“The More One Knows, The Less The Hero”

Early Exploration:

• King John never signed the Magna Carta, he simply used the Seal because he didn’t know how to write.

• Bjarni Herjulfson was the first European to land in America in 985 AD Leif Ericsson was mistranslated when he called it Vineland. In 1963, remains of a Norse (Viking) settlement were discovered in northern Newfoundland at a place called L’Anse aux Meadows.

• Leif Ericsson was the first Viking to set up a settlement. He stayed for one winter before returning to Greenland.

• The Viking’s word for Indian was Skrelling.

• Some people believe that the Irish were here before the Vikings. But there still isn’t physical proof. The Irish claim that they landed in America during the ninth or tenth century, sailing in small boats called currash.

• Another popular myth, completely unfounded, regards a Welshman named Modoc who established a colony and taught the local Indians to speak Welsh.

• Recently, some believe that Chinese as well as Japanese had reached the western shore of North America. Chinese scholars contend that nine hundred years before Columbus, Buddhist seamen had explored what is now California and Mexico.

Christopher Columbus:

• Christopher Columbus didn’t prove the world round. Aristotle proved it round, pointing out during an eclipse that the earth casts a spherical shadow on the moon. Washington Irving popularized this myth.

• Queen Isabella also never had to pawn her jewels to finance the venture, it was paid for with government funds.

• Christopher Columbus’ real name was Cristoforo Colombo.

• On October 12 at 2:00 A.M., just as his crews were threatening to mutiny and force a return to Spain, a lookout named Rodrigo, aboard the Pinta, sighted moonlight shimmering on some cliffs or sand. Having promised a large reward to the first man to spot land, Columbus claimed that he had seen the light the night before, and kept the reward for himself.

• Columbus name the little island San Salvador - Guanahani to the natives.

• Believing he was on a island of the Indies or Indonesian Islands, Columbus named the natives indios.

• Columbus did discover tobacos - it became a real hit in Spain.

• The fort, Natividad was built of timbers from the wrecked Santa Maria.

• Columbus never reached the continent of North America. Most experts believe that John Cabot, from Italy, but sailing for England, was the first.

• Driven by an obsessive quest for gold, Columbus quickly enslaved the local population - an era of genocide was opened that raved the native American population through warfare, forced labor, cruel punishments, and European diseases.

• Columbus was directly responsible for the deaths of 250,000 Arawak Indians on the Island of Haiti. He had their hands cut off for not obeying him and they were left to bleed to death.

• Five Jews left with Columbus to escape the Spanish Inquisition.

• Columbus discovered the hammock when he saw Caribbean natives using them. He realized it could be used by sailors as beds on board a ship.

• Oranges are not indigenous to California nor Florida. Columbus brought them from Spain

Native Americans:

• Estimates of the Indian population at the time of Columbus vary, ranging from 8 million to 16 million people, spread over two continents. Although Hitler’s attempted extermination of the Jews of Europe was a calculated, methodical genocidal plan, the European destruction of the Indians was just as ruthlessly efficient, killing off perhaps 90 percent of the native population it found, all in the name of progress, civilization, and Christianity.

• The first settlers (Indians) came over to the new world by crossing the land bridge Bering Strait. It was so cold in upper North America, that most all of the microbes and parasites which cause diseases died. These first immigrants entered the Americas through a frigid decontamination chamber. The first settlers in the Western Hemisphere thus probably arrived in a healthier condition than most people on earth have enjoyed before or since. Many of the diseases that had long shadowed them simply could not survive the journey.

• Neither did some animals. People in the Western Hemisphere had no cows, pigs, horses, sheep, goats, or chickens before the arrival of Europeans and Africans after 1492. Many diseases from anthrax to tuberculosis, cholera to streptococcus’s, ringworm to various poxes - are passes back and forth between humans and livestock. Since early inhabitants of the Western Hemisphere had no livestock, they caught no diseases from them.

• The scarcity of disease in the Americas was also partly attributable to the basic hygiene practiced by the region’s inhabitants. Residents of northern Europe and England rarely bathed, believing it unhealthy, and rarely removed all of their clothing at one time, believing it immodest. The Pilgrims smelled bad to the Indians. Squanto “tired, without success to teach them to bathe,” according to Feenie Ziner.

• By the time the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock, ninety to ninety-six percent of the native population was lost due to diseases. In 1617, just before the Pilgrims landed, the process started in southern New England. For decades, British and French fishermen had fished off the Massachusetts coast. After filling their hulls with cod, they would go ashore to lay in firewood and fresh water and perhaps capture a few Indians to sell into slavery in Europe. Diseases such as the bubonic plague, viral hepatitis, smallpox, chicken pox, or influenza killed most of the Indians.

• Most Indians never came in contact with white people. They did have to come in contact. An infected Indian would bring the disease with him to a new village - only to infect the next village.

• The British for their first fifty years in New England would not face a real Indian challenge because there were not many Indians in the area that were alive.

• Europeans look at the Plagues as “God’s message” that he favored the Europeans and wanted the Indians to die!

• By the time the Indian populations of New England had replenished themselves to some degree, it was too late to expel the intruders.

• Charles Darwin once put the situation of the plagues as: “Wherever the European had trod, death seems to pursue the aboriginal.”

* Pestilence is surely the most important event in the history of America. By 1840, 98 percent of the entire Indian population in North America had been genocide.*

• Indian women were also given more status and power in most Native societies than in white societies.

• White Americans could not understand why Indians didn’t value land ownership. To whites, owning land was a dream come true. Even General Philip Sheridan of the Civil War - who is notorious for having said, “The only good Indian is a dead Indian’ -understood Native beliefs of land. “We took away their country and their means of support, and it was for this and against this they made war,” he wrote

• Indians taught Americans about scalping. During the cold winter months, the steam coming off the freshly cut scalped heads was believed by Indians to be a lost soul - Indians feared this more than anything! We got even by deliberately spreading diseases to Indians. We gave away free blankets to the Indians that had covered the bodies of people who had small-pox and other diseases.

• Native American ideas may be partly responsible for our democratic institutions. We have seen how Native ideas of liberty, fraternity, and equality found their way to Europe to influence social philosophers such as Thomas More, Locke, Montaigne, Montesquieu, and Rousseau. These European thinkers then influenced Americans such as Franklin, Jefferson, and Madison

• Adolf Hitler studied American history and admired our concentration camps for Indians in the west. He often praised the efficiency of America’s extermination - by starvation and uneven combat - he mode for his extermination of Jews, Gypsies, and undesirables.

Other Early Explorers:

• The first European to set foot on what would become the United States is Ponce de Leon, the Spanish adventurer who conquered Puerto Rico and tried to find the “Fountain of Youth.” He named Florida in 1513 and discovered Mexico on the same trip.

• Ponce de Leon’s main business was capturing slaves for Hispaniola.

• Amerigo Vespucci never realized that America was not part of Asia as acclaimed. Vespucci lied about beating Columbus to the mainland in an account of a 1497 voyage that was completely fabricated. So “America, as Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote, must wear the name of the thief Amerigo Vespucci, the pickle dealer at Seville who managed in this lying world to suppress Columbus and baptize half the world with his own dishonest name.” Martin Waldsemuller, a German map maker, place the name of Amerigo on his map of the new world - he too was fooled about who really discovered the “New World.”

• Some historians argue that Vespucci did sail to the New World and reached the mouth of the Amazon. The reason Waldsemuller gave Vespucci credit is that in Vespucci’s journal he wrote the word “Mundus Novus”, or “New World.”

• Balboa was not the first European to see the Pacific Ocean. Thousands of Europeans had seen it from Asia by looking east.

• Balboa virtually wiped out a village of Indians because the chief liked to dress in women’s clothes. Six hundred people were killed, most by Balboa’s man-eating dogs - bull mastiffs (150 lbs).

• The Spanish introduced horses, cattle, sheep, pigs, and the basic elements of cowboy culture.

• Hernando de Cortes introduced Europe to chocolatl from the Aztecs. It was considered an aphrodisiac.

• Cortes had all horses which were killed to be buried so that the Indians would think the horses were Gods.

• An Italian named Giovanni Caboto (John Cabot) sailed for the English. In 1496, Cabot and his son, Sebastian sailed on the Matthew and reached present day Newfoundland, laying a claim that would eventually provide the English with their foothold in the New World. Sailing with five ships on a subsequent voyage in 1498, Cabot ran into bad weather. One of the vessels returned to an Irish port, but Cabot disappeared with the four other ships.

• It is believed that the Portugese were the first Europeans to enslave Africans - some fifty years before Columbus sailed.

• Henry Hudson did not discover the Hudson Bay or Hudson River, he merely explored both. Verrazano discovered the River 85 years earlier.

• Sir Walter Raleigh did not introduce tobacco to England or Europe, it was first introduced into England in 1586 by a couple of sea captains.

• Tobacco was considered excellent medicine. “It opens all the pores and passages of the body, and users are in better health because of smoking it.”

• Captain John Smith was never saved by Pocahontas. He made up the whole story.

• John Smith named Plymouth six years before the Pilgrims arrived there.

• The “Susan Constant, Discovery, and Goodspeed were the names of the ships which brought the Jamestown settlers over.

The Pilgrims:

• During the first winter with the Pilgrims, of the 1,000 Indians living in the area 950 died.

• The Pilgrim’s didn’t land first at Plymouth (Plymouth Rock), but landed at Provincetown. There was no Plymouth Rock for more than 100 years!

The Pilgrims never and couldn’t have landed on Plymouth Rock. The ocean current would have made it impossible.

• Native farming methods were not “primitive.” Indian farmers in some tribes drew two or three times as much nourishment from the soil as we do.

• The Pilgrims might have actually wanted to land in Plymouth and not in Virginia - it might not have to do anything with a storm. Bear in mind that only Thirty-five out of the 102 passengers were Pilgrims. Most came over to seek their fortunes in the new Virginia colony.

• Thanksgiving Day originated in Holland in 1574 but the huge festivities were copied from the Indians. The Pilgrims spent twelve years in Leiden, Netherlands and picked up the custom. But the custom of a huge celebration - the one we celebrate - came from the Indians. Even though the Pilgrims learned about Thanksgiving in Holland, they never seen such a feast until the Indians presented it to them. Pumpkins, turkeys, corn and squash are all indigenous to America. It was the Indians who invited the Europeans not the Europeans inviting the Indians. The Indians called the day the “harvest celebration,” and had been following this custom for centuries.

