Did you know? I didn't.

Brownies were invented in America!!!! It happened in the late 1800's or early 1900's. No one knows the fabulous cook who either invented them on purpose or by mistake.

I knew brownies tasted like home-sweet-home!

From the back of a cereal box...

...You can get the most interesting trivia:

American City Trivia:

~ DFW International Airport in Dallas, TX takes up more space than New York's entire island of Manhattan!

~ Detroit is called Motor City or Motown because it is the birthplace of the car industry. Henry Ford began the Ford Motor Company in Detroit in 1903.

~ The Chicago River is the only river in the world that flows backwards. Its flow was reversed by engineers in 1900 to prevent industrial wastes from flowing into Lake Michigan. Every year on St. Patrick's Day, the Chicago River is dyed green.

~ Marthasville, Terminus, and Atlanta are all the same city! Atlanta was formerly known as "Marthasville" after a former Governor's daughter. Before that it was named "Terminus" because it was situated at the end of a railroad. Today, it is known by its third and final name, Atlanta.

~ Chicago's Tribune Tower on Michigan Avenue was completed in 1925. Its large Gothic entrance contains pieces of stone from other famous structures such as the Alamo, Westminster Abbey, the Taj Mahal, and the Great Pyramid.

~ City Firsts:
First Daily Newspaper: Philadelphia, PA Dec. 1, 1913
First Traffic Light: Cleveland, OH Aug. 5, 1914
First Baseball Stadium: Pittsburgh, PA June 30, 1909
First Department Store: Salt Lake City, UT 1868
First Parking Meter: Oklahoma City, OK July 16, 1935
First Skyscraper: Chicago, IL 1885
First Computer: Philadelphia, PA 1946


Random, but interesting, huh?

Whew! I love this one:

"From all that I have read of history and government, of human life and manners, I have drawn this conclusion, that the manners of women were the most infallible barometer to ascertain the degree of morality and virtue of a nation. The Jews, the Greeks, the Romans, the Swiss, the Dutch, all of them lost their public spirit and their republican forms of government when they lost the modesty and domestic virtues of their women."

~ John Adams

Yankees?

Today Dad asked me where the name "Yankees" came from. A man from England asked him about it. Here's what I replied with;

From what I've heard, back in the late 1700s, and early 1800s, colonial Americans liked to pick on the Dutch. If food was bad, it was called Dutch food. If a house was bad, it was called a Dutch house. If a man was known to have bad habits or character, he was called "John Keys" - apparently a common Dutch name.

I guess the Dutch decided that enough is enough. They started calling the other colonial Americans the name the colonials had tried to pin on the Dutch; "John Keys." All the early Americans were soon being called "John Keys."

...However, Dutch pronunciation being what it is, we all became "Yan-kees."

Now, is that story correct? What have y'all heard?

Adoption

"For ye have not received the spirit of of bondage to fear;
but ye have received the Spirit of adoption,
whereby we cry, Abba, Father."
~ Romans 8:15

Two cool facts about adoption:

~ According to common law in England, an adopted child cannot be disinherited. You can disinherit your own children, but not those who are adopted. This law was made years ago by the Puritans, who understood the concept of adoption as taught in the Bible.

~ In Roman times - the time in which the book of Romans was written - the Latins had a law that an adopted son could never associate with his old family. Many times, Roman citizens would adopt their slaves. When they did so, all old debts would be forgiven the slave.

Doesn't this parallel our spiritual adoption well?

Small Fact Known Only to Few...

...Okay, so maybe more than a few people know this one. But for those of you who don't:

Columbus didn't discover America.

The Vikings beat him to it. And there is a possibility that the Romans crossed the Atlantic Ocean as well. And the Chinese possibly found our west shores long before Columbus. The "lost" continent wasn't that lost and unknown.

I'm not sure why Columbus is hailed as the discover... I enjoy reading about his voyage and all that, and I agree he furthered the advance of Europeans settlement in North America, but he wasn't the very first. Anyone have an idea why he's presented as the one who discovered America?

World Views...and some random thoughts

I was just thinking about how so few people know much about what happened in the southern half of the colonies during America's War for Independence.

It is a pity that an American child should think that the only important cities during that time were Boston and Concord. The Boston tea party and the march to Concord certainly have their place in our history, but there were 13 colonies involved in the fight!

In the past two years I have had a growing interest in the southern involvement with the War for Independence - particularly Virginia and North Carolina's part in it all. Through my research, I have discovered amazing, wondrous, thrilling accounts that testify to God's hand working through many incidents that occurred in Virginia and North Carolina - and in Tennessee and Kentucky land too, though they were not states yet.

I am sitting here, staring at the computer screen, wondering where to begin, and how to say all I am thinking. I suppose I shall have to consider this post as an introductary one, and give out little bits of information as I have time. For the present, let me encourage all my readers to research and read for themselves.

I suppose I should mention that I was homeschooled through all the grades. This gave me the wonderful advantage of being able to spend a ton of time researching topics that were of special interest to me - though I suppose any determined student could do that if he had a mind to. I spent a good deal of my last year in school studying history of the Revolution era.

I consider history one of the most important subjects under the sun because... how can we know where we're going if we don't know from where we've come?

How can we learn from the mistakes our ancestors made if we don't know what they were?

How can we chart our course if we don't know what works and what fails?

How can we properly praise God for His guiding hand if we don't see what He has done?

How can we see what will be if we don't know what has been?

How can we hold forth the Bible as trustworthy when we can't show people how the prophesies have been fulfilled?


I think a life that is out of touch with the past would be a life with a very warped view of the present. Of course, our forefathers don't hold the answer for everything; they were sinners too. But they can certainly teach us quite a bit, and if we balance what we see in history with what we see in the present and, most importantly, what we see in the Bible, I believe we will have very clear views of the world.