Essay:Greatest Mysteries of American History

Here is a growing list of unsolved mysteries in American History:

1. Where did the American Indians come from?
2. Did the Vikings really settle in North American, at L'anse aux Meadows in Newfoundland? If so, then why would they abandon it?
3. How was Christopher Columbus able to navigate himself across the Atlantic Ocean on his second voyage to find the precise same location that he colonized on his first voyage?
4. What happened to the Lost Colony?
5. Did the Puritans do better economically by abandoning socialism in the Mayflower Compact?
6. Was the Mayflower trip motivated by profit, or by faith?
7. Did Christopher Columbus bring back slaves to Europe?
8. Did Puritans allow dancing?
9. What was the cause of the possession-like symptoms of the young girls in Salem in 1692, which their doctor attributed to the devil?
10. Did the U.S. Constitution incorporate Roman and other prior systems of government, or was the Constitution primarily an original work?
11. Did Benedict Arnold lead the American Revolutionary army to triumph at Saratoga, or was his military leadership ineffective before be became a traitor?
12. Did Alexander Hamilton cut a deal with Thomas Jefferson to make him president?
13. Was Meriwether Lewis murdered?
14. Was the so-called corrupt bargain real and, if so, was there anything wrong with it?
15. Why did the Tariff of Abominations pass?
16. What is the real source of the name "Whig" in the "Whig Party"?
17. Did the bloodshed that started the Mexican War occur on American or Mexican soil, indicative of who was the aggressor?
18. Why wasn't Congressman Preston Butler prosecuted for violently beating Senator Charles Sumner to near death?
19. Did President James Buchanan arrange the Dred Scott decision?
20. Did George McClellan scorn Abraham Lincoln because he was homeschooled?
21. What caused the USS Maine to explode?
22. What caused the Great Depression?
23. What really caused the repeal of Prohibition?
24. Who was the lone dissent on the jury in the court martial of Billy Mitchell?
25. Did FDR have advance knowledge of the attack on Pearl Harbor?
26. Why did FDR, who knew he was dying, replace his Vice President Henry Wallace with Harry S Truman to make Truman the next president?
27. Why did the U-2 spy plane crash-land in the Soviet Union?
28. Did a communist sympathizer in the U.S. government leak plans of the Bay of Pigs invasion to Castro?
29. Why did the social movement of the 1960s end so abruptly?
30. What happened to Jimmy Hoffa, Judge Crater and D. B. Cooper, who disappeared without a trace?
31. What role did Justice William Brennan have in writing Roe v. Wade?
32. Where did President Ronald Reagan get the idea and impetus for proposing the Strategic Defense Initiative?

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