and uh, you know lactose and that's a different that's a different thing entirely. You might still have your AOL CDs friends and neighbors.
I keep a stack of them to use as coasters and just to hand out to people as party gifts when they come by the house.
I always love to frisbee though, huh. Me and my old dog would would frisbee those things.
Oh, man, tell us about your old dog.
It's too soon, man, really yeah.
Wow, A beloved pet.
A beloved pet, very much. So I love pets and we hope you do too. Yes, Fido became the world's most famous dog for a.
Time because I think of a more famous one.
Because mass media was going out.
Let's see, how was that one they shot into space? Right?
H you make that up? No, the Russian dog and then there though I can't remember, we can find it. His name is on record, and we should do a thing on animals in space. But spoiler, there are a couple of doubters, and.
That especially if you're again like you should be against animal cruelty.
Right right, And so, although Fido's life ended too soon, he remains immortal as a symbol, the symbol, at least in American English, for all things cannot He is the quintessential I believe we used the word earlier, the quintessential image of a faithful, friendly dog, a good boy, a good.
Boy with b o ye it comes that good boy? Aw Snap, what up?
What up?
Family show? Looking up for yourself.
So here ends our story of the rise and fall and immortal fame of the most famous presidential dog, the frisky yellow Fido. But the story doesn't stop there, and it doesn't stop with Fido. If you haven't checked it out yet, do check out our community page Ridiculous Historians, where I believe Noel. Was it you or was it one of our fellow listeners who started that awesome threat about.
Past there's a cat thread. I think it's specifically about cats, and yeah, I posted a picture of my my good boy bad boy. Really Ert Robert Fernando because he's, you know, like I said at the top of the show, always bringing creepy little tribute dismembered tribute. Yeah, I'm not a fan.
He might be trying to teach you to hunt. Yeah, but do let us know about the dogs in your life. Send Casey and NOL and I some pictures, find us some ridiculous historians. You can also find us on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook, where we are Ridiculous History or some variation thereof.
It's true and as always, thank you to our super producer Casey Pegram, our super researcher Christopher Hasiotis and Alex Williams who composed our banging theme.
And super special thank you to our returning contributor Laurie L. Dove. We worked on a sound queue for you.
Laurie. Here we go. I like that and please don't forget to join us next time when we talk about historical mooning.
We were so proud of them.
Yes, yeah, that's good. On. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
