May 14th...This Day in History (Now with links to other events)

Lewis and Clark depart 1804

 

One year after the United States doubled its territory with the Louisiana Purchase, the Lewis and Clark expedition leaves St. Louis, Missouri, on a mission to explore the Northwest from the Mississippi River to the Pacific Ocean.

Even before the U.S. government concluded purchase negotiations with France, President Thomas Jefferson commissioned his private secretary Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, an army captain, to lead an expedition into what is now the U.S. Northwest. On May 14, the “Corps of Discovery”–featuring approximately 45 men (although only an approximate 33 men would make the full journey)–left St. Louis for the American interior.

The expedition traveled up the Missouri River in a 55-foot long keelboat and two smaller boats. In November, Toussaint Charbonneau, a French-Canadian fur trader accompanied by his young Native American wife Sacagawea, joined the expedition as an interpreter. The group wintered in present-day North Dakota before crossing into present-day Montana, where they first saw the Rocky Mountains. On the other side of the Continental Divide, they were met by Sacagawea’s tribe, the Shoshone Indians, who sold them horses for their journey down through the Bitterroot Mountains. After passing through the dangerous rapids of the Clearwater and Snake rivers in canoes, the explorers reached the calm of the Columbia River, which led them to the sea. On November 8, 1805, the expedition arrived at the Pacific Ocean, the first European explorers to do so by an overland route from the east. After pausing there for the winter, the explorers began their long journey back to St. Louis.

On September 23, 1806, after almost two and a half years, the expedition returned to the city, bringing back a wealth of information about the largely unexplored region, as well as valuable U.S. claims to Oregon Territory.

 (More Events on This Day in History)

• American Revolution

• 1787 Constitutional Convention delegates begin to assemble

• Automotive

• 2007 DaimlerChrysler sells most of Chrysler for $7.4 billion

• Civil War

• 1864 The Battle of Resaca, Georgia, begins

• Cold War

• 1955 The Warsaw Pact is formed

• Crime

• 1948 A brutal murder begins an unusual investigation

• Disaster

• 1991 Two trains crash in Japan

• General Interest

• 1796 Jenner tests smallpox vaccine
• 1904 First American Olympiad
• 1948 State of Israel proclaimed
• 1973 Skylab launched

• Hollywood

• 1998 Frank Sinatra dies

• Literary

• 1842 Alfred, Lord Tennyson, publishes his popular volume Poems

• Music

• 1936 Bobby Darin is born

• Old West

• 1861 William Fetterman joins the U.S. Army

• Presidential

• 1999 Clinton apologizes to Chinese leader for embassy bombing

• Sports

• 1913 Scoreless inning streak ends

• Vietnam War

• 1969 President Nixon responds to National Liberation Front proposal
• 1970 South Vietnamese sustain second highest casualties of war

• World War I

• 1916 London Times article sparks “Shells Crisis”

• World War II

• 1943 United States and Britain plan Operation Pointblank