America The Story of Us - 5 US History Facts I learned From This Show

I'm not sure why this surprised me, but did you know that the Statue of Liberty was shipped to the United States in 350 pieces? It arrived and then New York didn't have the money to put it together. So Joseph Pulitzer put together a newspaper campaign to raise the funds to assemble it in New York. People sent in their pennies, nickels, dimes, and dollars from all over the country and in the end raised $121,000 which was more than enough to assemble the statue in New York City where he felt it really belonged. There were 6 other cities fighting for the right to errect the statue in their city.

The winter at Valley Forge was not a fun one, clothing was scare, food was scarce and on top of it all, the soldiers were hit with an outbreak of Small Pox. The vaccines were not official shots and it was a long shot for Washington, but it worked.

While the white man brought Small Pox to the North American continent and nearly wiped out the American Indians with it, since it had been 3 or 4 generations since they had been exposed to the disease, the colonists were susceptible to it again.

Washington remembered that he had Small Pox as a child and started a make-shift vaccination program. They would cut the soldier's skin and then take the puss from an infected soldiers postules and rub it on the open wound. While it's not clean like the vaccinations of today, it's the same idea. It worked as well, the outbreak was contained.

This idea didn't come without a price, about 1 in 50 soldiers died from the vaccinations because their immune system couldn't work fast enough to build up the antibodies to fight off the disease.

This isn't really a fun fact either, but it's something to be aware of. Making the artilary for WWII was just as dangerous as using it. If you were a woman working in a munitions plant, you didn't dare comb your hair on the line where the add the magnesium powder because even the slightest strike of static electricity could set the powder off.

I was originally going to include 10 facts that I learned from the series, but I didn't want to ruin it for history buffs that may want to spend some time watching it.

I think the entire series is geared towards the Americans that have a short attention spand or teenagers. It is not meant to be an entire comprehensive history of the United States, if it was this series would take another 10 to 20 years to make and they still wouldn't be able to cover everything. 

The one thing I did not like about the series was the fact that some entertainers were included speaking their piece about US history. Margaret Cho was a stretch being included because she is the daughter of Chinese immigrants, but including Sheryl Crow stating her piece on US history really wasn't necessary. I think this was just the producer's way of getting their series to appeal to the masses.

Ok, there was one more thing that I didn't like about this series and that was the fact that WWI was skipped entirely. This war lead to a lot of the prosperity of the 1920's and should have been at least mentioned.

If you are a history buff, don't expect the major events in this series to be anything new to you, but watch for the details, that's where you will learn something.