Category: History

This is a Google Streetview of the Beginning Point of the U.S. Public Land Survey, the point from which the United States in 1786, driving by efforts of Thomas Jefferson, began the formal survey of the lands known then as the Northwest Territory, which now make up all or part of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, and Wisconsin. I believe that townships, ranges, sections, and the like, all common today, derive from these efforts.

The survey is claimed to be the first major cadastral (a comprehensive land recording of the real estate or real property’s metes-and-bounds of a country) survey undertaken by any country. The point now lies underwater on the state line between the states of Ohio and Pennsylvania. The actual point it is actually submerged. This monument commemorates the point adjacent to the nearest roadway.

 

Straight south of Marlins Park, in a nondescript apartment building typical to and located in Little Havana at 1629 SW 6th Street, is where Enola Gay Tibbets lived at the time that her son, Paul Tibbets, Jr., became the first pilot to drop an atomic bomb, named Little Boy, on Hiroshima. People have understandably mixed feelings about this event. It was the beginning of the end of World War II, certainly a good thing, but at a horrific cost that surely anyone would want to avoid if possible. It also was a pivot, of sorts, for humanity. We’ve not been quite the same since, as at any given point we are aware of how much we might be at risk of a nuclear conflict.

More on Tibbets, with mentions of the Miami connections:

• Obituary at Legacy.com
• Census of Paul Tibbets, Sr, with wife Enola Gay and daughter Barbara
• Short Bio of Paul Tibbets Jr. In Airport Journals
• Wikipedia: Paul Tibbets Jr.

Just an observation here;

On May 4th 1776, a piston made by Matthew Boulton by was fitted precisely into the steam engine of James Watt, creating the first effective steam engine. Thus began the industrial revolution. A mere 2 months later, the colonies of America declared their independence from Britain with the Declaration of Independence.

Much has been made of what made this new country in the making so successful. There are all kinds of reasons, of course, many of which have to do with liberty and property rights. One has to consider giving some credit, however, to good old lucky timing. Much like Bill Clinton is sometimes noted as having been fortunate enough to be president as the semiconductor began to contribute to the economy, the USA itself surely benefited by having been created almost to the day of what one would have to consider the beginning of the industrial revolution.