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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

27. Weird as it Sounds, if Not for a Beer Shortage, We Might be Talking about the New York Pilgrims Today

The Mayflower’s intended voyage, vs the actual route. Scholastic

When the Pilgrims set sail, their initial destination had been a Virginia Colony island teeming with wildlife and natural resources. The site had a huge natural harbor, and a navigable river that led deep into the interior. The Virginia Colony’s borders in 1620 were not the same as those of today’s Virginia. Back then, the Virginia Colony’s northern boundary was about 225 miles farther north than Virginia’s current border. The island where the Pilgrims had intended to establish their colony is today called Manhattan.

Instead, the lack of beer led them to explore the coastline of Cape Cod and the nearby mainland region, until they finally decided upon a site. On Christmas Day, 1620, the Pilgrims founded Plymouth Plantation as their new colony, and importantly, the site where they would brew up a fresh batch of beer. Weird as it sounds, if not for the Pilgrims’ running out of beer, we might be referring to them today as the Virginia or Manhattan Pilgrims, instead of the Massachusetts Pilgrims.

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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.