# Little-known American history **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [November 5, 2007, 12:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/little-known-american-history/425227 "2007-11-05T00:07:36Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [November 6, 2007, 1:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/little-known-american-history/425227/61 "2007-11-06T13:39:00Z")
> [@](#): > > Mark Twain was a correspondent in Hawaii for a while for a California newspaper. His stories from that time are priceless. I especially remembered his thoughts on visiting the Kilauea volcano on the Big Island while the wife and I were visiting it ourselves. I just finished reading a collection of his letters from Hawaii. Great stuff. When Twain was older, he made a round-the-world trip (chronicled in **Following the Equator** , but was unable to land on Hawaii because of a quarantine. It was a big disappointment to him. He never got another chance to return. **Spectre of Pithecanthropus** writes: > [@](#): > > Some Civil War battles were fought as far west as New Mexico and Arizona (by today’s maps). Arizona was strongly pro-Confederate and sent representatives to the Confederate legislature. Not only that, there was a Cibvil War battle in St. Albans, Vermont. **Vermont!** > **[Vermont Civil War Battle](https://americancivilwar.com/statepic/vt.html)** > > vermont Battle Map American Civil War Battles by State during the American civil war. There was also an aborted Confederate terrorist incident in New York City. Ellis writes about it in **The Epic of New York City**. ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [November 6, 2007, 1:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/little-known-american-history/425227/62 "2007-11-06T13:43:33Z")
More on the St. Albans raid: [http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/american\_civil\_war\_retired/6658](http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/american_civil_war_retired/6658) [http://vermontcivilwar.org/staraid/](http://vermontcivilwar.org/staraid/) > **[St. Albans Raid](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Albans_raid)** > > The St. Albans Raid was the northernmost land action of the American Civil War. It was a raid from the Province of Canada by 21 Confederate soldiers. They had recently failed in engagements with the Union Army and evaded subsequent capture in the United States. The mission was to rob banks to raise money, and to trick the Union Army into diverting troops to defend their northern border against further raids. It took place in St. Albans, Vermont, on October 19, 1864. They got the money, killed a l... ---
**Author:** ![Loach](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/loach/32/350_2.png) [@Loach](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Loach)\ **Post date:** [November 6, 2007, 6:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/little-known-american-history/425227/63 "2007-11-06T18:00:28Z")
[QUOTE=Jamaika a jamaikaiaké] [Rutgers University](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Queens), too. From the link: The Old Queens campus is rife with history dating several years before the construction of the Old Queens building. During the American Revolution, Alexander Hamilton commanded a battery of artillery which fired upon British positions under the command of William Howe, 5th Viscount Howe to provide time for General George Washington to escape south through New Brunswick in 1777 following the fall of New York City Not quite a battle, but still pretty good. [/QUOTE] Damn you! I was looking for this too but couldn’t find a cite. Coincidentally it happened right near Hamilton St in New Brunswick. Oh wait, maybe they named it that after… ---
**Author:** ![Chefguy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chefguy/32/138_2.png) [@Chefguy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chefguy)\ **Post date:** [November 6, 2007, 9:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/little-known-american-history/425227/64 "2007-11-06T21:52:20Z")
Most Americans can tell you the whats and even the whens of the Revolutionary War and the Civil War, but few are familiar with one of the bloodiest wars in US history, King Philip’s War. Percentage-wise, this war took a large toll between 1675 and 1676, with about 600 colonists and 3000 Indians taking a dirt nap. “King Philip” was actually a Wampanoag named Metacom (sounds like a Silicon Valley company). He was referred to as King Philip because of his ambitions to be the leader of all the local tribes. Alliances between tribes sprang up, as did alliances between colonists and tribes (notably the Mohegans). The year-long struggles taxed the resources of both sides, with the Indians being the worse for wear, but even so, it was touch and go for the colonies for awhile. Metacom had a habit of fading away into the trees whenever capture or death came near, and so remained a strong influence up until his death. He was beheaded and his head displayed at Plymouth for many years. A good article on this can be found on Wiki. ---