• The Pilgrims had nothing to do with Thanksgiving as a national holiday. The annual drawing and coloring of young students in American schools are recognizing the wrong people - The Separatists were very poor and could not afford the expensive clothes. It was the Puritans who dressed that way! The Native Americans that wear feathers were not from anywhere near the North Eastern part of the U.S. Not until the 1890’s did they get included with the celebration and for that matter, no one used the term Pilgrims until the 1870’s.

• Plymouth, unlike most other colonies, usually paid the Indians for the land.

• There was one black man in Plymouth Colony. His name was Abraham Pearce.

• Through New England, colonists appropriated Indian cornfields for their initial settlements, avoiding the backbreaking labor of clearing the land of forest and rock - this explains why so many towns throughout the region end in field “Marshfield, Springfield, Deerfield.”

• Squanto just didn’t learn English from some fishermen. In 1614 a British slave raider seized Squanto and two dozen fellow Indians and sold them into slavery in Malaga, Spain. Squanto escapes from slaver, escapes from Spain, and made his way back to England. After trying to get home via Newfoundland, in 1619 he talked Thomas Demer into taking him along on his next trip to Cape Cod. When Squanto came back to Patuxet he was horrified by the discovery that he was the sole member of his village still alive. All the others had perished in the epidemic two years before. No wonder Squanto threw in his lot with the Pilgrims. Squanto was used as a translator, ambassador, and technical advisor. He was essential to the survival of Plymouth in its first two years. Massasoit, the Chief Indian of the area sent another Indian, Hobomok, to live among the Pilgrims for several years as guide and ambassador. Hobomok helped Plymouth set up fur trading posts at the mouth of the Penobscot and Kennebec rivers in Maine; in Aptucxet, Massachusetts; and in Windsor, Connecticut.

• King James and the early Pilgrim leaders gave thanks for the plague, which proved to them that “God was on their side.”

• By 1840 the Pilgrims weren’t even known as Pilgrims. They were called the “Old Comers” or the “Forefather.”

• The Pilgrims did not use democracy as their form of government in the Mayflower Compact they used a communist economy. After a couple of years of communism, they finally decided that it was inefficient so they switched to capitalism - individual incentives.

• Pilgrims thought that marriage was secular (non-religious) so they never married in the church until after 1750.

• Pilgrims adopted a law making it illegal to earn money by representing a person in court. In 1658 they passed a law expelling all attorneys from the colony.

• Celebrating Christmas was a serious crime in Plymouth. It won’t be until the mid 1800’s that this tradition was found appropriate

The Puritans:

• Purintanism: “The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.”

• There once was a governor of New York who was a transvestite. His name was Lord Cornbury, and he served from 1702 to 1708. He appeared at public ceremonies in full drag, wearing a dress, silk stockings, and an elaborate hairdo. He let his nails grow long and customarily donned high-heeled boots. (see portrait, page 24 - One Night Stands)

• Any Puritan child who did not honor their father or mother was put to death. Children never gave their parents any problems.

• In colonial America, more than two hundred crimes were punishable by death.

• Puritan clergymen specifically urged parents not to get close to one’s children. In fact, most children were sent away by the age of twelve to live somewhere else - maybe a distant relative.

• One could be found guilty of murder if during the court proceedings the judge made the defendant touch the corpse and if the corpse started bleeding it meant the defendant was guilty.

• It one committed or was accused of adultery in Plymouth or Massachusetts Bay, you would have to wear a scarlet letter “A” on part of your clothing.

• The potato is not indigenous to Ireland - it came from North Carolina.

Other Early Colonies:

• Peter Minuit thought he pulled a fast one on the Indians when he purchased Manhattan Island for about $24.00 (60 Dutch guilders) worth of beads. Actually, the Indians pulled many fast ones on us because they sold Manhattan Island eight times - and they never thought anybody could own land anyway and they would have let all people stay free in the first place.

• Mother Goose wasn’t Elizabeth (Foster) Goose, who was born in 1665. Elizabeth had nothing to do with nursery rhymes; the Mother Goose rhymes were the work of Charles Perrault, the same Frenchman who invented the tales of Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty. The name came from one of his books which was titled, Tales of My Mother Goose.

• In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries it was customary to provide guests at funerals with gifts, including a black scarf, a pair of black gloves, and a mourning ring. During the revolution, black armbands replaced the morning ring as a sign of mourning.

• Wives were considered property and could be loaned out.

• Wall Street received its name in 1644, when New York City built a wall around lower Manhattan to protect cattle from Indian raids.

• Most textbooks spend little time talking about the Indian Wars. But the greatest Indian War of all time - King Philips War, had more causalities than the French and Indian War, the Revolution, the War of 1812, the Mexican War, and the Spanish-American War. To celebrate the end of King Phillips War, the worst Indian war in New England’s history, the colonists placed Chief Metacomet’s head on a pole outside the gates of Plymouth for twenty-five years.

• Betsy Parris and the other girls who swore, during the Salem Witch Trials of 1692, that they saw witches and were being bitten by them, may actually believed they were. Researchers believe the girls were suffering from ergotism, a toxic condition produced by eating grain tainted with the parasitic fungus Ergot, Genus Clavicepts. Ergot is a hallucinogen related to LSD.

• The Reverend Cotton Mather, famous for his input with the Salem Witch Trials, wrote more than 450 books and pamphlets during his life

• George Fox, the founder of the Quaker religion, believed that no ministry or clergy was necessary for worship, and the word of God was found in the human soul, not necessarily in the Bible. This believe eliminated also all parts of organized religion, including church buildings and formal liturgy. In a Friends meeting, members sat in silent meditation until the “inward light,” a direct spiritual communication from God, caused a believer to physically tremble or quake - the source of the group’s commonly used name. Fox also took literally the commandment “Thou shalt not kill,” beginning a long tradition of Quaker pacifism.

• In 1732, a German-born printer, John Peter Zenger was hired to edit and produce the New York Weekly Journal. Governor Cosby found intolerable articles on the back-page. The articles said the governor was likened to a monkey and his supporters to spaniels. Cosby shut down the paper, charged Zenger with seditious libel, and had him jailed for ten months. Zenger’s trial and acquittal marked the first landmark in the tradition of a free press, a somewhat radical notion that became the law of the land as part of the First Amendment in the Bill of Rights

• The order of becoming the thirteen original colonies:

1. 1607 - Virginia (Jamestown)

2. 1620 - Massachusetts (Plymouth and Massachusetts Bay Colony)

3. 1626 - New York (originally New Amsterdam)

4. 1633 - Maryland

5. 1636 - Rhode Island

6. 1636 - Connecticut

7. 1638 - Delaware (originally New Sweden)

8. 1638 - New Hampshire (including New Haven)

9. 1653 - North Carolina

10. 1663 - South Carolina

11. 1664 - New Jersey

12. 1682 - Pennsylvania

13. 1732 - Georgia

* Maine was never one of the original 13 colonies - it was made out of the land from Massachusetts in 1820 as part of a compromise.

Revolutionary Times:

• Only three people died at the Boston Massacre and two were wounded. Crispus Attacks, one of the people who was killed at the Boston Massacre, was not only Black he was also Indian.

• Ben Franklin is said to have believed in the divinity of Christ, but is also reported to have thought that there might be other gods as well. He strongly believed in an afterlife.

• Ben Franklin’s pen name was Richard Saunders - Poor Richard’s Almanac

• Some examples from Benjamin Franklin’s Poor Richard’s Almanac:

- “He that lies down with dogs, shall rise up with fleas.”

- “god works wonders now and then; behold an hones layer!”

- “Three may keep a secret, if two of them are dead.”

- “Fish and visitors stink in three days.”

- “He that lives upon hope, dies farting.”

- “Keep your eyes wide open before marriage, half shut afterwards.”

- “Be slow in making friends, and slower in losing them.”

• Ben Franklin’s idea of creating the Albany Plan for the Union actually came from the idea of the Iroquois in the 1740’s when the Indians suggested that the bickering colonies form a union as their Indian League.

• Ben Franklin once said, “No European who has tasted Savage Life can afterwards bear to live in our societies. Many Africans as well as whites defected and went to live with the Indians. The Pilgrims so feared Indianization that they made it a crime for men to wear long hair. “People who did run away to the Indians might expect extreme punishments, even up to the death penalty,” if caught by whites. African Americans often fled to Indian societies to escape bondage.

• When Ben Franklin was told that the Bald Eagle was to become America’s national symbol he was very upset and said to his daughter, “For my part, I wish the bald eagle had not been chosen as the symbol of our country; he is a bird of bad moral character; he does not get his living honestly; you may have seen him perched on some dead tree, where, too lazy to fish for himself, he watches the labor of the fishing hawk (waiting to steal that bird’s food).” Franklin thought a more uniquely American bird should have been selected by the Continental Congress. His choice, the turkey!

• When John Hancock remarked at the signing of the Declaration of Independence he said, “We must be unanimous - we must all hang together.” “We must indeed all hang together,” agreed Ben Franklin, “Or, most assuredly, we shall all hang separately.”

• When Phillis Wheatley’s Poems on Various Subject, first book ever published by an American Negro, appeared in London in 1773, someone bound a copy of the book in Negro skin.

• The Boston Tea Party fixed in the American mind the belief that the British tax on tea was an appalling burden. But it was not. Tea actually cost less in America than in Britain - even with the tax. When colonist took action to oppose unjust authority, as in the Boston Tea Party they chose to dress as Indians, not to blame Indians for the demonstration or to hide behind a Indian disguise but to appropriate a symbol identified with liberty.

• The American victory at the Battle of Trenton almost had a different outcome. A loyalist spy tried to warn the German Hessians on Christmas Day but a guard outside of the headquarters made the spy write down the message, the guard then took the message to Colonel Rall inside the headquarters. The colonel and the other officers were in the middle of playing cards and the colonel put the note into his pocket. By the time the colonel remembered the note, the Americans had begun their attack.

• After the Revolutionary War the Americans taxed themselves higher than the British had.

• Our Revolution in compared to others in world history was more like a party.

• The average age in America in 1800 was thirty-six and in Britain nineteen.

• In George Washington’s day, it was the custom at formal dinners and receptions in Virginia society for women, to display ample cleavage, which was enhanced by the use of very tight stays. Some even rouged a nipple and exposed it, while others even more daring often plopped a rose petal or two between their breasts to be fingered by some gallant man during the course of the evening’s festivities.

