Bloody English!

It's like you said before, the English language is not always logical. Here's something else I'll bet you didn't know: The Canada goose with which we are so familiar is actually the greater Canada goose. There is also a lesser Canada goose that looks exactly like the greater Canada goose, except that it's smaller. I don't believe I've ever seen one in real life, but I've seen pictures and read about them. I don't know where they live, but they must be pretty rare compared to the greater Canada goose.

St. Louis did indeed have a lock on the Mississippi river, which is why Illinois wanted to have access to the Great Lakes in case Missouri ever wanted to get pricky about it. They also wanted to have access to the river, in case Missouri didn't get pricky about it, and they said they needed the extra 60 miles to build a system of canals connecting the Great Lakes to the rivers that flowed into the Mississippi. I agree that they didn't need a 60 mile wide right of way to dig a ditch but, like you said, some arms must have been twisted. Wisconsin wasn't a state yet, so nobody cared what they thought about it.

I don't think that Michigan played a part in the American Revolution, but a significant battle in the War of 1812 was fought over Mackinac Island. The fort on Mackinac Island was built facing the Straits, I suppose to protect the fur trade, and the builders didn't seem to notice that its back door was vulnerable. The Americans took over the fort when the British turned over the Northwest Territories after the revolution, and the British took it back during the War of 1812. They landed on the far side of the island and dragged their cannons to the top of a hill that overlooked the fort from the rear. All the fort's artillery was facing the other way and couldn't be turned around, so it wasn't a very long battle. The British then built a small log fort on top of the hill so the Americans couldn't pull the same trick on them, and the fort remained in British hands for the duration of the war.

I don't know if the Founding Fathers smoked pot, but I understand that they used to drink a lot. People in those days were not so aware of the health hazards of alcohol consumption as they are today, but they knew that a lot of people got sick drinking water, so alcohol was believed to be the safer bet. Benjamin Franklin has been quoted as saying that God must really love the human race, otherwise He wouldn't have invented beer, or words to that effect.

Maybe the advantage the structure of the Electoral College gives to the smaller states was done on purpose, like the way the Senate was set up. Don't forget that these were 13 independent sovereign states, and getting them to form a federal union was not an easy sell. If the smaller states had not been given some kind of favorable considerations, they might not have joined, the British might have won the War of 1812, and we might all be speaking English today.