Pilgrim myths: Don’t believe everything your kindergarten teacher told you

1. Myth: The Pilgrims were the first Europeans to land in Southern New England and to interact with the Native people. 
2. Myth: The Pilgrims came to the New World seeking religious freedom.
3. Myth: The Pilgrims intended to settle in Patuxet/Plymouth or, alternately, the Pilgrims meant to settle in Virginia, but they were blown off course.
4. Myth: The Pilgrims and Wampanoags came together in November 1621 for a Thanksgiving feast. 

Facts:

There’s a lot to unpack with Myth #4, and not just because it forms the basis of our country’s Thanksgiving Day story. 

First, while the Puritans did have “days of Thanksgiving” they were literally the opposite of a big, fun, family feast. They were usually days of fasting and prayer that maybe would be broken with a larger meal. 

Edward Winslow, in his writing about the first few years in Plymouth titled “Mourt’s Relation: A Journal of the Pilgrims in Plymouth,” does mention a celebration marking the settlement’s first successful harvest, probably held around October 1621. Given the context, it certainly wasn’t a huge deal but it would later become one in modern America.

According to Winslow, despite the fact that the Wampanoags had allowed the Pilgrims to live on their land, provided them with aid and taught them how to successfully grow native crops, the Wampanoags were not invited to this celebration. They arrived only after the Pilgrims started shooting their guns into the air. Believing themselves to be under attack, the Wampanoags head sachem, Massasoit, showed up at the settlement with about 90 warriors expecting war. Instead, they found a celebration and they decided to stay, with their hunters bringing in five deer as a contribution. Rather than a happy celebration of camaraderie and partnership, the feast that would serve as the basis of the traditional Thanksgiving myth was actually quite a tense affair, fraught with political implications. 

Source: For the complete article: capecodtimes.com Eryn Dion, Managing Editor of Content

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What is the Thanksgiving myth?

Claire Bugos, Correspondent

The myth is that friendly Indians, unidentified by tribe, welcome the Pilgrims to America, teach them how to live in this new place, sit down to dinner with them and then disappear. They hand off America to white people so they can create a great nation dedicated to liberty, opportunity and Christianity for the rest of the world to profit. That’s the story—it’s about Native people conceding to colonialism. It’s bloodless and in many ways an extension of the ideology of Manifest Destiny.

Source: smithsonianmag.com for the complete article

Celebrate by learning what the truth is and why we were all taught an

1520 – Portuguese navigator Ferdinand Magellan reached the Pacific Ocean after passing through the South American strait. The strait was named after him. He was the first European to sail the Pacific from the east.

1582 – William Shakespeare and Anne Hathaway were married.

1757 – English poet, painter and engraver William Blake was born. Two of his best known works are “Songs of Innocence” and “Songs of Experience.”

1919 – American-born Lady Astor was elected the first female member of the British Parliament.

1922 – Capt. Cyril Turner of the Royal Air Force gave the first public exhibition of skywriting. He spelled out, “Hello USA. Call Vanderbilt 7200” over New York’s Times Square.

1925 – The Grand Ole Opry made its radio debut on station WSM.

1929 – Ernie Nevers (St. Louis Cardinals) became the first professional football player to score six touchdowns in a single game.

1942 – In Boston, MA, 491 people died in a fire that destroyed the Coconut Grove.

1943 – U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Soviet Leader Joseph Stalin met in Tehran to map out strategy concerning World War II.

1953 – New York City began 11 days without newspapers due to a strike of photoengravers.

1958 – The African nation of Chad became an autonomous republic within the French community.

1963 – U.S. President Johnson announced that Cape Canaveral would be renamed Cape Kennedy in honor of his assassinated predecessor. The name was changed back to Cape Canaveral in 1973 by a vote of residents.

1964 – The U.S. launched the space probe Mariner IV from Cape Kennedy on a course set for Mars.

1977 – Larry Bird was introduced as “College Basketball’s Secret Weapon” with a cover story in Sports Illustrated. (NBA)

1978 – The Iranian government banned religious marches.

1979 – An Air New Zealand DC-10 flying to the South Pole crashed in Antarctica killing all 257 people aboard.

1983 – The space shuttle Columbia took off with the STS-9 Spacelab in its cargo bay.

1985 – The Irish Senate approved the Anglo-Irish accord concerning Northern Ireland.

1987 – A South African Airways Boeing 747 crashed into the Indian Ocean. All 159 people aboard were killed.

1989 – Romanian gymnast Nadia Comaneci arrived in New York after escaping her homeland through Hungary.

1990 – Margaret Thatcher resigned as prime minister of Britain.

1992 – In Bosnia-Herzegovina, 137 tons of food and supplies were to be delivered to the isolated town of Srebrenica.

1992 – In King William’s Town, South Africa, black militant gunmen attacked a country club killing four people and injuring 20.

1994 – Jeffrey Dahmer, a convicted serial killer, was clubbed to death in a Wisconsin prison by a fellow inmate.

1994 – Norwegian voters rejected European Union membership.

1995 – U.S. President Clinton signed a $6 billion road bill that ended the federal 55 mph speed limit.

2010 – WikiLeaks released to the public more than 250,000 U.S. diplomatic cables. About 100,000 were marked “secret” or “confidential.”

1684 – Japan’s shogun Yoshimune Tokugawa was born.

1701 – Anders Celsius was born in Sweden. He was the inventor of the Celsius thermometer.

1779 – The College of Pennsylvania became the University of Pennsylvania. It was the first legally recognized university in America.

1839 – The American Statistical Association was founded in Boston.

1889 – Curtis P. Brady was issued the first permit to drive an automobile through Central Park in New York City.

1901 – The Army War College was established in Washington, DC.

1910 – New York’s Pennsylvania Station opened. 

1934 – The U.S. bank robber George “Baby Face” Nelson was killed by FBI agents near Barrington, IL.

1939 – The play “Key Largo,” by Maxwell Anderson, opened in New York.

1951 – Hosea Richardson became the first black horse racing jockey to be licensed in Florida. 

1963 – U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson delivered his first address to a joint session of Congress. 

1970 – Pope Paul VI, visiting the Philippines, was attacked at the Manila airport by a Bolivian painter disguised as a priest.

1973 – The U.S. Senate voted to confirm Gerald R. Ford as vice president after the resignation of Spiro T. Agnew.

1978 – San Francisco Mayor George Moscone and City Supervisor Harvey Milk, a gay-rights activist, were shot to death inside City Hall by Dan White, a former supervisor.

1980 – Dave Williams (Chicago Bears) became the first player in NFL history to return a kick for touchdown in overtime.

1983 – 183 people were killed when a Colombian Avianca Airlines Boeing 747 crashed near Barajas airport in Madrid.

1985 – The British House of Commons approved the Anglo-Irish accord giving Dublin a consulting role in the governing of British-ruled Northern Ireland.

1987 – French hostages Jean-Louis Normandin and Roger Auque were set free by their pro-Iranian captors in West Beirut, Lebanon.

1989 – 107 people were killed when a bomb destroyed a Colombian jetliner minutes after the plane had taken off from Bogota’s international airport. Police blamed the incident on drug traffickers.

1991 – The UN Security Council unanimously adopted a resolution that led the way for the establishment of a UN peacekeeping operation in Yugoslavia.

1992 – In Venezuela, rebel forces tried but failed to overthrow President Carlos Andres Perez for the second time in ten months.

2008 – The ocean liner Queen Elizabeth 2 (QE2) was taken out of service after more than 30 years. The ship was launched on September 20, 1967.