That's right, gang. 2009 (another year when the Union is in peril, appropriately enough) marks the 200th birthday of Abraham Lincoln. To celebrate, the National Portrait Gallery in Washington D.C. is curating the uber-creepily titled show "One Life: The Mask of Lincoln."

One of the little-known facts about Lincoln is that he was absolutely terrifying-looking, a fact which Leondard Wells Volk and Clark Mills apparently sought to embellish in their sculptures of the sixteenth president, pictured here.

The exhibition does not limit itself strictly to masks, however. There are also early photographs and dagerotypes that depict how Lincoln, being among the greatest Americans to ever live, was also way crazier looking than you even realized.
-AM