U S Presidential Trivia

[Ch00paKabrA]

I am a bit of a history buff since in the off season, I have a lot of time on my hands. I ran across this little tidbit of Presidential trivia and it hits home just how young the United States really is.

U S President John Tyler, the 10th president of the United States (Abraham Lincoln was the 16th President) has 2 living grandchildren. Not great-great-great grandchildren. 2 of his son's children are still alive today.

Nothing earth shattering just thought it was noteworthy.

President John Tyler's only real accomplishment is asserting that the when the President dies in office the Vice-President actually becomes the President. Before him, it just hadn't been thought about before.

 

[Punx0r]

It is interesting to see how different people have different frames of reference when it comes to these things. I figure having old stuff around gives a sense of secure consistency and longevity. In the next town over from me there's a hotel/restaurant that recently celebrated 400 years of continuous trading (it was originally a coaching inn). It was barely noteworthy to the locals but some friends from the U.S. could scarcely comprehend such perpetuity

Most people I know don't consider their house to be old if it's brick-built (as opposed to stone), but in reality many are 150-200 years old. It's interesting doing home DIY and realising you're hammering a nail into a floor board older than your great-grandfather would be (you also notice how much better quality construction timber was back then).

 

[Dauntless]

It's funny to see someone say "History" and someone else respond "Old." But Tyler was in his 60's when a certain son was born, that son was in his 70's having kids. I identify with that, as not only were my parents the age of my friends grandparents when I was growing up, they were both late children themselves. One of Mom's grandparents fought for Nathan Bedford Forest during the Civil War, (Shortly after the birth that son of Tyler) but this daughter, Mom's Mother, wouldn't be born for several decades after the war.

So how about those Tlingit people (On the coast of Canada between the states of Washington and Alaska. Wearing old Chinese coins as body armor into battle against the Russians at the time of the American Revolution. (It proved bulletproof.) Such coins have been "Dug Up" in remote areas that weren't believed to be traveled at the time. (Well before the gold rush.) http://news.discovery.com/history/us-history/chinese-coin-canada-yukon-111104.htm Chinese explorers went SOMEWHERE deep into the Pacific, returning in 499A.D. to tell of people rather like the American Indians of the time are believed to have been at the time. At the beginning of the 15th century, decades before Columbus, there was the, a, "Plunderer" Zheng He, who would sail as many as 70 ships at a time (Of his fleet of over 200) to great distances to bring back loot.

Could he (Or his men) have build the 'Mystery Walls of East Bay?' http://www.atlasobscura.com/places/berkeley-mystery-walls An ancient Chinese junk long at the bottom of Bodega Bay, other Chinese porcelain pulled from the waters of Northern California, even Ming Dynasty coins found as far as Nevada; all offer suggestion without being real proof. Zheng He era Chinese coins also circulated into South Africa. So much is known of the Vikings in North America as much as 600 years before Columbus, but the Chinese on the west coast is still only theoretical.

I'm not so much a history buff as a pure addict. Compare the size of Zheng He's behemoth ships compared to the Santa Maria.

 

[Punx0r]

I found the following map interesting. It shows how the U.S. grew from nothing to the 50 current states:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/29/UnitedStatesExpansion.png


For an interesting take on U.S. history I'd recommend the book "Colossus: The Rise and Fall of the American Empire" by Nial Ferguson. He's an historian who has held senior positions at Oxford, Stanford and Harvard, so I like to imagine his writing is credible. His bent towards the economic aspects of history are also quite interesting.