.Much to their surprise, the first pilgrims at Plymouth Colony were greeted by a Native American in English (his name was Samoset and he had begun to learn English from fisherman along the coast) .When James Cook first arrived in Hawaii the locals thought he was a god. When he came back, however, his boats had been battered by a storm, which apparently offended the natives. They subsequently killed him and ate him. .Admiralty Island in Alaska is half the size of Yellowstone Park but with twice the number of grizzly bears. Early Russian explorers named the island Ostrov Kutsnoi, which translates to "fear island". .During an expedition through Yellowstone, Truman Everts was separated from his group. He ended up losing his horse, his supplies, falling into a geyser, and getting frostbite before being found several months later barely alive .When Sir Walter Raleigh, an English explorer, captured the Portuguese ship Madre de Deus, it was estimated to carry cargo worth half of England's national treasury. .In 1962, Michael Siffre, a French explorer, spent 2 months buried beneath a glacier in total darkness to show that humans have an internal biological clock .While exploring South Dakota, Hugh Glass was left for dead by his group after being mauled by a grizzly bear. He then crawled 200 miles to the nearest settlement. .Columbus's ship captain, Rodrigo de Triana, was the first to spot land but Columbus claimed he had seen in several hours earlier already. In this way he secured the lifetime pension promised by King Ferdinand for being the first to make the sighting.
It was the the Mexican-American War that brought about the need or desire to begin an expansionist policy with regard to foreign affairs, since the end of this war ceded a lot of new territory that was used by settlers moving west.
