Captains Meriwether Lewis and William Clark stopped by the Harpers Ferry arsenal for supplies before beginning their legendary expedition into the American West, 1804-1806.
The Lewis and Clark National Historic Trail stretches nearly 4,900 miles and passes through 16 state and over 60 Tribal nations.
In 1976 I was part of a group of teens and adults from Oregon and Washington who were tasked with tidying up a segment of the Trail. My team started at Cape Disappointment and worked our way along the land routes to Puget Island, near Cathlamet, WA. The Oregon group began near Cannon Beach and met us in Portland; we drove to Walula Junction in Washington and worked our way to Waitsburg, WA, where a group from Eastern Washington and Idaho took over cleanup duties. The bulk of our job was clearing brush from trails, picking up trash and cleaning signs. Minor repairs were done by adults.
Hey, I have a tee from there! When people ask me about it I tell them it was named after me. . .by my parents.
Funny!
The 4,900 mile long Lewis and Clark National Historic Trail is the continuously longest of the 30 National Scenic and National Historic Trails.
https://lewisandclark.visitwidget.com has a map and trip planner for sites along the route, from Pennsylvania to Oregon and Washington and including Harpers Ferry WV.
Lewis & Clark was an NBC sitcom that aired during the 1981-82 season. It starred Gabe Kaplan and Guich Koock.
Seaman was a Newfoundland dog, a “Newfie” (“newfee”) that belonged to Meriwether Lewis. He was about 150 pounds in size and he accompanied Lewis and Clark on their Corps of Discovery Expedition. Seaman has his own Wikipedia page ➜ https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seaman_(dog) ■
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Which led me to wonder, how many dogs have their own Wikipedia page dedicated to them? The answer is not readily available but there is a wiki page, List of individual dogs ➜ https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_individual_dogs ■ , and also another list on the page for animal actors, here ➜ https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_animal_actors#Dogs ■ .
One dog who has his own wiki page is Togo the Iditarod sled dog from the 1925 serum run to Nome (➜ https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Togo_(dog) ■ ), but he is not listed on that wiki list page, List of individual dogs, but Toto from The Wizard of Oz is listed and he does have his own page (➜ https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toto_(Oz) ■ ), and so does the actor dog who played him in the movie, Terry the Cairn Terrier (➜ https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terry_(dog) ■ .
Balto, another dog from the 1925 serum run, has his own Wikipedia page, and his statue in NYC’s Central Park has a page too.
Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s dog Fala also has his own page:
Fala (dog) - Wikipedia
Franklin Delano Roosevelt was elected to the presidency four times. In each of those elections, he won the electoral college vote by a large margin:
1932: 472 to 59
1936: 523 to 8
1940: 449 to 82
1944: 432 to 99
The 1936 election is the greatest electoral landslide since the beginning of the current two-party system in the 1850s. FDR’s opponent, Governor Alf Landon of Kansas, failed to win even his home state, winning the electoral votes of only Maine and Vermont.
Wow, good trivia, good to know. Thanks!
In the 1984 election Ronald Reagan defeated Walter Mondale in a landslide, 525 to 13. The only state Mondale carried was his home state of Minnesota, for 10 electoral votes. Mondale also carried DC, for 3.
Added — in FDR’s 1936 election he received 98.5% of the electoral votes which was the largest share in a non-unanimous Presidential election, according to the few samples provided on wiki’s page for Landslide victories in the US, ➜ Landslide victory - Wikipedia ■ .
Given the close presidential race in 1796 between John Adams and Thomas Jefferson and that for the first (and as of now only) time the President and Vice-President were from different parties, South Carolina Representative William Smith introduced a constitutional amendment to change the flawed system where each elector had two at large votes to each elector having one vote for president and one for vice-president. His motion died almost immediately and the very next election was thrown into the House because of this flaw. As a result of this, in 1803 the process started to implement Rep. Smith’s idea.
Ohio joined the Union in 1803, becoming the 17th state in the United States. Its flag (the only non-rectangular state flag) accordingly bears 17 stars. The last President from Ohio was Warren G. Harding, elected just over a century ago.
The flags of Vatican City and Switzerland are square; the flag of Nepal has two right-angle triangles with the top slightly overlapping the one below it.
The Holy See (also known as the See of Rome, the Petrine See, and the Apostolic See) is the central governing body of the Roman Catholic Church, and of the Vatican City. Catholic tradition holds that the Holy See was founded by Saints Peter and Paul in the first century CE.
The crimson red in the flag of Nepal is the color of the rhododendron, Nepal’s national flower. Red is also Nepal’s sign of victory in war.
The major religion of Nepal is Hinduism, which is practiced by about 81% of the country’s 30 million inhabitants. Christianity is a distant fifth, at an estimated 1.7%. The Christians in the country are dominated by Protestants, as the number of practicing Catholics estimated at just 8,000 to 10,000.
According to a 2023-2024 Pew Research Center study, Americans are about 62% Christian, 29% religiously unaffiliated, and 7% religiously other than Christianity. Since 2007 Christians have been declining as a percentage of the US adult population while the share that is religiously unaffiliated has been rising.
Of the Christians, 40% are Protestant, 19% Catholic, and 3% other Christians.
➜ https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2025/02/26/religious-landscape-study-religious-identity ■
The Episcopal Church is a mainline Protestant religious denomination, the American offshoot of the Church of England, formed after the American Revolution. The Church began ordaining women in 1976. The Right Reverend Anne Jolly is the Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Ohio. She is the first female bishop of the diocese, having begun her service in April 2023. Trinity Cathedral in Cleveland is the site of her cathedra or bishop’s seat.
“Mainline Protestant” is a term coined in the U.S. in the early 20th Century, in reference to Protestant denominations, primarily in the U.S. and Canada, which are more theologically liberal/progressive, in contrast to more conservative and Fundamentalist Protestant denominations. Mainline Protestant denominations typically are supporters of social justice and ecumenism.
In the U.S., the seven largest mainline denominations, which are sometimes referred to as the “Seven Sisters of American Protestantism,” are:
- United Methodist Church
- Evangelical Lutheran Church in America
- The Episcopal Church
- Presbyterian Church (USA)
- American Baptist Churches USA
- United Church of Christ
- Christian Church (Disciples of Christ)
The Lutheran Church is divided into Synods. A synod, to quote wiki, is a council of a Christian denomination, usually convened to decide an issue of doctrine, administration or application. The word synod comes from the Ancient Greek (synodos) for ‘assembly, meeting’; the term is analogous with the Latin word (concilium) for ‘council’.
Martin Luther, back in 1517 when he nailed his Ninety-five Theses (or Disputation on the Power and Efficacy of Indulgences) to the church door in Wittenberg, Saxony-Anhalt, never wanted a church bearing his name. He did not want a church separate from the Roman Catholic Church. Luther wanted the Catholic Church to change its ways. Luther thought he was being a ‘good Catholic’. But the Edict of Worms in 1521 by Emperor Charles V changed that.
Today in the US there are several synods within Lutheranism. Some are the ELCA (as posted by @kenobi_65), the Missouri Synod, the Wisconsin Synod, and LCR or Lutheran Churches of the Reformation.
Today in Wittenberg, Luther’s 95 theses are engraved on the church door at All Saints’ Church.
In 2021, Pope Francis convoked the 16th Ordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops, commonly referred to as the “Synod on Synodality”. It was an attempt to encourage dialogue and inclusiveness in the Catholic Church; for the first time, women and laypeople had a vote in the assembly.
Several months before announcing the synod, Pope Francis said Synodality was “a walk together, and it is what the Lord expects from the Church of the third millennium”.