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began to use the trails by the 1820s, with the heaviest use from the 1840s to the early 1870s, when they were superseded by railways.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

_______________________________ 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

_____________________________ 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

___________________________ 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