**Author:** ![Big\_Norse](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/big_norse/32/9954_2.png) [@Big\_Norse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Big_Norse)\ **Post date:** [November 6, 2007, 11:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/little-known-american-history/425227/65 "2007-11-06T23:27:38Z")
Centralia, PA (or at least the ground under it) has been on fire for [45 years](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centralia,_Pennsylvania). And on an even more obscure (and trivial) note: Clark University in Worcester, MA was the only American University to host a lecture by [Sigmund Freud](http://www.clarku.edu/research/archives/freud_jung.cfm), and the only American University to grant him an honorary degree. ---
**Author:** ![Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spectre_of_pithecanthropus/32/12343_2.png) [@Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spectre_of_Pithecanthropus)\ **Post date:** [November 6, 2007, 11:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/little-known-american-history/425227/66 "2007-11-06T23:52:48Z")
[QUOTE=Civil Guy] There’s also a Union Army barracks at Two Harbors on Catalina Island, isn’t there? Set up at about the same time? Similar purpose, presumably? I need a little help here; I seem to recall in doing some research for a college paper that one of the famous names from the Old West actually got a start running a stagecoach between Los Angeles and San Bernardino - but I can’t remember the name. . [/QUOTE] You mght be thinking of Wyatt Earp, who was a teamster working between San Bernadino and Los Angeles in the 1860s. I coiuld be wrong, but I thought he drove a freight wagon, not a stagecoach. Most of the Earps are buried in Colma, which I think is somewhere out towards Berdoo. In later life he was a technical advisor on Westerns to the early film directors, and died in L.A. in 1929. The historical novel _Bat Masterson_–well worth reading if you are at all interested in this stuff–depicted Wyatt Earp, around 1919, as an impoverished and somewhat embittered man, but I don’t know if there was any truth to that. In the novel, he and Bat, and wives, meet up at the Alexandria Hotel, presumably because Earp didn’t want his friends to see what a dump he and Josie lived in. But again, that’s only a novel. ---
**Author:** ![Bosda\_Di\_Chi\_of\_Tricor](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bosda_di_chi_of_tricor/32/16845_2.png) [@Bosda\_Di\_Chi\_of\_Tricor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bosda_Di_Chi_of_Tricor)\ **Post date:** [November 7, 2007, 12:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/little-known-american-history/425227/67 "2007-11-07T00:00:09Z")
[QUOTE=Siam Sam] Mark Twain was a correspondent in Hawaii for a while for a California newspaper. His stories from that time are priceless. I especially remembered his thoughts on visiting the Kilauea volcano on the Big Island while the wife and I were visiting it ourselves. [/QUOTE] The paper he wrote them for also discussed sending Twain to Japan, & it almost came off. But Twain & the publisher quarreled, & he got canned. I’d have loved to read that. Sam Clemens was an acute observer, & Japan was in transition from a medeval society to a modern one. He’d have had **a lot** to say. ---
**Author:** ![Sampiro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/2acd7d/32.png) [@Sampiro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sampiro)\ **Post date:** [November 7, 2007, 12:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/little-known-american-history/425227/68 "2007-11-07T00:24:31Z")
This is not _just_ U.S. History but world history, but as it’s important to both I’ll mention it. When the Puritans and Pilgrims settled Massachusetts, nobody on Earth had any conception of the methodology of conception, or more precisely, of embryology. There were many theories and of course it was known that pregnancies were caused by sex and that fertile and infertile times of the month could be linked to the timing of menses, etc., but the role of women in formation of a fetus was completely underestimated and that an ejaculate contained individual sperm cells was unknown until the invention of the microscope in the late 17th century. Fallopio had written treatises on the tubes that now bear his name in the 16th century but he was not sure what they did, with “female semen” even entering into medical literature, and there was much debate over whether an infant was deposited fully formed into the mother by its father’s sperm (17th century [drawing](http://academic.evergreen.edu/v/vivianoc/homunculus.gif) of