“They all laughed at Christopher Columbus/When he said the world was round…” So begins the lyrics of Ira Gershwin for brother George’s 1937 composition “They All Laughed.” The Gershwins wrote the song for the movie Shall We Dance, starring Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire. Frank Sinatra famously included the tune in his masterpiece Trilogy album, where he sings the closing lyrics “Who’s got the last laugh now?” with a knowing wink.
From Christopher Columbus to Frank Sinatra, it’s clear that Italians and Italian-Americans have had a tremendous impact on America. Over the next three weeks, we’ll focus on those names history books seem to have neglected.
Did you know Italian-Americans played a prominent role in the founding of America? For example, three of the first five American warships were named after Italians. These were Continue Reading “Declaration of (Italian) American Independence”
A Royal Mess Of Competing Colonial Charters
Or so it would appear.
Greater Western New York had been claimed many times before it was ever governed. European powers declared it theirs, and when Britain removed its rivals, the claims didn’t disappear—they multiplied. Now they came from within, as competing colonial charters layered atop one another. At one point, no fewer than five colonies claimed the region.
Yet, not one ever truly governed it.
Authority did not collapse at the forest’s edge. It contradicted itself at the source.
Long before a single settler felled a tree in Western New York, the kings of England were Continue Reading “A Royal Mess Of Competing Colonial Charters”