History of North America questions

The city is ancient - its largest pyramid, the Pyramid of the Sun, was completed by AD 100. It predates most known cultures of Mesoamerica. The origin of its founders is uncertain, and its original name is also unknown. It housed a population of about 150,000 people, making it one of the largest cities in the world at that time.

Alaska was colonized by Russian fur traders. Rather than hunting by themselves, the Russians forced the Aleuts to do the work for them. Many of Aleuts had been removed from their home islands and sent as far south as California to hunt sea otter.

On 8 April 1941, the United States occupied Greenland in order to defend it against a possible invasion by Germany. After the end of WW2, the United States wished to keep the island for strategic reasons and offered $100,000,000, but Denmark refused to sell.

On 30 April 1863 a small infantry patrol of French Foreign Legion, numbering 62 soldiers and three officers was attacked and besieged by a force that may have eventually reached 3,000 Mexican infantry and cavalry. They made a defensive stand at the nearby Hacienda Camarón, with a plan to occupy Mexican forces to prevent attacks against the nearby French supply convoy. Only two legionnaires survived, but they stopped Mexicans for the whole day and reached their goal.

In 1681, Charles II granted a land charter to William Penn to repay a debt of £16,000 owed to William's father, Admiral William Penn. This was one of the largest land grants to an individual in history. William Penn wanted to name the land Sylvania and was embarrassed at the name Pennsylvania chosen by the king.

Liberia was created in 1847 by freed slaves from the United States. They established a government modelled on that of the United States and named its capital city, Monrovia after James Monroe, a prominent supporter of the colonization.

The Empire State Building took only one year and 45 days to build, or 7 million man-hours. To this day, this is a record for a skyscraper of its height. Due to reduced costs during the Depression, the final costs totalled only $24.7 million instead of the estimated $43 million.

There were the Olympic Games in St. Louis (1904), twice in Los Angeles (1932, 1984) and in Atlanta (1996)

It is estimated that the American Civil War caused the death of 625,000 soldiers. Second World War costed US the lives of 405,000 soldiers. Numbers for First World War and Vietnam War are much smaller, 116,000 and 58,000 respectively.

Hinckley became obsessed with the 1976 film Taxi Driver, in which a disturbed protagonist plots to assassinate a presidential candidate. Failing to develop any meaningful contact with Jodie Foster, who played a child prostitute in the film, Hinckley developed a plot to assassinate the president to get her attention.