Two hundred years ago today Napoleon lost at Waterloo which elevated England to a major world power and was pretty much it for France. Never again would they rise to the heights that Napoleon took them to. And it figgers that Napoleon wasn’t even French. He was a Corsican. He changed his name from Napoleone di Buonaparte to Napoleon Bonaparte. This once again proves that the only time France is successful is when someone other than a French male leads them. We here in the United States should be thankful to the Brits, even though we fought a war with them starting in 1812. Since Napoleon needed money for his war he sold us the Louisiana Territory which doubled the size of the country. St. Louis went from a French trading outpost to become the “Gateway to the West”. Lewis and Clarke set out from there to travel up the Missouri River to its source and from there to the West Coast down the Columbia River.
St. Louis has a lot of streets with French names like Choteau and Gravois (which St. Louisians pronounce gra-voy or gra-voys). Then the Germans moved in and they started naming streets after Germans like Beethoven (pronounced beet-hoven) and Goethe (pronounced geth-ee). I can top that. About 50 miles southwest of St. Louis there is a creek called Courtois Creek which is pronounced co-da-way. Stands to reason since most residents of Missouri pronounce it Mi-zoo-rah.
Here’s a little bit of trivia that Ron sent me.
The Panama Canal is not the only water line connecting the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. There’s a place in Wyoming—deep in the Teton Wilderness Area of the Bridger-Teton National Forest—in which a creek splits in two. Like the canal, this creek connects the two oceans dividing North America in two parts.
Yes. You read that right: North America is divided in two parts by a single water line that—no matter how hard you try not to—you will have to cross to go from North to South and vice versa.
The creek divides into two similar flows at a place called the Parting of the Waters, pictured above. To the East, the creek flows “3,488 miles (5,613 km) to the Atlantic Ocean via Atlantic Creek and the Yellowstone, Missouri and Mississippi Rivers.” To the West, it flows “1,353 miles (2,177 km) to the Pacific Ocean via Pacific Creek and the Snake and Columbia Rivers.”
Technically, a fish could swim from the Gulf of Mexico to the Pacific Ocean.
The fish could swim from the Gulf to the Pacific.
Brain fart. Fixed it. Thanks!
These creeks are on the Two Ocean Plateau. Not only could fish swim from the Atlantic to the Pacific but they did. At least the Cutthroat trout that Yellowstone is so famous for are actually Pacific drainage fish. They made it over the divide at Two Ocean Lake and migrated into the Yellowstone River drainage. This took place as the great Ice Age glaciers melted away. No thanks to man made CO2 either.