• Lancaster, Pennsylvania, was capital of the U.S. for one day. It occurred when British General Sir William Howe and his troops were approaching Philadelphia and the Congress fled to Lancaster, sixty miles west of Philadelphia. Although New York was the first capital of the new republic, Philadelphia was the second, and remained until the seat of government moved to Washington DC.

• The White House was named after Martha Washington’s plantation in Virginia. It was painted white after it was burned during the War of 1812. Martha was considered one of the prettiest and wealthiest women of her day.

• The founders of the Declaration of Independence didn’t believe all men are created equal. They apparently believed all men are created equal in the eyes of the law, and that was all. They did not believe men are socially or economically equal and didn’t believe they should be.

• The Declaration of Independence saying that “all men are created equal” only meant equal under the law - not economically or socially. Plus, the Declaration was not approved on July 4, but on July 2, 1776. Only John Hancock, President of Congress, and Charles Thomson, secretary, signed it on the fourth - the majority signed it later on August 2, 1776 The Declaration Of Independence was originally written in French. The adoption of the Declaration went virtually unnoticed in England, where the ceremony received only a six-line mention in a London paper, buried below a theater review.

• Our Founders haven’t always been revered. Most have only been thought of highly since this century.

• George Washington never signed the Declaration. He was too busy fighting the War.

• George Washington never took off one day during the eight and one half years of the Revolution. If he would have accepted a salary it would have totaled $449.261.51, which converted into modern dollars, is somewhere $5 and $25 million. He never took a penny.

• Washington’s teeth for chewing were made out of lead. Artist Gilbert Stuart had a special set of teeth carved from hippopotamus ivory for Washington in order to fill out Washington’s face. Artistically, great, the plates were worthless for eating and very uncomfortable to wear.

• George Washington had our government loan hundreds of thousands of dollars to the French planter in Haiti to help them suppress their slaves.

• Washington was a terrible public speaker so he wrote his Farewell Address.

• President Washington never shook hands. George would only occasionally wear a Whig. He usually tied back his hair and put white powder in it to help keep the smell down and the lice off.

• Washington’s family motto was “Exitus acta probat” (the end justifies the means).

• When Washington died, he provided in his will for the emancipation of his slaves on the death of Martha, his wife. Washington was the only member of the Virginia dynasty to free all of his slaves.

• All people had strong body orders in the 1700 and 1800’s. They didn’t bath regularly because they considered it unhealthy.

• Indian warfare absorbed 80 percent of the entire federal budget during George Washington’s administration.

• Thomas Jefferson had four children by his black slave Sally Hemmings. Jefferson was a very poor speaker, so he began a custom of not personally addressing Congress - he sent a letter instead. Not until Woodrow Wilson became President in 1914, did Presidents start addressing Congress in person again.

• Even though most people are convinced that Jefferson was an atheist, he was probably more religious than Washington. Jefferson read the Bible regularly. He even publicly announced he was a Christian.

• Jefferson believed the press had only the right to print the truth. Whereas, Madison believed in the “total freedom of the press.”

• Thomas Jefferson and John Adams died on the very same day - July 4, 1826. James Madison also died on July 4, 1834.

• Haym Salomon, Polish-born banker and American colonial patriot, lent the Revolutionary government a total of $7000 thousand, without which the U.S. probably not have won their independence. Salomon never was paid back and died poor.

• The Marquis de Lafayette’s full name was: Jean Marie Paul Roche Yves Gilber Motier, Marquis de Lafayette.

• John Paul Jones ship, Bonhomme Richard, was destroyed by the Serapis but the British didn’t know this and surrendered to Jones. Jones was from Scotland and never visited the U.S.

• The first submarine in history was built by the Americans during the Revolution. The vessel’s name was the Turtle and David Bushnell, the inventor, was a Yale graduate. It consisted of a wood frame, several small windows, and a hand-driven propeller. Big enough for only a single person, it reached speeds of up to three miles an hour and could stay submerged for approximately thirty minutes. On the outside was an egg-shaped time bomb equipped with an iron screw for penetrating the hulls of enemy ships. The Turtle was used only once during the Revolution.

• Betsy Ross had nothing to do with the Stars and Stripes. Betsy Ross played no role in making the flag! Ross came to prominence around 1876, when some of her descendants, seeking to create a tourist attraction in Philadelphia, largely invented the myth of the first flag

• The American flag had fifteen stripes from 1795 to 1818, when the number was reduced to thirteen by and Act of Congress - we had more than 13 colonies during the Revolution.

• Ethan Allen is a national hero, exalted for his daring assault on Fort Ticonderoga. A furniture store chain is even named after him. He was a crafty land speculator and he secretly negotiated with the British during the American Revolution. In the 1770’s with the help of roving bands of mounted Green Mountain Boys, he launched a campaign of terror to prevent New York from taking possession of land he claimed as his own in an area in dispute between New York and New Hampshire. Before he was through he burned down several homes, destroyed a few mills, and set up a kangaroo court in which he condemned colonial officials to punishment by whipping. Ethan Allen, of the Green Mountain Boys fame, is the most overrated revolutionary hero: he may even qualify as another Benedict Arnold. Allen opened secret negotiations with Britain; apparently to try to secure royal recognition of more than a quarter million acres of disputed Vermont land his family claimed. At one point he even promised to take Vermont out of the war in return for certain land concessions. The British wouldn’t go along, however, and the deal fell through. Ethan Allen swindled land out of his neighbors in Vermont, and cavorted with the British during the Revolution; when he was captured he not only refused to try to escape but he prevented others from doing so, at one point stopping the captain of a privateer from taking over a lightly defended British ship.

• Unknown Joshua Barney was truly a real hero of two wars - The Revolution and The War of 1812. He played the hero’s role in twenty-some battles. At the outset of the Revolution, over the course of a month and a half, he helped capture three British ships, two of them virtually single-handedly. Toward the end of the war, though commanding an inferior ship, he took on and defeated a British vessel in what has been described as the single “most outstanding” naval victory of the Revolution. During the battle he exposed himself to gunfire, his hat was shot off, and his uniform was “riddled with bullets.” In the War of 1812 he delayed the British attack on Washington by six hours by seizing five naval guns with a commanding view of the British forces and firing ceaselessly. After other American troops had fled, the little force under his command continued firing, Barney atop a horse giving the orders. Several times in his career he was captured by British forces and escaped, once after dressing in a British officer’s uniform. But despite his brilliant deployments and gallant action, Barney remains unknown.

• Nathan Hale never said, “I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my country, and Patrick Henry never said, “Give me liberty or give me death!” Actually William Wirt, a Virginia lawyer and man of letters, actually wrote both to make these figures and many others seem more historic.

• During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries it was the custom for local candidates to treat voters to free drinks. Those who didn’t get elected. In 1758, George Washington ran for an important seat in the Virginia House of Burgesses. He only bought 144 gallons of rum, beer, wine, and punch. This small amount cost him the election. In 1760, he easily won, after he obtained the necessary votes by donating 2 gallons for every vote gotten.

• Not all the British colonies in North America rebelled against England. Only thirteen fought in the Revolution. I Nova Scotia, Canada, British West Indies, Jamaica, Bermuda, and Barbados did not.

• Morocco was the first nation to recognize the United States.

• We had fourteen presidents before George Washington. They were the presidents of the Continental Congress from 1774 to 1789, and their names were: Peyton Randolph, Henry Middleton, John Hancock, Henry Laurens, John Jay, Samuel Huntington, Thomas McKean, John Hanson, Elias Boudinot, Thomas Mifflin, Richard Henry Lee, Nathan Gorham, Arthur St. Clair, and Cyrus Griggin. John Hanson is considered by some to be the first United States president, since he was the first to serve under the Articles of Confederation.

• The first president of the U.S. was John Adams, who had been elected Vice-president but took the oath of office nine days before George Washington. George was delayed and late for his inauguration.

• The founders never wanted the general public to elect Presidents directly. They didn’t want the electoral college to elect Presidents either. They expected the electors would be deadlock, throwing the contest into the House of Representatives. James Madison predicted that this would happen nine times out of ten. The Electoral College was not wanted by our Founding Fathers. They only allowed this compromise because they figured that 95% of the elections would end up in the House of Representatives anyway.

• The “Liberty Bell” was almost used as scrap metal. And it’s name has nothing to do with our country getting liberty (freedom), but the name was coined by antislavery activists. The Liberty Bell never rang the announcing of American Independence.

• Paul Revere was never heard of until Henry Wadsworth Longfellow wrote his poem.. Plus, Revere never made it to Lexington, because he was captured along with William Dawes who journeyed along with Revere. Actually Dr. Samuel Prescott, veterinarian, made this historic journey. Boston born, Revere was the son of a Huguenot, the French Protestants who had been driven from France. In America, he changed his name from Apollos Rivoire. A silversmith like his father, Paul Revere also went into the false-teeth business. Revere did make it to Concord and was able to worn the patriots to hide the ammunition in Concord, but not on the night of the famous “Mid Night Ride.” This first ride happened earlier in the week.

The Early 1800’s:

• Alexander Hamilton saved our country in 1804 when he stopped Thomas Pickering of Massachusetts and Aaron Burr from having the South secede from the Union. Burr had joined a group of men who were known as the “Essex Junto” - this group wanted to break away from the Union. Their conspiracy would have been historically laughable had it not ended in tragedy. Part of their plan was to support Aaron Burr for governor of New York. No friend of Jefferson’s, Burr had been frozen out of power in the Jefferson administration, and then unceremoniously dumped by his party as candidate for Vice-president (and replaced by George Clinton, the again governor of New York). The long-standing hatred between Burr and Alexander Hamilton resurfaced as Hamilton used all his influence to defeat Burr in the governor’s race. Hamilton politically destroyed Burr by announcing to the people of New York about Burr’s sexual exploits. A few months after the election, Burr challenged Hamilton to a duel, and they met on the morning of Wednesday, July 11, 1804, on the cliffs above the Hudson in Weehawken, New Jersey. Hamilton’s son had died in a duel, and he opposed the idea of dueling, but personal honor and that of the fading Federalist party forced his hand. Hamilton fired first but missed. Burr didn’t and Hamilton was mortally wounded and suffered for thirty hours before dying.