a sperm cell seen under a microscope based upon this theory) or, as Aristotle opined and Wm. Harvey championed at the time of the Puritans, a fetus was a big mess that formed gradually. There were theories that babies were formed by the mingling of ejaculate and menstrual blood even, or that it was hastened by the mother eating certain foods directly before or after sex. By the 18th century, Harvey’s view of unformed embryo was the leading one. He did believe that “everything begins with an egg”, but his concept of that egg had nothing to do with the one that actually existed. It was not until _years after the U.S. Civil War_ that the sperm fertilizes egg theory was really understood. In a paper in 1875 a trio of embryologists (Barry, Bischoff and van Beneden) first pretty much “got it right”, and their work was not immediately accepted by all doctors. This seems trivial, but it actually was of MAJOR importance to how women, sex, and babies were viewed. It explains much of the stigma of male masturbation (you’re killing bunches of iddy biddy humans in addition to the kittens Jesus stomps on), of why infertility was almost always the fault of the woman (and she could be divorced for it even if the man’s first three wives had also been “infertile”- all she had to do was lay there and let him put the wee babies in her), of the relatively low opinion of women, etc… Plus, it’s just amazing that only for 1/50th of recorded history have we understood something as elemental and universal as human conception. Not to say people used to be stupid or ignorant- how would they know that an ejaculate contains all these little boogers swimming around?- but does show how much we take for granted by way of knowledge today and how in a century we went from just beginning to understand fertilization to test tube babies. ---
**Author:** ![Raguleader](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/258eb7/32.png) [@Raguleader](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Raguleader)\ **Post date:** [November 7, 2007, 1:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/little-known-american-history/425227/69 "2007-11-07T01:15:48Z")
Another George Washington tidbit: There is a statue of George Washington on the lawn of the National Gallery in London, England. ---
**Author:** ![smiling\_bandit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e9a140/32.png) [@smiling\_bandit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/smiling_bandit)\ **Post date:** [November 7, 2007, 2:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/little-known-american-history/425227/70 "2007-11-07T02:23:03Z")
[QUOTE=CalMeacham] There is no way that Adams would ever have agreed to a peaceful reconciliation with Britain. I suspect Franklin wouldn’t either, but he’d be more ambiguous about it. [quote] Adams would have gone for a peaceful settlement, but by then the terms were independance and nothing less. He did not hold grudges for the most part and usually forgave those who aggreived him. > [@](#): > > AFAIK, Adams’ frustration with franklin didn’t begin until he saw him in action in France. Adams didn’t dislike Franklin — they’d had dealing before. Oh yes. Here’s my story: Franklin was a miracle worker with the French. But there was a flaw. He was absolutely the worst administrator and least effective consular in history. This wasn’t totally his fault, as he wasn’t technicaly consul. But at the same time, it was difficult for Congress to handle the job in a time of sea-going warfare. And Franklin was notoriously poor at keeping in touch with Congress, writing around once a season and half his messages failed to get through. The net result was that Congress had no idea what was going on in Europe, no idea what France had done, couldn’t make arrangements to receive French aid (much of which was wasted through Franklin’s abominable record keeping, inability to choose transportation for goods, lack of security, and poorly-chosen purchases of textiles and supplies). This is what drove John Adams to fury. Adams could be harsh, but in this case his ire was well deserved. Franklin did more than anyone else to gain material aid for America but also wasted more of it than anyone could imagine (we’re talking fortunes upon fortunes here). ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [November 7, 2007, 2:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/little-known-american-history/425227/71 "2007-11-07T02:27:13Z")
[QUOTE=Phlosphr] Colonial homes were taxed on the thickness of their hardwood flooring, which gave way to the thicker planks being used in the up stairs and the thinner ones used downstairs, this is because it was considered rude for the tax collector to go upstairs in a home, which was deemd for the family living space and not for guests or strangers. [/QUOTE] Got a cite? :dubious: ---
