On June 13, 1777, a 19-year-old French teenager landed on a beach in South Carolina, uninvited, to fight in someone else's war. He would become one of the most important men in American history.
The Marquis de Lafayette was one of the richest young aristocrats in France. He had a beautiful wife, a fortune, and zero reason to risk any of it. But he believed in the American cause so fiercely that when the French king forbade him from going, Lafayette bought his own ship and sailed anyway. He literally went AWOL from a life of luxury to bleed for a country that didn't exist yet.
Congress was annoyed at first. Another foreign officer looking for a paycheck? Then Lafayette offered to serve for free and pay his own way. That got their attention.
He met Washington and the two formed one of the great father-son bonds in American history. Washington had no biological children. Lafayette named his only son George Washington Lafayette.
He took a bullet in the leg at Brandywine and kept rallying the retreat. He was instrumental at Yorktown, the battle that won the war. He went home a hero on two continents.
A foreign teenager believed in America before America did. 249 years ago today.
Everyone always talking about “talent density” in Silicon Valley when we really should be talking about how 80% of pretzels in America come from a small region of Pennsylvania
One of the most insane facts in municipal finance:
Chicago still owes ~$500M on the *CURRENT* Soldier Field.
So in the mid-2030s, when the Bears are in Indiana, Chicago will be STILL be paying off all the backloaded debt from the stadium they gave the Bears in the early 2000s.
(Reuters) - Chicago Board of Trade wheat and K.C. wheat futures climbed by their daily trading limits on Tuesday after the U.S. Department of Agriculture projected the nation's harvest will drop to the lowest level since 1972.