• Burr was done in American history. Politically ambitious, Burr envisioned securing a western empire for himself to rule - Mexico. With James Wilkinson, one of Washington’s wartime generals who was appointed by Jefferson to govern Louisiana, but who was secretly on the Spanish payroll, Burr organized a small force in 1806 to invade Mexico and create a new nation in the West. For some reason, Wilkinson betrayed Burr and the conspiracy was foiled. Burr was captured and placed on trial for treason, with Chief Justice John Marshall presiding. Jefferson’s hatred for Burr was unleashed as he did everything in his power to convict his former vice-president. But the crafty old Federalist Marshall saw the trial as another way to undermine Jefferson, and his charge to the jury all but acquitted Burr. Following a second treason charge, Burr jumped bail and fled to Europe. He did return to New York in 1812. Aaron Burr was convicted of adultery at the age of eighty

• When Aaron Burr killed Alexander Hamilton in 1804, Burr was vice-president of the United States

• The following is a partial list of leading Americans who at one time or another made or accepted the challenge to a duel:

Benedict Arnold

Aaron Burr

Henry Clay

De Witt Clinton

Nathanel Greene

Alexander Hamilton

Samuel Houston

Andrew Jackson

John Jay

Abraham Lincoln

James Madison

Winfield Scott

• The greatest margin of victory for President happened in 1820, when James Monroe beat John Quincy Adams by 231 votes to one.

• The Great Awakening - rebirth of Christian faith in America, was caused essentially because of two ministers - Jonathan Edwards and George Whitefield.

• The subject of sex may be the biggest myth of all. Between 1720 and 1740, nearly half of newlywed couples had a baby before their marriage was eight months old. Children were not as naive as we’ve been taught. Most families slept in the same room together. Today, not even liberal parents allow their teenage daughters to sleep with boyfriends. But the Puritans did - as long as everyone remained clothed. This practice was known as bundling. Sometimes this practice led to sexual experimentation.

• The history of why we have abortions has always been controversial. During the 19th century, about all that physicians and lay people alike knew was that at some point after sexual intercourse the male sperm began to develop into a recognizably potential human being. As a result, everyone believed that life began at about four months, when the mother felt the baby move in her stomach (a moment known as quickening). In 1920, when abortion was illegal, one in four pregnancies ended in abortion.

• Johnny Appleseed was a real person. His name was John Chapman and he did plant apple seeds in the Ohio River area.

• Eli Whitney did not devise the principle of interchangeable parts. A Frenchman, Honore Blanc, made the firing mechanisms for muskets out of interchangeable parts. Whitney’s muskets are engraved with special marks - marks that would only be necessary if the manufacturer had failed to achieve interchangeability. Whitney also did not invent the Cotton Gin - it was invented in Asia and perfected in Santo Domingo in the 1740’s. This Santo Domingo gin, however, didn’t work on the slippery seeds of American cotton. Whitney’s gin was effective on American cotton, but it was equipped with a wire brush that needed constant cleaning and wasn’t very effective. Hodgen Homes invented a gin equipped with sawteeth, which allowed for the continuous operation of the device without cleaning.

• Robert Fulton didn’t event the steam engine. The first steam engine was invented by James Rumsey of Virginia. But the engine only had a speed of four miles per hour. John Fitch had more success. He built a boat that could carry up to sixty passengers and had a top speed of eight miles per hour. Fulton’s ship wasn’t called the Clermont but the “North River Steam Boat.”

• Voting wasn’t always done by secret ballot. In the 1800’s it was done “viv voce” (saying yeah or neah): at the town hall, or indicated by raising one’s hand at the public square.

• After we paid Napoleon $15 million in 1803 for Louisiana, we then paid Indian tribes more than twenty times that amount for the same territory. France did not really sell Louisiana for $15,000,000. France merely sold its claim to the territory. Between 1819 to 1890 we had more than fifty Indians wars in the Louisiana Territory.

• One result of the War of 1812 was the Indian Wars after 185, while they cost thousands of lives on both sides, would never again amount to a serious threat to the United States.

• The largest pressure group behind the War of 1812 was slaveholders who coveted Indian and Spanish land and wanted to drive Indian societies farther away from the slaveholding states to prevent slave escapes.

• The Seminoles’ refusal to surrender their African American runaway members led to the First and Second Seminole Wars (1816-18, 1835-42). Whites attacked not because they wanted the Everglades, which had no economic value to the United States in the nineteenth century, but to eliminate a refuge for runaway slaves. The Second Seminole War was the longest and costliest war the United States ever fought against Indians.

• From 1815 on, instead of spreading democracy, we exported the ideology of white supremacy. Gradually we sought American dominance over Mexico, the Philippines, and much of the Caribbean islands.

• John Marshall served both as John Adam’s Secretary of State and Chief Justice at the same time for six weeks. Chief Justice John Marshall had only two months’ of legal training in his life. In addition, he was Thomas Jefferson’s cousin

• There is no constitutional requirement that there be nine justices of the Supreme Court. The number has frequently varied. Originally the Supreme Court had only a chief justice and four associate justices. The office of Chief Justice of the United States is not mentioned in the Constitution, nor are the powers of the Supreme Court more than generally defined. The newest member of the Supreme Court always votes first, so that he or she will not be inhibited by the more senior justices.

• More than half the chief justices of the United States never attended law school. Until the early twentieth century, lawyers, rather than attending school., more often learned their profession by reading law in law offices.

• William Plumer was the only elector to cast a negative vote against President Monroe in 1820 - but he didn’t do because of tradition of respect to George Washington but because he didn’t like Monroe’s big spending plan.

• In the election of 1824 several men became candidates. The leading candidates for President in 1824 were all from the same party, the Democratic Republicans of Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe. Even John Quincy Adams, son of the last Federalist President, was now a member of this party and as Monroe’s Secretary of State, a leading contender for the presidency. The other chief candidates, all from the South or West, were General Andrew Jackson, senator from Tennessee; House Speaker Henry Clay of Kentucky; William H. Crawford, Monroe’s Treasury Secretary from Georgia; and Secretary of War John C. Calhoun of South Carolina. After considerable infighting, Calhoun dropped from the race and opted for the vice presidency, with an eye on a future presidential bid. Crawford suffered a stroke during the campaign and his chances left. Jackson and Adams took the lead as popular favorites, but the election was inconclusive, with neither winning a majority of electoral votes, and the choice was given to the House, as it had been in 1800. Jackson, with 43.1 percent of the popular vote and nine-nine electoral votes, had a legitimate claim to the office. But Clay, also a powerful westerner, wanted to keep his rival Jackson from the office. It is more than like that Clay legitimately believed Adams was the more experienced candidate but that an Adams election would clearly benefit Clay’s political future at the expense of Jackson’s. Clay threw his considerable influence in the House behind Adams, who won on the first ballot. Adams then named Clay to be his Secretary of State. Jackson supporters screamed that “a corrupt bargain” had been made between the two.

• When John Quincy Adams lost to Andrew Jackson in the election of 1828, the town of Adams, New Hampshire, changed its name to Jackson. The town had been named in 1800 to honor the election of John Adams, John Quincy’s father.

1830’s

• Women were not allowed on the floor of the Senate until the 1830’s.

• In January 1835 the United States became the only major nation in modern history to pay off completely its national debt. This will be the only year in our history that we didn’t have a national debt.

• While Martin Van Buren was vice-president, he presided over the Senate wearing a pair of pistols, as a precaution against the frequent outbursts of violence.

• William Henry Harrison delivered the longest inaugural address of any president and served the shortest time: one month, to the day. In his address he made the prophetic remark that he would not be a candidate for a second term.

• The origin of the expression “OK” is attributed to Andrew Jackson because he would sign with the abbreviation of “Oll Kurrect.” he was a terrible speller.

• Uncle Sam was a real person. Sam Wilson, a boyhood friend of Johnny Appleseed, began supplying meat to troops stationed around Troy, New York. Meat sent to the soldiers was stamped “U.S.” for United States. But when a government inspector came along to check on the meat, he was told by an imaginative worker in Wilson’s store that the initials stood for “Uncle Sam.” Wilson’s nickname. Soon all federal supplies were said to belong to “Uncle Sam.”

• Mormons believe Indians are descendants of the ancient Israelites.

• Barns are painted red for many good reasons. In the early nineteenth century, farmers learned that the color red absorbed sunlight extremely well and was useful in keeping barns warm during winter. The farmers made their red paint from skim milk mixed with the rust shavings of metal fences and nails.

• Until the 1830’s, Americans did not eat tomatoes. Up to that time tomatoes were believed to be poisonous and were used only as decorations. They were known as “love apples.”

• Usually pirates didn’t terrorize innocents; they just robbed them. Most pirates became pirates to escape cruelty, not to inflict it. Thus, when a ship was captured its captain usually was executed only if he was known to have treated his men badly. Also, they did not make their victims “walk the plank.” In fact, they commonly seem to have disposed of their victims simply by throwing them overboard. Nor were they totally uncivilized. It may be the case that pirates behaved in a more civilized fashion than many of their maritime counterparts. To provide help for the poor and the lame, they established a formal welfare system funded from the ship’s booty. To aid fellow pirates injured in accidents they paid out benefits like an insurance company, compensating sailors who lost an eye in a storm or a leg in battle. The average pirate also lived better than other sailors. He had more to eat and more time to sleep. And everybody earned about the same pay as everybody else.

• President John Tyler was on his knees playing marbles when informed that he had become president because of the death of Harrison. Tyler was the first president which impeachment charges were brought against.

President Tyler fathered fifteen children by two wives. John Tyler was the only United States president to serve in the Confederacy as a member of the Virginia House of Representatives

• When Sarah Childless Polk became first lady, she immediately banned dancing from the White House. For four years no one danced one step there.

• The Smithsonian Institution was founded in 1846 and named in honor of an Englishman, James Smithson.

• A week before he died, James Polk fulfilled a lifelong promise to his wife and was baptized.

• The first attempt to assassinate a president occurred on January 30, 1835, when Andrew Jackson was shot by Richard Lawrence. Remarkably, Jackson wasn’t hurt.

• In 1835, the New York Sun created the greatest hoax in American history. The Sun had Americans believing that an English astronomer, Sir John Herschel, published articles that proved that creatures inhabited the moon. The creatures were described in terrifying detail, from their furry bodies to their bat wings. Finally, the Sun revealed that Herschel didn’t exist. But most people still believed the story.

• Beginning in the 1840’s, Americans built thousands of miles of roads made out of wooden planks.

