History – with the good bits put back!
1805: Explorer William Clark reaches the Pacific Ocean and pens the famous line: “Ocian in view! O! the joy!” (That was Clark: good explorer; bad speller).
1836: The Mexican general Santa Anna surrounds the Alamo, trapping 180 Texans inside and prompting Texan William Travis to declare, “I shall never surrender or retreat.”
1846: A band of travelers, including the soon-to-be notorious Donner family, becomes trapped in the Sierra Nevada, forcing them to decide whether it’s better to eat each other or starve to death in the snow.
1861: Two railroad companies, one starting in the West and one in the East, start a race to lay the most track and create a Transcontinental Railroad.
Get the felling the world’s changing quickly? Welcome to the thrilling, tragic, and downright wild adventure of America’s westward expansion.