Fun Facts

I've learned lots of fun things from my big book of maps, and relearned some that I'd forgotten since I took AP European History in high school. The reading was a little dense, I think that's just how all history books are, but parts of it were interesting and there were a lot of cool maps.

Some things I didn't know or thought were interesting:
*Dublin was once a Viking ruled colony
*The Vikings also settled in Russia, not only just to the east
*Jamaica (since I was just there) was settled in 1509 by the Spanish
*Iowa had large coal deposits -- when I think of Iowa, I only think of corn
*Between 1945 and 1975, the population of Miami doubled
*The greatest number of immigrants who went into Canada were from Italy and Britain
*Toward the end of the Cold War in 1987, on top of the U.S. and the U.S.S.R., there were four other declared nuclear powers in the world, the U.K., France, China, and India
*In 1983, the life expectancy in Afghanistan was 45 years or less
*The Peoples of the African Congo were considered an advanced culture in the middle of the fifteenth century while the American Indians were considered primitive.
*In 1450, most of Russia and much of China were not known to the Europeans

A lot of what I found interesting had to do with the maps, which is hard to tell you about since I can't show them to you. I enjoyed this one a lot but it wasn't as interesting as the mob book, just because the mob is more interesting than history and was all new to me. My history teacher would be proud of me though because I actually remember some of what she taught me.

I'm hoping to have a chance to read more in the morning and tell you more fun things. If not, you'll have to wait and see what the next new book will be.