Texas War For Independence:

• The Texas War for Independence is filled with many myths. Davy Crockett didn’t die on the last day but was captured by Santa Anna early in the battle and executed. The reason why the Texans held out so long at the Alamo was because they believed that reinforcements were coming at any time. Most of the myths about Davy Crockett were created not by Crockett but his political supporters, the Whigs. He was to have said, “I’m that same David Crockett, fresh from the backwoods, half horse, half alligator, a little touched with the snapping-turtle; can wade the Mississippi, leap the Ohio, ride upon a streak of lightning, and slip without a scratch down a honey locust; can whip my weight in wild cats - and if any gentleman pleases, for a ten-dollar bill, you may throw in a panther.”

Crockett was a juvenile delinquent, wife-deserter, and braggart; after winning two terms to Congress from Tennessee, he lost a third and promptly left the state in disgrace. Though he was known as a crack shot, when he went west, in historian Horace Beck’s vivid description, he “totally missed the target in a shooting match, then missed a buffalo, got himself lost, then lost his horse, was clawed by a cougar and captured by the Comanche.” In short, “he acted very much as any Easter greenhorn in similar circumstances.”

• The Alamo today is only one-ninth of its original size. Colonel Travis, the leader of the Texans at the Alamo, was a murderer and left his pregnant wife and child to run away from the law.

• Slavery was perhaps the key factor in the Texas War (1835-36). The freedom for which Davy Crockett, James Bowie, and the rest fought at the Alamo was the freedom to own slaves.

• Santa Anna, Mexico’s military leader, gave us chewing gum. In the fall of 1866, while Santa Anna was living on Staten Island, his interpreter, James Adams noticed how the old general would constantly cut slices from an unknown tropical vegetable and place the pieces in his mouth. Adams learned that the substance was called “chicle.” Adams took some of the chickle and began experimenting with it by adding different sweetening agents to add flavor. Most historians rank Santa Anna as one of the “top five worst military commanders of all time.” Most of Santa Anna’s troops were Mayan Indians who could not speak Spanish. The guns used by the Mexican were English guns left over from the days of the Battle of Waterloo. Their range was barely seventy yards, while the Texas long rifles were accurate at two hundred yards.

• The Battle of San Jacinto was won by the Texans because Santa Anna after drinking non-stop for two days, and in bed with a black slave named Emily , was caught with his pants down when the Texans attacked. The battle lasted less than twenty minutes. Emily became a famous Texas legend. She was called the “Yellow Rose of Texas,” and a song was made in tribute to her. The lyrics have changed over the years. One chorus line was sang, “She’s the sweetest rose of color, this darky ever knew.” Today this song is called the Yellow Rose of Texas.”

• Texas, because of the terms of the treaty annexing Texas to the United States, has the right to divide itself at any time into as many as five states. This right gives the state the power to create eight more senators, and four more governors.

• James K. Polk was the most successful president in American history if one judges a president by his ability to keep his promises. During the 1844 presidential election, candidate Polk made five major promises: to acquire California, to settle the Oregon dispute, to lower the tariff, to establish a sub-treasury, and to retire from the office after four years. When Polk left office, his campaign promises had all been fulfilled.

• Before the Mexican War, President Polk had insisted that the Mexicans had crossed the borders killing innocent Americans. Lincoln asked Polk to show his the exact spot, but the President never answered Lincoln.

• The U.S. had three Presidents in one year. In 1841, Van Buren’s term expired on March 4: William Harrison, the new president, passed away one month later and was succeeded by John C. Tyler.

• The War with Mexico (1846-48) was chiefly driven by Southern planters wanting to push the borders of the nearest free land farther from the slave states.

• Zachary Taylor never voted in any election - including his own.

• Following the Mexican War, President Zachary Taylor commissioned Captain William Tecumseh Sherman to explore and survey the new acquired lands. When Sherman returned two years later, he was asked by Taylor was it worth the deaths of ten thousand men and millions of dollars. Sherman responded by saying, Well Mr. President, I’ve been out there and looked it over, and between you and m, I feel that we’ll have to go to war again.” “What for?’ asked the surprised President. “Why,” answered the captain, “To make ‘em take the darn country back.”

African Americans:

• Before the 1450’s Europeans considered Africans exotic and not inferior. They remembered how the Moors from Africa had brought to Spain and Italy much of the learning that led to the Renaissance. By the 1850’s most whites in America, including Northerners, claimed that black people were so hopelessly inferior that slavery was a proper form of education for them; it also removed them physically from the alleged barbarism of the “dark continent.”

• Almost half of the signers of the Declaration of Independence were slaveowners. Thomas Jefferson had 175 slaves at the time he wrote the words to “Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.” Jefferson was an ardent advocate of the expansion of slavery to the western territories. Jefferson was an average master who had his slaves whipped and sold into the Deep South as examples, to induce other slaves to obey. By 1822, Jefferson owned 267 slaves. During his long life, of hundreds of different slaves he owned, he freed only three, and five more at his death by his blood relatives. Jefferson even sold his own children who were the children of a black mistress.

• Like other slaveowners, Jefferson preferred a Napoleonic colony to a black republic in the Caribbean. In 1801 he got our government to pass a policy toward Haiti that secretly gave France the g-ahead to reconquer the island. In so doing, the United States not only betrayed its heritage, but also acted against its own self-interest. For if France had indeed been able to retake Haiti, Napoleon would have maintained his dream of an American empire. The U.S. would have be hemmed in by France to its west, Britain to its north, and Spain to its south. But planters in the United States were scared by the Haitian Revolution. They thought it might inspire slave revolts here (which it did). When Haiti won, the United States would not even extend it diplomatic recognition.

• Dr. Samuel W. Cartwright of Louisiana attributed slave misconduct to a disease, called “Dysaethesia Aeghiopica.” The disease made slaves do dumb things and work slow - actually slaves did this because of the absence of incentives and cruel conditions.

Interesting things about the middle 1800’s:

• The bathtub was first introduced in America in 1842. But very few people would use it because the medical society said taking baths posed a serious danger to health. According to the story made by H. L. Mencken, opposition remained strong until 1851, when President Fillmore ordered one for the White House. After that, bathing became fashionable. This story became accepted as truth. In 1926, Mencken revealed that the he had made up the story and that everything about it was a pack of lies, and that he never thought anybody but a fool would believe it. People though still believed the story no matter what Mencken did - once in print - most people then believe, no matter how ridiculous the story!

• The U.S. had a president for one day. At twelve noon on March 4, 1849, Zachary Taylor was scheduled to succeed James K Polk as president. But March 4 was a Sunday and Taylor, a religious man, refused to take the oath of office on the Sabbath. Thus, under the Succession Act, Senator David Rice of Missouri, as president pro tempore of the Senate, automatically became president of the United States.

• President Millard Fillmore refused to accept an honorary degree from Oxford University because he said that no man should accept a degree he can not read.

• Franklin Pierce entered the office of president with possibly the most devastating personal problems of any president. The Pierces had lost two children in infancy. But when a third child was born, Franklin resigned his Senate seat, to be with his family. In 1852, Pierce was named as the candidate for the Democratic party after 49 ballots were taken. Franklin had told his wife he had not wanted the nomination, but since the party had drafted him anyway he had to run. After the election, Mrs. Pierce discovered that her husband actually sought the nomination and had lied to her. Then, the Pierce’s personally witnessed the brutal death of their only living son, Benjamin, in a train accident - he was crushed between two cars. In two months Jeanie Pierce had lost her faith in her husband’s integrity and her son.

• William King, elected vice-president under Franklin Pierce, never did anything during his brief forty-five days of being vice-president. He took the oath in Cuba - the only man to be sworn in as vice-president in a foreign country. On April 18, 1853, he died. Never performing any tasks as vice-president.

• Presidents Millard Fillmore and Andrew Johnson started out as indentured servants. Johnson ran away from a tailor and a ten dollar reward was offered - Johnson was never caught. Fillmore was indentured to a clothmaker. After serving his master for several years, he purchased his freedom for thirty dollars.

• Early in the 1800’s, when salt wells filled up with oil, they were abandoned as useless. In 1857, Edwin L. Drake became convinced that you could drill holes for oil-wells, even though everybody thought he was nuts. The rest is history.

• Theater managers used prostitutes to help fill the seats in their theaters. The ladies were limited to use the upper gallery of the auditorium.

• Roger B. Taney, who wrote the majority opinion in the infamous Dred Scott Case, was misunderstood. He considered slavery as a “blot on our national character,” and thirty years before Dred Scott, freed his own slaves, whom he had inherited from his parents. When the South seceded, Taney, unlike many fellow southerners, remained with the Union.

• 1851 was the first year a Christmas tree was put in an American church - Cleveland, Ohio.

The Civil War & Reconstruction:

• By 1861 there were only two countries in the Western world other than the United States which maintained slavery: Cuba and Brazil.

• Had the South won the Civil War they would have pushed to take over Cuba and Mexico for the expansion of slavery.

• The last veteran of the American Revolution died in 1867.

• Grant gave federal position to thirteen of his relatives.

• Harriet Beecher Stowe received torrents of abuse from Southerners fro writing Uncle Tom’s Cabin. She also received a black man’s ear by mail.

• In 1856, Secretary of War Jefferson Davis, ordered seventy camels brought to the United States. The camels were used for about two years.

• The first shot of the Civil War was fired by Edmund Ruffin at Fort Sumter.

• As the war came, as thousands of Americans found themselves making the same commitment to face death that John Brown had made, the force of his example took on new relevance. That’s why soldiers marched into battle singing “John Brown’s Body.” Julia Ward changed the lyrics to John Brown’s Body and it became a Northern hit - The Battle Hymn of the Republic. Julia Ward Howe sold her “Battle Hymn of the Republic” to the Atlanta Month in 1862 for five dollars.

• John Brown was not as crazy as most history books paint him. In fact, most black leaders such as Martin Delaney, Henry Highland Garnet, Frederick Douglass and Harriet Tubman knew and respected Brown. Douglass called Brown “one of the greatest heroes known to America.”

The story about Brown and his men riding into Pottawatomie where they brutally killed many people is always mentioned in history books. But text books rarely mention the incident at Osawatomie, where Brown was the defender of thirty-five free-soil men defending themselves against several hundred proslaver men from Missouri. John Brown killed many people and was allowed to be set free because the government feared that abolitionists would riot if they convicted Brown. Finally, in 1859, he was caught in Harper’s Ferry, Virginia, tried, and hanged. John Brown was a complete failure in business. He welshed on his debts. He almost certainly was insane. And in 1856, he nearly plunged Kansas into civil war by ruthlessly murdering five helpless members of a mildly proslavery family, in the process “splitting open heads and chopping off arms and fingers.”

• One of the correspondence of the New York Tribune during the Civil War, was Karl Marx who was a reporter for European newspaper.

