What's with Columbus, anyway? He never set foot on either American continent or had a clue that they existed. To paraphrase Mark Twain, he didn't know where he was going, he didn't know where he was when he got there, and he didn't know where he had been when he returned.
Northern Europeans had been coming to North America for centuries. The entire formative history of the United States before the 1830s was the outcome of British, French, and Dutch exploration.
1807 - Former Vice President Aaron Burr was indicted on charges of treason. He was accused of plotting to set up a dictatorship or kingdom at the southwestern border of the U.S. (which history records as a fact). He was found not guilty at trial (probably because telephones and e-mail had not been invented).
1947 - Civilian pilot Kenneth A. Arnold reported seeing "flying saucers" in the State of Washington. It was the first recorded sighting, leading to a frenzy that was put to rest only by a vast government cover-up.
1948 - The Soviet Union, in control of eastern Germany, cut off all surface travel to and from West Berlin. The western Allies responded by organizing the Berlin Airlift. This operation conducted about 270,000 flights in the next year.
It was the end of the pretense that the Soviet Union was an ally of the western powers. In the end, it was also a strategic defeat for the reds.
http://www.trumanlibrary.org/whistlesto ... ift/large/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
http://www.trumanlibrary.org/teacher/berlin.htm" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
- Jim