**Author:** ![RealityChuck](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/realitychuck/32/195_2.png) [@RealityChuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RealityChuck)\ **Post date:** [November 7, 2007, 3:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/little-known-american-history/425227/72 "2007-11-07T03:33:37Z")
The history of the bathtub in America was invented by H. L Menken in an article in the _New York Evening Mail_\* in 1917 entitled “[A Neglected Anniversary](http://members.aol.com/zoticus/bathlib/menck/ambath.htm).” Known now as “The Great Bathtub Hoax,” Mencken’s article was taken seriously and is still the basis for various “histories” of the tub, most notably the story that Milliard Fillmore was the first to install a bathtub in the White House. ---
**Author:** ![Chefguy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chefguy/32/138_2.png) [@Chefguy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chefguy)\ **Post date:** [November 7, 2007, 3:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/little-known-american-history/425227/73 "2007-11-07T03:42:20Z")
[QUOTE=CalMeacham] I was afraid of this – you took me seriously. But the smileys all seemed too blatant. There is no way that Adams would ever have agreed to a peaceful reconciliation with Britain. I suspect Franklin wouldn’t either, but he’d be more ambiguous about it. AFAIK, Adams’ frustration with franklin didn’t begin until he saw him in action in France. Adams didn’t dislike Franklin — they’d had dealing before. [/QUOTE] By the time of that conference, neither would have been amenable to reconciliation. Franklin had exhausted all avenues with England, diplomatic and otherwise, and met with intransigence, obstinance and ridicule. The letters that Adams wrote from Paris certainly reeked of dislike, envy and disdain for Franklin, not that much of it wasn’t deserved. I took you seriously, because I have no notion of your knowledge of this period (possibly a bad assumption on this board). ---
**Author:** ![Siam\_Sam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/d78d45/32.png) [@Siam\_Sam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Siam_Sam)\ **Post date:** [November 7, 2007, 4:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/little-known-american-history/425227/74 "2007-11-07T04:09:30Z")
In _John Adams_, David McCullough details how Adams pretty much single-handedly prevented the US from going to war with France while he was president. War fever against Napoleon was running high. If we HAD gone to war with France, then the Louisiana Purchase would almost certainly never have occurred, and the course of US history would have been altered dramatically. ---
**Author:** ![Miss\_Purl\_McKnittington](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e9a140/32.png) [@Miss\_Purl\_McKnittington](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miss_Purl_McKnittington)\ **Post date:** [November 7, 2007, 8:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/little-known-american-history/425227/75 "2007-11-07T08:20:09Z")
There are two murder cases in Wisconsin’s history that stand out when it comes to the death penalty. (Never mind that only something like ten people have been executed since Wisconsin was a territory.) The first is the rather spectacular hanging of William Caffee in Mineral Point in 1842. Caffee rode to the gallows beating out his own funeral march with liquor bottles on his coffin. It’s estimated that over 5,000 people came to Mineral Point to witness the hanging. It was, to say the least, not a very solemn affair. The other case is that of [John McCaffary](http://www.wisbar.org/AM/Template.cfm?Section=Home&TEMPLATE=/CM/ContentDisplay.cfm&CONTENTID=50092) in 1851. He drowned his wife in a barrel, was found guilty of murder, and consequently, a debate broke out across the state about the desirability of the death penalty in Wisconsin. Basically, the way the law was worded, the only sentence a judge could deliver to a guilty murderer was death. Not life imprisonment, not forty years, just death. The desire to avoid tasteless public executions and “judicially murdered” men, as one newspaper editor put it, is what led to the abolishment of the capital punishment in Wisconsin. (Let’s not talk about the last referendum, huh?) It’s kind of weird that the two men’s names sound so similar, though. ---
**Author:** ![denquixote](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b9bd4f/32.png) [@denquixote](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/denquixote)\ **Post date:** [November 7, 2007, 1:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/little-known-american-history/425227/76 "2007-11-07T13:10:23Z")
[QUOTE=Spectre of Pithecanthropus] You mght be thinking of Wyatt Earp, who was a teamster working between San Bernadino and Los Angeles in the 1860s. I coiuld be wrong, but I thought he drove a freight wagon, not a stagecoach. Most of the Earps are buried in Colma, which I think is somewhere out towards Berdoo. [/QUOTE] Actually Colma is virtually all cemeteries and is located near San Francisco. Earp and his late wife are indeed buried there in a Jewish cemetery as she was raised Jewish apparently. ---
