Uncle John’s Impossible Questions & Astounding Answers (13 page)

Let’s put it this way—you could probably walk across the country faster than cowboys could move their cattle across it (unless there was a stampede, in which case the cows moved very fast, though rarely in the right direction). A good day’s travel would get the cowboys and their herd about 15 miles from where they started out that morning. Why so slow? Because cows require an enormous amount of food every day—about 100 pounds of grass, even more if they’re expending energy (like stampeding). The cowboy’s job was (and still is) to know when to get them dogies moving and when to let them stop and refuel, which was often.

Dead presidents. Buried in Virginia are Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, Tyler, Taft, and Kennedy (the latter two in Arlington National Cemetery). New York City’s most famous presidential resting place is Grant’s Tomb. Others buried in the Empire State: Fillmore, Van Buren, Arthur, and both Roosevelts. Ohio’s five dead presidents are Harrison, Hayes, Garfield, McKinley, and Harding.

In all, 18 states host the remains of former commanders-in-chief. Only one western state has more than one: California, the final resting place of Presidents Nixon and Reagan.

Did you get a good deal the last time you went shopping? Was it as much of a bargain as Peter Minuit’s purchase? No way. What did he buy?

Peter Minuit bought Manhattan, and according to legend, he bought it “for a steal.” But the Indians made out all right, too (at first, anyway).

A former diamond cutter turned merchant explorer, Minuit was sent to the New World by the Dutch West India Company in 1626 to serve as the Colonial Governor of what was then called New Netherland. His mission: to establish a civil government among the colonists, secure land rights from the Indians, and look for goods other than animal pelts to ship back to Europe. History books tell that Minuit offered a few “beads and trinkets” worth 60 Dutch guilders—about $24—to the Lenape tribe in exchange for ownership of the island. But these were more than mere trinkets: Minuit traded advanced European farming technology including duffel cloth, kettles, axes, hoes, drilling awls, wampum (sacred shell beads), and “diverse other wares.” And the value was closer to $72.

In a way, it was Minuit who got hosed: The Lenapes didn’t even “own” the island; they shared it with the Mohicans and Mohawks. And all three tribes were fighting over who would control the fur trade with the Dutch. Minuit built a fort and a home on what is now the southern tip of Manhattan, and ordered the Dutch colonists living inland to move there, mostly to stay out of the Indians’ war.

Although Minuit could make it there, he couldn’t make it anywhere: Twelve years later, he was killed during a hurricane in the Caribbean while searching for a good source of tobacco.

Who bombed Florida on June 8, 1959…and why?

Arthur Summerfield—President Eisenhower’s over-enthusiastic Postmaster General. “Gentlemen, we stand on the threshold of rocket mail,” he announced in 1959 to the crowd gathered at the Naval Auxiliary Air Station in Mayport, Florida. “Before man reaches the moon, mail will be delivered within hours from New York to California, to Britain, to India or Australia. How? By guided missiles!”

Then Summerfield informed the crowd that the first missile delivery was already on its way—launched only a few moments earlier from the submarine U.S.S.
Barbero
. The missile’s nuclear warhead had been replaced with two mail containers filled with 3,000 letters, each printed with a special “First Official Rocket Mail” insignia. (The “official” designation was an important qualifier, because 23 years earlier, the postmaster of Greenwood Lake, New York, had launched an
unauthorized
rocket full of letters 2,000 feet across a frozen lake to the postmaster of Hewitt, New Jersey.)

After flying more than 100 miles, Summerfield’s mail missile crashed reasonably close to its target. The letters scattered everywhere, but nobody was hurt, and Summerfield was quite pleased with the experiment. However, few others—including Eisenhower—were convinced that this was a viable way to deliver mail. In addition to the potential dangers involved, the number of missiles needed to transport America’s millions of letters every day would have been staggering. Result: U.S. Rocket Mail was declared dead on delivery.

Who is the only man to have served as President of the United States and as Chief Justice on the Supreme Court? Hint: He’s more famous in the Philippines than in the U.S.

What was especially unusual about the Battle of Palmito Hill?

William Howard Taft. The Yale graduate much preferred law to politics, and his lifelong dream was to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court, which he eventually did in 1921, but only after spending four awkward years as president from 1909 to ’13.

In the U.S., Taft is perhaps best known today for being too fat to get out of the White House bathtub, but in the Philippines, he is considered a national hero. While Taft was serving as a federal judge in 1900, President McKinley sent him to the U.S.-controlled island nation just after it gained independence from Spain. The portly politician helped set up a new government in the Philippines: He procured millions of dollars from the U.S. in order to jump-start the Filipino economy and to build roads and schools.

The war was over. During the U.S. Civil War, generals often went weeks without orders from headquarters, forcing them to act on their own. Case in point: the Battle of Palmito Hill, fought on the banks of the Rio Grande near Brownsville, Texas. On May 11, 1865, breaking a local gentleman’s agreement that neither side would advance on the other without prior written warning, a Union commander led a raid on a Confederate camp, making off with some supplies and a few prisoners. A two-day battle ensued, resulting in a few dozen soldiers injured and dead. Unbeknownst to them, Confederate General Robert E. Lee had surrendered on April 9, 1865…more than a month earlier.

What island nation’s revolution helped double the size of the United States?

You may know that the word “America” comes from Italian explorer cartographer Amerigo Vespucci. But it was another cartographer who first wrote “America” on a map. Who was he?

Haiti. At the beginning of the 19th century, Napoleon Bonaparte was building up his empire in Europe and extended his land-grabbing to North America. The French ruler laid claim to New Orleans and the rest of the Louisiana Territory. That gave Napoleon’s army control of all shipping into and out of the Mississippi River. In short, he staked a claim on nearly
everything
west of the Mississippi.