Today is (exactly) the 200th anniversary of the start of the Lewis and Clark expedition, on May 14, 1804. Did anyone realize this? I almost missed this entirely, but for Reuter’s Oddly Enough RSS feed: “Lewis and Clark’s List: Opium and ‘Portable Soup’” lists some of the provisions they took on their expedition, including opium, “portable soup” (“paste made of boiled-down beef and cow’s hooves, eggs and vegetables”), quills, inkstands, and 10 yards of linen.
Wikipedia has a decent start on an article on Lewis and Clark, but it needs fleshed out more.
Among other things, I seem to remember reading once that the Lewis and Clark expedition was one of the most successful such expeditions in history, because in a 28-month, cross-country trip they only lost one out of 33 members: Sergeant Charles Floyd died from acute appendicitis. Seems pretty good to me.