• Lincoln’s father belonged to the richest 15 percent of taxpayers in his community - so he wasn’t as poor as people think.

• Lincoln was elected as President by promising free land and a railroad to the Pacific.

• Lincoln disliked slavery, but he wasn’t an abolitionist. Although he opposed the extension of slavery, he believed that to save the Union, slavery ought to be left untouched where it was, and although he is known as the Great Emancipator, his Emancipation Proclamation didn’t end slavery since it applied only to the states that had rebelled, where Lincoln didn’t have any authority. He was critical of the radical abolitionists like John Brown and supported Brown’s execution.

• Most books never mention the time Lincoln said, “I should like to know if taking this old Declaration of Independence, which declares that all men are equal upon principle, and making exceptions to it - where will it stop? If one man says it does not mean a Negro, why does not another say it does not mean some other man? If that Declaration is not true, let us tear it out! Let us stick to it then, let us stand firmly by it then.”

• But Lincoln did not believe that ending slavery was as important as keeping our union: “If I could save the Union without freeing any slave, I would do it: and if I could save it by freeing all the slave, I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone, I would also do that. What I do about slavery and the colored race I do because I believe it helps to save this Union; and what I forbear, I forbear because I do not believe it would help to save the Union. I have here stated my purpose according to my view of official duty, and I intend no modification of my oft-expressed personal wish that all men, everywhere could be free.”

• Like most whites of his century, Abraham Lincoln would refer to blacks as “niggers” in conversation.

• The Bixby Letter was a letter that Abe Lincoln was suppose to have written, but it actually was written by Lincoln’s secretary John Haye. The letter was written to a mother who lost five sons during the Civil War. Actually, only two were killed, because one deserted, one was honorably discharged, and one was captured and became a Confederate soldier.

• Lincoln was very superstitious. He once peered into an old mirror and saw two images of himself; he took the incident to mean he would be elected to a second term but would not live to complete it.

• Lincoln hated the name Abe, so nobody ever called him this except his political enemies.

• Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address was not written on the back of an envelope. It also took him two weeks to write it, not two hours.

• The Emancipation Proclamation did not free any slaves, as it applied only to slaves in states that were in rebellion against the Union. It didn’t apply to the border states either because Lincoln feared these states would be upset and switch sides. Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation applied only to the Confederacy. It left slavery untouched in Unionist Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky, and Missouri.

• The log cabin on display near Hodgenville, Kentucky is not the home of Abraham Lincoln. It is a fraud created to make money. Lincoln’s home was burned down in 1840.

• All full-length portraits of Abe Lincoln were made by using someone else’s body - Henry Clay, Andrew Jackson, John C. Freemont, and even little Martin Van Buren. The practice of changing the heads of people’s bodies was widespread.

• Before John Wilkes Booth, President Lincoln was shot at twice.

• Lincoln was not elected by a majority vote in 1860. Fewer than two million of the 4.5 million persons casting ballots voted for him. He didn’t receive one vote from the South.

• Andrew Jackson was not the greatest spoilsman of them all. Jackson replaced only 252 out of a total of 612 men. Abraham Lincoln was the champion spoilsman. He threw out of office 1,457 men, leaving few than 200 appointees from the previous administration.

• Robert Todd Lincoln, the only son who survived the 16th president , saw in person Presidents Garfield and McKinley both get murdered. One week before Todd’s father was murdered, Todd had helped the son of John Wilkes Booth to safety from getting hit by a railroad car.

• Stephen Douglas referred to the fact that he once saw Lincoln selling whiskey. “Yes,” replied Lincoln, “It is true that the first time I saw Judge Douglas I was selling whisky by the drink. I was on the inside of the bar, and the judge was on outside; I busy selling, he busy buying.”

• Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson was a great general but a horrible teacher. Jackson taught mathematics at Virginia Military Institute. VMI students hated Jackson because he was stubborn, narrow-minded, and made excessive demands on them. Once, as Jackson walked near the campus barracks, a couple of particularly vengeful students dropped a brick on him from a third-story window. The brick knocked off his hat injuring Jackson. The brick almost killed him.

• In the nineteenth century the danger of being buried alive was very great. The mother of Robert E. Lee reportedly was buried alive during one of her catatonic trances. Luckily, a man heard noises and scratching from inside the coffin as it was being covered with dirt, and she escaped. Throughout the century, horrible incidents like this came to the attention of the public, prompting the invention of devices to prevent premature burial, such as a bell attached to a string that went into one’s coffin.

• In 1861 many sixteen and seventeen year old boys wanted desperately to volunteer in the Union Army and fight for their country. The minimum age was eighteen. Instead of lying to officers (most kids didn’t lie then) that they were eighteen they simply wrote the number 18 on a piece of paper and placed it in their shoe. Then, when questioned about their age, they could truthfully reply to their government, “I am over 18.”

• Nathan Bedford Forrest, who after the War will start the KKK, would crucify black prisoners on tent frames and then burned them alive, all in the name of preserving white civilization.

• At the Union camp in Chattanooga there were scores of wounded Federal soldiers and Confederate prisoners, but very little medical supplies. Especially scarce were chloroform and lint, which were used to keep maggots out of open wounds. Of course, the chloroform was made available only to Union doctors; Confederate doctors were given nothing. Inevitably, the soldiers in gray became infested with MAGGOTS. But a strange thing happened. Johnny Reb healed faster than Billy Yank. Even the rooms where the Southerners were housed smelled fresher and seemed healthier than the Yankee sickrooms. Unwittingly, the Southern doctors had stumbled onto a great discovery: maggots can be useful in stopping the growth of bacteria and in keeping open wounds clean. A French surgeon had learned this in the Napoleonic Wars, but his finding had been ignored. Union doctors, disbelieving the obvious, continued to treat patients with chloroform.

• Confederate President Jefferson Davis in March 1865 notified England and France that the South would be willing to abolish slavery in exchange for diplomatic recognition. Before either European powers could respond, however, the war was over.

• Jefferson Davis, the first and only president of the Confederacy, was once married to the daughter of President Zachary Taylor.

• When Jefferson Davis was captured by Federal troops on May 10, 1865, he was wearing his wife’s dress and shawl. He was caught trying to make an escape.

• Nevada became a state because Lincoln needed two more votes to get the 13th Amendment passed and three more electoral votes to help win the 1864 election. Nevada did not want to become a state because they didn’t want the high taxes.

• If you were drafted during the Civil War, you could send a substitute in your place. And if you had trouble finding one, you could buy your way out for three hundred dollars, by advertising in the newspaper.

• The word “hooker” comes from the camp followers who set up shop near the Civil War encampment of General Joseph Hooker in downtown Washington. The soldiers were camped on Pennsylvania Avenue between the White House and the Capitol. The women were nearby in an area of the city that was known as Hooker’s Division and became the capital’s red-light district.

• Slaves were not allowed to talk with white words such as mother; instead they had to say “mammy.”

• Several slaves tried to escape by having themselves mailed to the North in large shipping crates. Some made it, some did not, and some who made it contracted “brain fever” and emerged from their box gray-headed.

• The Peterson House is the house that Abraham Lincoln died in after he was brought over across the street from the Ford Theater. Interestingly, the bed that Lincoln’s body was placed was also slept in one week earlier by John Wilkes Booth.

• The first Black elected to the U.S. Senate was Hiram Revels of Mississippi. Ironically, Revel’s seat had last been filled by Jefferson Davis.

• Ulysses S. Grant, a notorious practical joker, used to hand-out trick cigars that would explode when lit.

• The life expectancy of Americans in 1876 was about forty.

• By the end of the Civil War, 93,000 blacks served in the Confederate Army and about 100,000 blacks fought in the Union Army. About 65,000 blacks were killed during the War.

1880’s & 1890’s:

• Rutherford B. Hayes had all alcoholic beverages removed from the White House. His wife was known as “lemonade Lucy.”

• The closest presidential election in American history occurred in 1876, when Rutherford B. Hayes beat out Samuel Tilden by a one-vote margin - 185 electoral votes to 184.

• In 1896, Henry John Heinz saw a sign that caught his eye. It was a sign that said twenty-one varieties of shoes. The sign gave him an idea. He would advertise his own company’s products with a number, any number, so long as it was catchy. Finally, he decided upon fifty-seven, which he believed people would remember. The number itself was meaningless, of course. Even in 1896 the Heinz company sold more than fifty-seven varieties.

• James A. Garfield was the only man in U.S. history who was a congressman, a senator-elect, and a president-elect at the same time.

• James A Garfield was ambidextrous. He could write with either his right or his left hand. He was literate in both Greek and Latin. But the last president to be born in a log cabin had another ability. While writing Greek with one hand, Garfield could, at the same time, write Latin with his other hand. Plus, he could write backwards just as fast as he could forwards.

• While in prison for the assassination of President Garfield, Charles Guiteau received upwards of a hundred letters and telegrams a day approving his murderous deed.

• Polygamy was legal in Utah until the year 1890.

• Electric lights were installed in the White House during the administration of Benjamin Harrison. Harrison and his wife were so afraid of electricity that they left the job of turning the light switches on and off to the servants.

• Clarence Birdseye discovered by accident about frozen food. He was ice fishing one day when the thermometer dropped to twenty degrees below zero. The temperature was so cold that the fish he caught froze solid instantly when removed from the sea. He took the frozen fish back to camp and tossed them into a pail of water. Miraculously, before Birdsey’s eyes, the fish revived and began to dart left and right. The naturalist concluded after several years of investigation, that the fish had survived because it had been frozen quickly. He then reasoned that food could be preserved the same way.

• Stephen Foster was going to call his song “Yazoo River” instead of “Swanee River.”

• Horace Greeley never said. “Go west, young man, go west.” The author of the quote was actually John L. Soule, a little-known Indiana journalist. Greeley repeatedly denied that he had said it, and even reprinted the article in which Soule used the expression, but to no avail.

• In the late 1800’s many doctors thought that women, since they were inferior to men, couldn’t handle the pressures of college.

• The ice-cream soda was invented by accident in 1874, when Robert M. Green ran out of sweet cream and substituted vanilla ice cream in sodas.

• The immigrants during the last part of the 19th century and the early part of the 20th century were not near as poor as most American, in fact they left a society more civilized than ours. Most were enterprising, and self-sufficient people who knew exactly what they were doing, and doing it quite well on their own.

• Both Grover Cleveland and his opponent in the 1884 presidential contest evaded the Civil War by hiring a substitute.

