Random Facts Friday July 1, 2011

Hi all,
As regular readers are aware, I am very patriotic.
Usually random facts mean little facts I have learned about throughout the week.
I have taken the liberty of changing the definition this week to mean random, little known facts about America and our founding as a nation. See if you already know them!

1. "This land is your land": The longest river in the U.S. is the Arkansas River at 2,540 miles. The Mississippi River has the largest drainage area, but the Arkansas River is longer. See http://pubs.usgs.gov/of/1987/ofr87-242/.

2. The names of George Washington's horses he rode during the Revolutionary War were "Nelson" and "Blue Skin".

3. The first patent issued on U.S. soil was granted to Samuel Winslow in 1641 for a new way to make salt. Since this was during colonial times, these patents were granted by the colony(in this case, Massachusetts). The first one by the U.S. Patent office was in 1790 and was issued to Samuel Hopkins for an innovative way of making pot ash and pearl ash. Small business recognized from the beginning!

4. For a map of Ohio around 1776, see: http://www.birdsofafeather1.com/maps/1776ohio.html.
Marietta, Ohio, the first town settled in the Northwest Territory, was not founded until 1788.
By 1803, Ohio had enough population to become a state.

5. Recipe: For a variation of a July 4th cake, make a cake cut out as the U.S. map. I actually have a cake pan of the U.S. After baking, cooling, and icing, get each person to mark their birthplace on the map.
We use M&M candies. You could also mark who was each Founding Father and what colony each  represented (some were not born in the States), location of Revolutionary battles, where each President was born or what state he came from, etc.