[ampaterry]

He does indeed, BlackEagle!

And today is yet another recognized day.

On October 9th of 1825, the ship Restauration docked in New York harbor. Aboard this ship was the first organized group if immigrants from Norway to the United States. For that reason, when Lief Erikson Day was proclaimed in 1964, this date was chosen to celebrate it.

Lief Erikson day is the day set aside to honor the first non-American to establish a colony in the new world. While there is some evidence that there might have been visits here prior to Erikson's, there is little doubt that Lief Erikson was the first to establish a colony here. He arrived here in 1002, a full 490 years before Columbus. This is recorded in Nordic sagas and other accounts, and physical evidence has come from archaeological discoveries in Newfoundland.

But the colony had a lot of difficulties. They were in constant battles with the Native Americans, or Skraelings as these Vikings called them. Although the Vikings had steel weapons which were superior to those of the native population and gave them a military advantage, the natives superior numbers, in just a few years, helped to force the colony to wither and die.

The other factor that caused its demise was the cooling climate. When Lief arrived, he named it Vinland because of the wild grapes growing there. But the climate cooled, and increasing arctic ice made it more and more difficult to maintain trade lines. Greenland was also so named because of the greenery growing there when the Scandinavians arrived.
Luckily, back in those days we had no climatologists to tell everyone that the climate change was being caused by man, so no draconian laws were put in place to reduce the use of cook fires, which surely caused a pollutant that reflected the suns heat away from the earth, causing the cooling. The lack of cooking would have led to various diseases which would probably have caused the human race to join the Dinosaur and Dodo bird in extinction.

And with that thought, the Bible verses for today:
Ecclesiastes 1:9 (KJV);
The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun.

Romans 1:22 (KJV);
Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools,

May God bless each and every one of you!