I need an interesting fact from history from the time period of columbus to reconstruction?

Pick some of the many fact about Andrew Jackson....by far he is the most interesting, and complex President.

The fact that he despised paper money, yet his picture is on the $20 bill.

His many wounds ...shot twice, sword to his head, survived malaria and smallpox. Many many unknown stuff about him.

http://www.doctorzebra.com/prez/g07.htm

America was NOT named after the Italian merchant and map maker Amerigo Vespucci, but Richard Ameryk, a Welshman and wealthy Bristol merchant.

Ameryk was the chief investor in the second transatlantic voyage of John Cabot. On his little ship Matthew, Cabot reached Labrador in May 1497 and became the first recorded European to set foot on American soil, predating Vespucci by two years.

New countries or continents were never named after a person's first name, but always after the second (as in Tasmania, Van Dienmen's Land, or the Cook Islands). America would have become Vespucci Land (or Vespuccia) if the Italian explorer had consciously given his name to it.

- The Book of General Ignorance), pg 94-95

George Washington's teeth were mostly hippopotamus bone.

None of his false teeth were wooden. The set made when he became president was carved from hippo and elephant ivory, held together with gold springs. The hippo ivory was used for the plate, into which real human teeth and also bits of horses' and donkeys' teeth were inserted.

Dental problems left Washing ton in constant discomfort for which he took laudanum, and this distress is apparent in many of the portraits of him while he was in office - including the one still used on the $1 bill.

- The Book of General Ignorance, pg. 97

A US Senator, in the Capitol Building was once beaten with a cane, nearly to death, for speaking out against slavery.

http://www.senate.gov/artandhistory/history/minute...

When the pilgrims first came to the New World they were afraid to eat Tomatoes; they thought they were poisonous.