A Note From Bob
The last man to surrender his rifle
Wednesday. This very week in 1881, Sitting Bull rode into Fort Buford with fewer than 200 weary followers. He would not hand his Winchester to the Army himself; he gave it to his young son Crow Foot, saying he wished to be remembered as the last man of his tribe to surrender his rifle. The frontier he fought for is today's featured territory: the American West. Saddle up.
Trivia Question of the Day
In 1860, Pony Express riders could carry a letter from Missouri to California in just ten days. What invention shut the whole operation down barely 18 months after it began?
The answer is at the bottom of this email.
Today's Featured Quiz
The American West
Wagon trains and railheads, cattle drives and gold camps, lawmen and outlaws whose names still ring out 150 years later. The land beyond the Missouri, and the people who worked it, fought over it, and made it legend. 15 questions.
The Answer
The transcontinental telegraph
The line was completed on October 24, 1861, and messages that took Pony Express riders ten hard days in the saddle suddenly took minutes. The Express announced its closure two days later. Its riders galloped along trails first traced by mountain men and pathfinders, and those trailblazers fill today's second quiz.
On This Day
On this day in 1587, John White and roughly 115 English colonists arrived at Roanoke Island, off the coast of present-day North Carolina. When White returned from a supply run three years later, every settler had vanished, leaving one word carved into a post: CROATOAN. America's story of exploration is full of bold gambles like that one. Test yourself with 15 questions on the pioneers and explorers of North America.
Stay
Curious.
Bob
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