The Red River Trails were a network of ox cart routes connecting the
Red River Colony and Fort Garry in British North America, with the head
of navigation on the Mississippi River in the United States. These
trade routes ran from the location of present-day Winnipeg in the
Canadian province of Manitoba across the international border and by a
variety of routes across what is now the eastern part of North Dakota
and western and central Minnesota to Mendota and Saint Paul, Minnesota
on the Mississippi. Travellers began to use the trails by the 1820s,
with the heaviest use from the 1840s to the early 1870s, when they were
superseded by railways. They gave the Selkirk colonists and their
neighbours, the MétisCategory:Articles containing French language text
people, an outlet for their furs and a source of supplies other than
the Hudson's Bay Company, which was unable to enforce its monopoly in
the face of the competition that used the trails. Free traders,
independent of the Hudson's Bay Company and outside its jurisdiction,
developed extensive commerce with the United States, making Saint Paul
the principal entrepôt and link to the outside world for the Selkirk
Settlement. That corridor has now seen a resurgence of traffic, carried
by more modern means of transport than the crude ox carts that once
travelled the Red River Trails.
Read the rest of this article:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_River_Trails>
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Today's selected anniversaries:
1282:
Sicilians began to rebel against the rule of the Angevin King Charles I
of Naples, starting the War of the Sicilian Vespers.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sicilian_Vespers>
1912:
Sultan Abdelhafid signed the Treaty of Fez, making Morocco a French
protectorate.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Fez>
1940:
World War II: Wang Jingwei was installed by Japan as head of the puppet
government in China.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wang_Jingwei>
1964:
Jeopardy!, the popular game show created by Merv Griffin where
contestants must phrase their responses in the form of a question, made
its debut on the NBC television network.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeopardy%21>
1981:
Trying to impress actress Jodie Foster, obsessed fan John Hinckley, Jr.
shot and wounded U.S. President Ronald Reagan and three others outside
the Washington Hilton Hotel in Washington, D.C..
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reagan_assassination_attempt>
2006:
Aboard Soyuz TMA-8, on a mission to the International Space Station,
Marcos Pontes became the first Brazilian to go into space.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcos_Pontes>
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Wiktionary's word of the day:
inveigle (v):
1. To convert, convince or win over with flattery or wiles.
2. To obtain through guile or cunning
<http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/inveigle>
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Wikiquote quote of the day:
Do you know what makes the prison disappear? Every deep, genuine
affection. Being friends, being brothers, loving, that is what opens
the prison, with supreme power, by some magic force. Without these one
stays dead. But whenever affection is revived, there life revives.
--Vincent van Gogh
<http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Vincent_van_Gogh>