• Custer in comparison to some of his contemporaries hardly killed any Indians. Nelson Miles, George Crook, Ronald S. Mackenzie - between them they routed the Sioux, defeated the Apaches, and broke up several other tribes, breaking the Indian’s hold on the Plains and in the Southwest. If Custer would have won he never would have been picked on. Custer was not a fool. He simply ran out of luck. There were 8,000 Indians to his 600 men, but this is not why he lost. In truth, Custer may have easily won if it weren’t for two chief subordinates. One never came and the other cut and ran. Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer battle of the Little Big Horn lasted only twenty minutes

• Buffalo Bill, born William Frederick Cody killed 4,289 bison in eighteen months for the railroad workers. He never killed any buffalo. Buffalo Bill and other Indian fighters like Custer wore their hair long to show the Indians they were unafraid. The Indians believed that a man with his hair clipped short was afraid of being scalped.

• Wells Fargo was created by its founders Henry Wells and William’s Fargo of New York.

• Thomas Alva Edison did not invent the phonograph to bring music to the masses. The great scientist was partially deaf and never cared for music. His reason for inventing the device had something to do to improve Alexander Bell’s telephone..

• Many more people have died in Hollywood westerns than ever died on the real frontier. The most famous legends such as Billy the Kid, Bat Masterson, Wild Bill Hicock, and Buffalo Bill were greatly exaggerated.

• Whenever his wife suffered an epileptic seizure in public, there was always one thing William McKinley would do: throw a napkin over her face.

• Until 1900 the state of Rhode Island had two capitals, at Providence and Newport.

• In the late nineteenth century Montogomery Ward’s catalogue offered an astonishing variety of merchandise. Many people believed they could order anything they wanted from Ward. Even a wife. One man wrote: “As you advertise everything for sale that a person wants I thought I would write you, as I an in need of a wife, and see what you could do for me.” Another man, more demanding wrote: “Please send me a good wife. She must be a good housekeeper and able to do all household duty. She must be 5 feet 6 inches in height. Weight 150 lbs. Black hair and brown eyes, either fair or dark. I am 45 years old, six feet, am considered a goo-looking man. I have black hair and blue eyes. I own quite a lot of stock and land. I am tired of living a bachelor life and wish to lead a better life and more favorable. Please write and let me know what you can do for me.”

The Early 1900’s:

• During the first five years of the twentieth century a Negro was lynched almost every other day.

• In 1910 a down-and-out young Italian named Mussolini almost emigrated to the United States.

• The Sears catalogue of 1909 carried an advertisement for a horseless buggy that was “guaranteed to go 100 miles in 24 hours it good care is taken of it.”

• America’s first self-service grocery store, the Piggly Wiggly, opened in 1916. The store was so organized that customers had to go up and down every aisle before reaching the checkout counter.

• Neither Robert Perry or Frederick Cook may have really discovered the North Pole. The National Geography Society claims Perry was the true founder but NBC claims that Cook beat him to it by two days. Both claims cannot be proved or disproved!

• Theodore Roosevelt was not nearly as sick during his early childhood as history books have lead us to believe. In fact, he didn’t even have asthma but suffered from psychosomatic illnesses which only occurred on every Sunday. Sunday’s were the only day of the week in which young Roosevelt saw his father. Teddy did it to get his father’s attention.

• The “Rough-Riders,” Teddy Roosevelt’s’ famous cavalry unit during the Spanish American War, never charged up San Juan Hill on horseback but actually charged up Kettle hill by foot.

• Henry Ford didn’t invent the assembly line a team of Ford’s engineers came up with the idea. Also, the first cars he built were not black but green with a red stripe. Later a sharp engineer realized that black dried faster than any other color so this is why Ford Started painting all his cars black - be faster and make more cars - MONEY!

• Lizzie Borden’s only crime is that she refused to talk to the press. This refusal only let people to believe she was guilty of killing both of her parents with an ax.

• The only man in American history who was both president and chief justice of the United States was William Howard Taft.

• President William Howard Taft once got stuck in a White House bathtub, and it required four plumbers with special cutters to get him out. Reports about his weight varied from 300 lbs to 400 lbs.

• On Thursday, December 17, 1903 made history by making a plane fly for fifty-nine seconds. But no one seemed to notice. This lack of press had many causes. Partly it was due to disbelief. A noted professor, after all, had just published an article packed with charts and diagrams proving that man could never fly. Some figured that one could use blimps (dirigibles) but they didn’t believe the blimps could carry cargo or be able to stay flying for more than an hour. Another cause was that the Wright brothers themselves were inventors not showmen. So naturally, they had trouble persuading people of the possibilities of their contraption. Finally, in 1907, the government realized the importance of the airplane.

W.W.I:

• The U.S. didn’t go immediately to war after the Lusitania was sunk. The Lusitania was sunk in 1915 and we entered the War in 1917. Also, the Germans didn’t invent submarine warfare, Americans did. George Washington used a primitive one-man submarine to try to blow up the British Eagle.

• Six thousand corpses of American soldiers arrived from Europe on a single day in May 1921.

• American newspapers such as the Washington Post fabricated a story about the rebellion that was occurring in China. The papers wanted to boost their sagging sales and they believed a sensational story was exactly what was needed. So the papers knew about the uneasiness in China so they figured they could make up a story about a rebellion that was going on in China. They called this rebellion “The Boxer’s Rebellion.” From American newspapers the Chinese read that the Western world was in a plot with the “Boxers” to destroy the Great Wall. China already was very unstable so that upon reading of the plot the Chinese government started a bloodbath (Boxer’s Rebellion). After a month of terror peace came.

• A single event in Europe triggered W.W.I. One June 28, 1914, Francis Ferdinand, Archduke of Austria, and his wife were reviewing troops at Sarajevo, Serbia, when both were killed by Serbian assassins. The Archduke had been heir to the throne of Austria-Hungary before renouncing all claim to the throne because he married a “common women,” but retained the right to review troops. On July 5, Germany announced its support of Austria in punishing Serbia for the assassination, knowing full well that this meant war with Serbia’s ally, Russia.

• Germany wasn’t bankrupted by the Versailles Treaty. The First World War cost Germany one hundred billion dollars; war reparations only came to about thirty-two billion. The reparations didn’t cause the ruin of Germany, the War did.

• President Woodrow Wilson loved to play golf so much that he painted the balls black so he could play in the snow.

• Wilson was the first President ever to visit a foreign county. He visited France.

• President Wilson grew a beard after his stroke. Wilson tried to be nominated by his party so that he could run a third time, but his party choose Governor James Cox.

• During W.W.I, Wilson raised $1,000,000 for the Red Cross by selling the wool of White House sheep. The sheep had been purchased at the beginning of the war to replace the gardeners who were drafted by the army - sheep could eat the grass.

• W.W.I ended at precisely eleven o’clock on the eleventh day of the eleventh month of the year 1918.

• President Harding was reported to be part Black. News of this was in the newspapers several times during his life.

1920’s:

• In 1920, Eugene V. Debs ran for President of the United States while serving a prison term, and he won over 900,000 votes.

• Calvin Coolidge wasn’t as quiet as everybody thinks. Dorothy Parker’s famous line, after he died, she asked, “How can they tell?” This was typical how the public was lead to believe how quiet he was. At a White House reception, the wife of a cabinet member bet Calvin Coolidge that she could get more than two words out of him. He replied, “You lose.”

• In 1924, Coolidge’s son died after getting a blister on his toe.

• Coolidge loved having his head rubbed with Vaseline while he ate breakfast in bed.

• After Coolidge left the White House he became a daily columnist, receiving $200,000 a year which was over three times his salary as president.

• John T. Scopes, the teacher who taught about the evolution of man, actually found his teaching job out of a newspaper which dared someone to teach Darwin’s theory in a classroom.

• The yo-yo was imported to America in the 1920’s from the Philippines.

• Walt Disney’s first cartoon, “Plane Crazy,” appeared in 1928.

• The only non-white elected vice-president in history was Charles Curtis, a Kaw Indian, who served under Herbert Hoover.

• J. Edgar Hoover (head of the FBI- Federal Bureau of Investigation) refused to allow people to walk on his shadow.

• It is almost too incredible to be true. Beginning in 1931, ten years before the Japanese surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, every graduate of the Japanese Naval Academy had to answer the following question as part of his final examination: “How would you carry out a surprise attack on Pearl Harbor?’ The question remained on the cadets’ exam every year until the beginning of the war in the Pacific. It is not known if the Japanese high command used any of the answers from the ten-year period while planning the real attack.

• President Hoover probably made the most foolish forecast in history when he said in 1928 that, “We in America today are nearer to final triumph over poverty than ever before in the history of any land.” Also, Hoover didn’t sit back and do nothing about the Depression, in fact he actually made more major changes than Franklin Roosevelt.

• A common sign held by hitchhikers during the fall of 1932 read: “If you don’t give me a ride, I’ll vote for Hoover.”

• President Hoover started the eight-hour work day and the hot school lunch programs.

• Franklin D. Roosevelt always slept with a gun under his pillow. Because he was a cripple, FDR’s greatest fear was fire. Eleanor Roosevelt hated to smoke but would do so to help American women.

W.W.II:

• “Tora, Tora, Tora,” means tiger, Tiger, Tiger - these words announced the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor. There were five critical opportunities the U.S. missed that might have avoided the disaster:

1. On the evening before the attack, the FBI monitored a significant telephone call with highly suspicious overtones from Tokyo to a Japanese in Honolulu, but was put off by the military.

2. Early in the morning of December 7, an America mine sweeper sighted a periscope outside the mouth of Pearl Harbor, but disregarded and never reported it.

3. Later that morning the tower of an unidentified submarine was sighted and a depth bomb was dropped by an American destroyer, but the U.S. Navy Headquarters downplayed it.

4. At 7:00 a. m. that same morning, two army privates at the radar station on the northern tip of Oahu, near Kahuku, picked up an enormous number of blips on their screen and telephoned the information center, where an inexperienced lieutenant goofed. The Japanese planes were by no already winging toward the islands.

5. In Washington, DC, General George Marshall, who knew that something vital was about to happen, alerted the Army and Navy brass in Honolulu by sending an ordinary telegram via Western Union. The telegram was handed to a Japanese messenger who dawdled on his way to the American military headquarters at Fort Shafter on Oahu, and delivered it to Lt. General Walter C. Short, commander of U.S. Army Forces in Hawaii, in the smoke and wreckage seven hours after the attack began. The U.S. lost more men at Pearl Harbor than it lost in the Spanish-American War.

