Columbus did not realize he had discovered a new continent that would be named America, but Amerigo Vespucci, who explored the New World between 1497 and 1504, did.
German mapmaker Martin Waldseemuller first applied the name to the new continent on a map published in 1507.
Yes, Bob Dylan did indeed meet Woody Guthrie, albeit when Guthrie was in his last years. Born Robert Zimmerman in 1941 in Duluth, Minnesota, young folksinger Bob Dylan hitchhiked to New York in 1960 to visit his musical idol Woody Guthrie, who was hospitalized with Huntington’s chorea. The composer and collector of hundreds of folk…
Antoine de la Mothe Cadillac, a French explorer and administrator, founded Fort Pontchartrain du Detroit in 1701. The Cadillac automobile is named for him.
West Virginia was part of Virginia when that state seceded from the Union in 1861. The delegates of 40 western counties formed their own government and seceded from Virginia to join the Union side. These counties entered the Union as the state of West Virginia in 1863.
The colorful, demagogic Huey Long (1893-1935), nicknamed the “Kingfish,” governed Louisiana from 1928 to 1932, when he resigned to enter the U.S. Senate. Elected in 1930, he deferred his entry into the Senate until 1932. He stayed there until he was killed by an assassin’s bullet in 1935. His wife finished his term.
The 42nd president Bill Clinton (1993— ) was born William Jefferson Blythe 4th on August 19, 1946. His father, a traveling salesman, died in a car accident three months before he was born. He received his new name when his mother married Roger Clinton, a car dealer, in 1950.
Lincoln said, “I believe this government can not endure permanently half slave and half free” in a speech delivered on June 16, 1858, in Springfield, Illinois, accepting the Republican nomination for the U.S. Senate. In the same speech, Lincoln paraphrased the New Testament, saying, “A house divided against itself can not stand.”