Work with an axe, become President...

See, you can spend your whole adolescence working with an axe and become the greatest President in history.  Maybe kids these days just aren't applying themselves to the right kinds of work.

Abraham Lincoln (books by this author) was born on this day (February 12) near Hodgenville, Kentucky (1809). Though he's generally considered possibly the greatest president in our country's history, fairly little is known about his early life. Unlike most presidents, he never wrote any memoirs. We know that he was born in a log cabin and had barely a year of traditional schooling. His mother died when he was nine, and he spent much of his adolescence working with an ax. But when he was in his early 20s, Lincoln apparently decided to make himself into a respectable man. Residents of the town of New Salem, Illinois, said that they remembered Lincoln just appearing in their town one day. People remembered him because he was one of the tallest people anyone had ever seen, about 6 feet 4 inches, and the pants that he wore were so short that they didn't even cover his ankles.

Now you can go back to cramming for the SAT.