Mo Rocca invades Danville to celebrate Abe Lincoln

RELEASED: January 8, 2009

DANVILLE, KY—Mo Rocca—journalist, NPR commentator, comedian, self-described "fundit" and regular contributor for CBS' Sunday Morning—will be visiting Danville along with the Kentucky Historical Society's "Kentucky's Abraham Lincoln" HistoryMobile exhibit in conjunction with the Kentucky Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial celebration.

Rocca and the HistoryMobile will be at Constitution Square on Thursday, Jan. 15 from 10:30 a.m. to 2 p.m. Rocca will be conducting his famous man-on-the-street interviews and filming for a CBS Sunday Morning segment. This event is free and open to the public.

Note: Come by Centre's communications office (Breeze House, 2nd floor) and (while supplies last) grab a copy of the College's official "Year of Lincoln" commemorative poster to get signed by Mo!

Rocca will be in Frankfort filming at the HistoryMobile and the KHS on Wednesday, January 14 from 1 p.m. to 4:30 p.m.

About the HistoryMobile
A mobile museum housed in a 45-foot tractor-trailer, the HistoryMobile features exhibits on Kentucky history. Since 1973, this program has presented a wide variety of exhibits on Kentucky history to at least one million Kentuckians, half of whom have been students.

As part of the Kentucky Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial commemoration, the traveling museum currently features an exhibit titled "Kentucky's Abraham Lincoln." The 300-square-foot exhibition explores Lincoln's frontier childhood, his career from log house to the White House, and his struggles to end slavery and lead the nation through the Civil War.

About Mo Rocca
In addition to his work for Sunday Morning, Rocca, a writer and political satirist with a particular reverence for Abraham Lincoln, is a regular panelist on National Public Radio's Wait Wait…Don't Tell Me!, appears on The Tonight Show on NBC, and was a regular contributor to The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. He also has provided celebrity commentary on VH1's Best Week Ever series, as well as the I Love The… shows, which include I Love the '80s and other decades.

Centre's Year of Lincoln
In honor of the 200th anniversary of Lincoln's birth (Feb. 12), Centre is sponsoring a host of projects honoring America's 16th president and the College's connections to him.

As Lincoln wrote in a biographical sketch, at age 23 he considered a career as a blacksmith. When his friend John Todd Stuart, Centre Class of 1826, encouraged him to study for the bar instead, Lincoln protested that he had nothing to study. Stuart promptly loaned Lincoln his own set of law books. Lincoln then, in his own words, "went at it in good earnest," and later passed the bar. He became Stuart's law partner, and the rest is history. Lincoln and Stuart remained friends until Lincoln's death in 1865. Stuart then headed the National Lincoln Monument Association that built a memorial to the fallen president in Springfield, Illinois.

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Founded in 1819, Centre College is ranked among the U.S. News top 50 national liberal arts colleges. Consumers Digest ranks Centre No. 1 in educational value among all U.S. liberal arts colleges. Centre alumni, known for their nation-leading loyalty in annual financial support, include two U.S. vice presidents and two Supreme Court justices. For more, visit http://www.centre.edu/web/elevatorspeech/

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