**Author:** ![lawoot](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/35a633/32.png) [@lawoot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lawoot)\ **Post date:** [November 7, 2007, 1:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/little-known-american-history/425227/77 "2007-11-07T13:45:39Z")
The [Port Chicago Naval Magazine Explosion](http://www.history.navy.mil/faqs/faq80-1.htm), near San Francisco in 1944. Killed 320 people, 202 of whom were African American dock workers. 15% of the African-Americans who died in WW2 died at Port Chicago. 390 people were injured, and two liberty ships were destroyed. One of them was shattered into pieces no larger than a suitcase. The White officers who ran the facility were given leave time to help them recover. The African American workers were told to get back to work, and rebelled, leading to many of them being court martialed. > [@](#): > > _from the link_ > Of the 328 men of the ordnance battalion, 258 African-American sailors refused to load ammunition. In the end, 208 faced summary courts-martial and were sentenced to bad conduct discharges and the forfeit of three month’s pay for disobeying orders. The remaining 50 were singled out for general courts martial on the grounds of mutiny. The sentence could have been death, but they received between eight and fifteen years at hard labor after a trial which a 1994 review had strong racial overtones. Soon after the war, in January 1946, all of the men were given clemency. On 23 December 1999, President William Clinton pardoned Freddie Meeks of Los Angeles, one of the few still living members of the original 50. ---
**Author:** ![Shecky](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/85e7bf/32.png) [@Shecky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shecky)\ **Post date:** [November 7, 2007, 1:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/little-known-american-history/425227/78 "2007-11-07T13:56:39Z")
Many NJ shore towns have huge victorian mansions set within 20-30 feet of the street, but giant properties for the backyard. The reason for this is that property taxes were assessed on the front yards only. The wealthier you were, the further back your house could be. ---
**Author:** ![Ranchoth](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ranchoth/32/1066_2.png) [@Ranchoth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ranchoth)\ **Post date:** [November 7, 2007, 2:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/little-known-american-history/425227/79 "2007-11-07T14:46:44Z")
If the Viking sagas are correct, the first slaves brought into the New World by Europeans were Irish. Not quite 20 years ago, the US had the F-21A “Lion” jet fighter in service. Never heard of it? Well, all 25 of them were leased Israeli Kfir-C1’s—basically an unlicenced copy of the French Mirage V—used for “aggressor” squadron training. All were returned by 1989. You know who [Nobuo Fujita](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nobuo_Fujita) is? Only the first man to fly an aerial attack against mainland North America, in 1942. From a seaplane launched from a submarine aircraft carrier. (Not to mention the other [axis attacks on North America](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attacks_on_North_America_during_World_War_II)) This is a [picture of the aftermath of the “Ruth” test](http://nuclearweaponarchive.org/Usa/Tests/Ukruth.jpg) from the [Upshot-Knothole](http://nuclearweaponarchive.org/Usa/Tests/Upshotk.html) series of nuclear tests. That tower wasn’t a weapon effects test target—that’s the 300’ tower that the bomb was resting on. 2/3rds of it survived the blast. (It hopefully goes without saying that this wasn’t the Earth-shattering kaboom that’d been hoped for.) Apparently, the last man executed for burglary in the United States was one James Coburn of Alabama…in 1964. ---
**Author:** ![Koxinga](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/4af34b/32.png) [@Koxinga](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Koxinga)\ **Post date:** [November 7, 2007, 3:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/little-known-american-history/425227/80 "2007-11-07T15:18:03Z")
The United States once [invaded Russia and fought the Red Army](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polar_Bear_Expedition). [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/little-known-american-history/425227.md?page=3) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/little-known-american-history/425227.md?page=5)