Category: History
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Disestablished National Parks
Last summer 12MC reader “Scott” provided me with a boatload of National Park trivia. I continue to mine that for article suggestions. With that, I’m going pursue an angle that might be little known, or maybe just to me. One often thinks of everything associated with National Parks as perpetual. After all, their goals include…
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Jamestown Field Trip
I had the pleasure of serving as a parent chaperone for my son’s school field trip to Jamestown last week. Admittedly, the thought of accompanying two busloads of children aged nine-to-ten sounded a bit daunting. And of course it definitely had its challenges at times. I thought it was going to unfold like an uglier…
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Odds and Ends 4
The mailbag runneth over with great finds and suggestions from the generous readers of the Twelve Mile Circle audience. I’ll combine that with a couple of my recent discoveries and voilà, instant article. I’m not sure if I’m feeling lazy or if I’m still in a food coma from the recent Thanksgiving holiday but either…
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Where Monks Make Beer
It’s Thanksgiving in the United States today so most of the regular 12MC readers won’t be seeing this article. They can hang out with Big Tom the Turkey. We have more important things to talk about. I did consider taking the day off. Instead I decided to post an article that would likely be more…
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X Marks the Spot
It occurs to me how few place names begin with the letter X. I’ll admit that lots of places in China and other portions of the world do. However, those names derive from another language and gain their X during translation. I believe we need to distinguish the set of names converted from foreign logographic…
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Carbon
I noticed an interesting theme in a small town in Eastland County, Texas. Carbon, population 224, seems dedicated to all things carbon as befitting its name. Check out its fascinating array of streets featuring carbon in various allotropes, primarily although not exclusively in the form of coal and its derivatives. Carbon-themed streets I found: Coal…
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Damfino
I received an interesting tip by email about an old street in San Antonio, Texas identified as “Damfino” (as in “Damn if I know”). Our reader even provided a copy of an 1885 map for the online Library of Congress collection, which I’ve excerpted below. He theorized that the street name may have been a…
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Studios to Towns
I began to sense a pattern as I examined a map of Los Angeles, California recently. The movie industry has left its fingerprints upon the names of various places scattered throughout the basin and into the San Fernando Valley. This doesn’t surprise me, I’ve just never noticed it before. Let’s make sure we have the…
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European Capitals of New York
New York is certainly an international locale, a player on the world stage attracting people from every corner of the world. It has been that way for a long time, a point of debarkation for more than two centuries. Perhaps I should expect to see the names of so many European capitals diffused within the…
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My Little Poni
I completed my annual business trip to Williamsburg, Virginia earlier this week. I’ve featured articles arising from these periodic visits in the past including A Colonial Capital, The Jamestown-Scotland Ferry and Revisiting the Swap. I felt like I’d mined that area rather extensively. I had no plans to report anything further. Something made me smile…