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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

30. The Pilgrims Had Actually Set Out for Virginia

The Pilgrims leaving the Netherlands. Digital Commonwealth

As every American schoolchild is taught, the Pilgrims crossed the Atlantic Ocean in the Mayflower. They landed at Plymouth Rock, and established Plymouth as a settlement, about forty miles south of modern Boston. However, Plymouth, at roughly 42° latitude N, had not been the Pilgrims’ intended destination. When they left England, they had aimed for a destination hundreds of miles down the eastern seaboard in the Virginia Colony, at roughly 40° latitude N.

However, the Pilgrims encountered many setbacks. They had planned to sail from England in July, 1620, but most of them were then living in Leiden, in the Netherlands. So the plan was for a sister ship, the Speedwell, to sail from England to the Netherlands, pick up the passengers, return to Southampton, join the Mayflower, and then the two ships would sail together in convoy to Virginia.

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.