• The belief that Americans did not know that the Japanese were going to attack Pearl Harbor but thought they would attack Thailand, British Malaysia, or the Dutch East Indies (Philippines). This isn’t true! Many of the United States top brass new of the invasion several hours before it happened! Even some historians believe that we knew of this attack days before it took place. Some historians claimed that we deliberately allowed the attack to take place so that American would go to war.

• Germans used the “BLITZKRIEG” not because they wanted lightning war but because they didn’t have enough money to sustain a long, drawn-out battles.

• The woman accused of being Tokyo Rose was actually a helpless, young Japanese American girl, Iva Toguri, who had been stranded by the war in Japan. She indeed broadcast on Radio Tokyo during the war, but she was made to by the Japanese because she spoke good English. She never denounced her U.S. citizenship. She didn’t have a sweet, seductive voice. She actually sounded like Gracie Allen. And she never said anything to demoralize the troops. The broadcasts in which she was involved, in fact, were slyly orchestrated by an Australian POW to comfort the troops. The Japanese never caught on. The key witnesses who testified against her during her trial for treason and who claimed that she had broadcast propaganda, subsequently admitted they had lied. “We had no choice,” said one of the witnesses, a Japanese businessman. “U.S. occupation police came and told me I had no choice but to testify against Iva, or else.” Iva only confessed to the American press because she needed money desperately and they promised to give her $2,000. She was in truth only one out of nearly a dozen women who talked over the radio during the war - all were known as Tokyo Rose. “If the name applied to all of them,” she said, “it applied to her too.” But she had no idea that Tokyo Rose was considered a traitor and certainly would not have admitted to being one. The leading sensationalist was Walter Winchell. Millions swear they heard her voice. She was released from prison in 1956 and in 1977, one day before his term ended, President Gerald R. Ford gave her a pardon. Ford commented that the identification of the woman as Tokyo Rose was erroneous and that all she did was introduce musical selections over the radio. Interestingly, while Tokyo Rose remains one of America’s great villains, almost no one remembers Axis Sally (Mildred Gillars), the Maine native who broadcast for the Germans, though she really existed and she clearly did commit treason. Both Tokyo Rose and Axis Sally were brought to trial at the same time and both were convicted. But Axis Sally was white and Tokyo Rose was Asian. That surely had something to do with it.

• The Mafia is not now and never has been a single, monolithic organization. There are many mafias. It’s true the Italians dominate “the Mafia,” but the fact is there was organized crime in America before “the Mafia” appeared and it’s likely organized crime will continue to exist in this country if “the Mafia” disappears. The only reason why organize crime exists in America is because people want what organize crime delivers: illicit goods and services.

• Hitler didn’t snub Jesse Owens during the 1936 Olympics. He didn’t congratulate anybody - not even his own countrymen. Hitler wasn’t upset about losing to some Black Americans, in fact he came away from the Olympics with smiles because Germany had captured more medals than all other countries combined.

• Most of the world new about the Holocaust even as early as 1942. American papers had articles about it but put it on pages towards the back of the newspapers.

• Japan would have surrendered within a couple of months even if the atomic bombs were never dropped. On June 20, 1945, emperor Hirohito and leading members of the Supreme War Direction Council had secretly decided to end the war. No one knew anyone would die of radiation poisoning.

• As president, Harry Truman washed his own underwear.

• The year 1949 was the first year of the twentieth century in which a Black was not lynched.

1960’s & 1970’s:

• Kennedy deliberately sent U.S. troops to Vietnam even though he was warned by many leaders of the world that to do so would cost Americans dearly. In fact, to show how insensitive Kennedy was, he once said, “The troops will march in; the bands will play; the crowds will cheer; and in four days everyone will have forgotten. Then we will be able to send in more troops. It’s like talking a drink. The effect wears off, and you have to take another.”

• Kennedy is still one the three most admired Presidents in the history of the United States. And no matter the amount of evidence it seems people will continue to believe he was admirable. Not even the fact that he used women as sex objects, sleeping with hundreds of them, many of whom he couldn’t even name; not even the fact that as President he exposed himself to blackmail by sleeping with the girl friend of a known mobster. Even his war record is fraudulently inflated. When his PT-109 was cut in half by a destroyer during W.W.II, he rescued, according to historian Gary Wills, not three men as Kennedy claimed, but one man. In truth, the disaster was in fact caused by Kennedy’s neglect. How could a much faster ship (PT 109) be outmaneuvered and struck by a ponderous destroyer in the midst of a naval battle?

• When Kennedy took office, he said, “that Americans should not ask what their country can do for them but what they can do for their country.” These were the exact words used by Cicero in an address to the Roman Senate in 63 BC

• In 1958, Senator John Kennedy told Stuart Symington and Lyndon Johnson about a dream he had concerning the presidency. “I dreamed about 1960 and how the Lord came into my bedroom, anointed my head, and said, ‘John Kennedy, I hereby appoint you President of the United States.’ Symington said, ‘That’s strange, Jack, because I too had a similar dream last night in which the Lord anointed me and declared me, Stuart Symington, President of the United States and Outer Space.’ Lyndon Johnson said, ‘That’s very interesting, gentleman, because I too had a similar dream last night and I don’t remember anointing either of you.’”

• On the day before the end of his term, Gerald Ford granted a full presidential pardon to Iva Toguri D’Aquino, another one of the infamous Tokyo Roses.

Odds and Ends:

• The longest war in American history was the Vietnam War, which lasted from April 1961 to May 1975. Yet war was never officially declared by the president, Congress, or the North Vietnamese government. During the war, American bombers dropped more tons of explosives on Vietnam than they dropped on all fronts in W.W.II.

• Similarities surrounding the lives of Lincoln and Kennedy: Lincoln was elected President in 1860 and Kennedy was elected President in 1960. Lincoln was elected to Congress in 1846 and Kennedy in 1946. The names of both men contain seven letters. Both men were shot from behind and in the head, and both were killed on Friday in the presence of their wives. Both presidents were concerned with civil rights. The successors of both presidents were named Johnson. John Wilkes Booth, Lincoln’s assassin, was born in 1839, Lee Harvey Oswald, Kennedy’s assassin, in 1939. Both assassins were slain before they could stand trial for their crimes, and both were southerners who espoused unpopular ideas. Booth shot Lincoln in a theater and ran to a warehouse. Oswald shot Kennedy from a warehouse and ran to a theater. Lincoln was shot in Ford’s Theater and Kennedy in a Ford motor car. Lincoln’s secretary advised him not to go to the theater and Kennedy’s secretary advised him not to go to Dallas. Lincoln’s secretary was named Kennedy, and Kennedy’s secretary was named Lincoln.

• The person who ran the most times for the presidency was Norman Thomas, he ran six times on the Socialist ticket, losing each time.

• Theodore Roosevelt was the youngest president in history at age forty-two, but John F. Kennedy was the youngest elected president at the age of forty-three.

• Supposedly, no president can be arrested while in office for any crime whatsoever. However, Franklin Pierce and Ulysses S. Grant were arrested during their terms in office. President Pierce, in 1853, accidentally ran down an elderly lady in his carriage one night. A constable named Stanley Edelin placed the president under arrest and then released him. President Grant was arrested in 1870 while driving too fast in his buggy between Eleventh and Twelfth streets in Washington D.C.’s northwest section.

• In 1948, 1969, and again in 1984, a poll was determined to rate the best presidents of the United States. Each time the results were identical. The poll was taken each time by 75 historians and political scientists. Only five were designated great, in the following order: Lincoln, Washington, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Wilson and Jefferson. After the top group came the near great: Jackson, Theodore Roosevelt, Polk, Truman, John Adams and Cleveland.

• The electoral college three times has elected a president who didn’t receive the most votes they are: John Quincy Adams, Rutherford B. Hayes, and Benjamin Harrison. The following presidents received less than fifty percent of the popular vote: Lincoln, Cleveland (twice), Wilson (twice), John Quincy Adams, Polk, Taylor, Buchanan, Hayes, Garfield, Benjamin Harrison, Kennedy, and Nixon.

• Until recently, there was never a time period for people called the teenage years. Children were regarded as little adults and were made to dress like their parents, given hardy responsibilities, and forbidden the luxury of playthings.

• There are not fifty states in the United States. Our nation consists of forty-six states and four commonwealths, namely Virginia, Kentucky, Massachusetts, and Pennsylvania.

• Our nation is loaded with thirteens: ‘76 adds up to thirteen, thirteen colonies, thirteen letter slogan - E Pluribus Unum, thirteen stars on the Great Seal, thirteen stripes, thirteen arrows, thirteen leaves, and our eagle has thirteen feathers in each wing. By the way, there are thirteen stripes on “Old Glory.”

• Today, the United States is composed of 106 ethnic groups.

• Less than two and half miles separates the U.S. and Russia at the Bering Straits.

• Every war has produced a president: The American Revolution, George Washington; The War of 1812, Andrew Jackson; The Indian Wars, William Henry Harrison; The Mexican War, Zachary Taylor; The Civil War, Ulysses S. Grant; The Spanish-American War, Theodore Roosevelt; World War I, Herbert Hoover; and World War II, Dwight Eisenhower.

• No American president has ever lost an election during wartime.

• The American government spends untold billions to defend the U.S. against a possible Russian strike. Yet Russia is the only major power with whom our nation has maintained uniformly peaceful relations since the Constitution. We have been at war with every other major country.

• Santa Claus was a composite of many European fold tales. He was known for centuries as St. Nicholas. Then somewhere along the line he became known as “Sinterklass” and finally “Santa Claus.” In Europe he showed up on December 6, as he did in the early years in America. Santa also didn’t always look the way he does today. The Dutch made him out to look tall, thin, and dignified. Washington Irving imagined Santa as a bulky man who smoked a pipe and wore baggy pants. Irving’s Santa didn’t have a beard. Not until the Civil War did he begin to look the way we think he should, thanks to a cartoon drawn by Thomas Nast. Santa hasn’t changed much since then, but he got Rudolph, the red-nosed reindeer, only in 1939, when Montgomery Ward came up with the idea. We never celebrated Christmas on the 25th of December until the retailing industry realized there was a great market for it. Not until after the Civil War did the stores start promoting December 25, as Christmas.

“The more one knows of a person, the less the hero”

Works Cited: I used four books from Richard Shenkman and several other books. For complete bibliography please email me.

For complete Bibliography, please email.

Thomas R. Brown

seitzteacher@yahoo.com