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America Wanted to Nuke the Moon and Other Weird History

Khalid Elhassan October 15, 2020 32 min

United States - List of nuclear weapons tests of China — Nuking the Moon. Stillness in the Storm

31. Why the Pilgrims Landed On Plymouth Rock

The Pilgrims’ landing on Plymouth Rock. Roanoke Food Tours

Few things can kill a party or put a damper on festivities as quickly as running out of beer. However, the lack of beer seldom produces results as far-reaching as what occurred in the summer of 1620. Weird as it might sound, the Pilgrims ended up settling in Massachusetts because they were running low on beer. Today, that could seem like a trifling reason for making such an important decision. Back then, however, beer was a serious matter.

It began on August 5^th, 1620, when the Mayflower departed Plymouth, England, for a journey across the Atlantic to the newly established Virginia Colony. In other words, when they set out, the Pilgrims’ destination had not been Massachusetts, but a point significantly further south. The vagaries of weather, the hardships of crossing an ocean in a seventeenth-century sailing ship, coupled with low levels of beer, led them to change their minds about where to settle.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.