It was funny. I was also thinking about how England had dinosaurs too. I believe fossils of the Megalosaurus (not megalodon), and Baryonyx were found on the island. (Which brings me to the conclusion that when they were digging the foundations for those ancient structures, they found fossils of those dinosaurs and thought they found dragons, tell me how a Baryonyx skull doesn't look like a depiction of a dragon)
Is this the bit where we scream "Retire, Diane!" and "Die horribly of an incredibly painful ass cancer as your dementia only allows you to feel and remember the pain and nothing else, Mitch!"?
Speaking of old trees, 2 miles from the house where I grew up in Florida, was a huge 3500 year old Bald Cypress named "The Senator" in a place called "Big Tree Park". It was, I believe, the 2nd oldest tree in America, and 8th oldest in the world. We knew that native peoples in the Florida Peninsula visited the tree as far back as the stone age, leaving many artifacts around it. The tree had a large crack in its trunk, big enough to crawl in and hide, which is what a junkie was doing one night in 2012, when she decided to have a smoke of some crystal meth and set a small fire in there so she could see. Rather than putting out her fire, she took pics and videos with her phone and then left, and a few days later the entire tree had burned from the inside out, killing it. Fortunately, the Senator's sister tree, a 2000 year old Cypress named "Lady Liberty" still stands, about a hundred feet away. The county had a few 20 year old clones of The Senator, so they planted one (already 50 feet tall) in its place, and named it The Phoenix. Maybe in a few thousand years it will be the size of its dad.
In Australia there's the King's Holly, which cannot reproduce sexually so existing trees are the offshoots of the original tree which is estimated to be between 42,000 and 135,000 years old. It's rarely considered to be the world's oldest tree as it's not a single independant plant but rather a network of genetically identical clones. It all depends on how you define "a tree"; if "The Senator" had new growth from the root stock, would it still be the same tree, or a whole new one?
@@avaggdu1 Putting an age on any tree that does have a historical record is mostly speculative, as trees don't always produce one ring per year, and other methods are impossible to prove. It's best to just wonder that they're ancient.
I live in Wisconsin now. We moved here in 2005. My mother in Ireland used call us whenever there was a Hurricane in Florida. She couldn't understand the size of the US.
I grew up in NJ, half hour to the beach & only one & a half to the mountains. We had friends in Cali whose daughter was staying in state for school. Still needed to take a plane! I forgot how big CA is
A foreign exchange student on my dorm floor in college at the start of the new semester absolutely freaked the heck out about Hurricane Katrina. While, yes, that was definitely no storm to shake a stick at, we were in _Kansas_ 😊
THANK YOU so much for mentioning Cahokia!!!! It’s the birthplace of 5 tribes including the Cherokee. The legend handed down vs scientific verification is fascinating to me
I once drove across Texas on I-10 from Houston to El Paso (877 miles of I-10 in Texas alone). When I saw mile markers that were in the 870's while driving ON THE SAME ROAD the entire time, I finally realized just how big Texas really is.
@kimberlysimpson343 I don't know if you know the band The Indigo Girls, but I always think of their song Southland in the Springtime when I think I of driving across Texas... Maybe we'll make Texas by the morning Light the bayou with our taillights in the night Eight hundread miles to El Paso from the state line And we never have the money for the flight
Reminds me of when I was stationed at Fort Bliss in El Paso, Tx, I took a couple of trips back home in South Carolina. Texas alone was half of the 1600 mile drive. When I moved back to TX the second time (Austin this time), the 1000 mile journey didn't seem so bad.
I did the same many years ago. Now, I live in central Texas and visit my in-laws in California via I10. It is still 567 miles from central Texas to El Paso.
Texas(which I've unfortunately had to drive through more than once) is the state where you drive for two solid days and you're still in Texas. Of course nothing compares with Alaska. HUGE. So big you have to use airplanes to get anywhere.
I’ve visited the Pueblo Indian cliff dwellings at Mesa Verde, which were built about 600 years before the United States was founded. They’re not exactly in the middle of a typical American town, but they’re still awesome to see.
In the center of the city I live in, there is something that we call "the mystery Tower". It's made of stones cemented together, and they believe that it predates colonial times, as they have found remnants that are older
I think that Mesa Verde is closed for this year and next year for infrastructure improvements but I would really love to go there. I did some reading and although they were not the same people that built the actual dwellings/buildings, there’s been human activity in that region as far back as 9500 BC. It was a lot greener and had more water in area area back then because the Ice Age ice was still receding. I would love to have ability to travel through time at will and experience what this part of the American west was like.
I was just there 2 weeks ago. It was open, but they did have it down to a single lane for a very short distance. I toured Cliff Palace. It was pretty cool.
Oooooh Laurence. Your post is just what I need today. Added: I would disappoint my fellow Texans if I failed to note it is a shorter distance from Texarkana, Texas to Chicago than it is from Texarkana to El Paso, Texas. Thank you for another fine post.
European visitors sometimes have amazingly impractical/nearly impossible travel itineraries. I've heard of some planning to visit New York City, Chicago, Los Angeles, Washington D.C. and Disney World in seven days, by Bus/Train/Automobile! Natives usually bring out a map of the continental U.S. and point out that this itinerary spans over thousands of Miles/Kilometers and would be a challenge for even "Jet Set" travelers via scheduled airliners.
My German friends often did the same. They just had no idea of the scale of America. Visit NYC and Disney World by car in a week?! LOL. A German once, upon overhearing a discussion by me on the scale of America, asked me to quit saying hours instead of distances. I think he wanted to compute the times himself. Anyways, I told him that time is how Americans measure distance in America. That I, and most Americans, almost exclusively use time as distance. NYC is 17 hours distant to Chicago. Denver another 17. Etc.
@@k.chriscaldwell4141I heard a British you tuber comment that traveling 150 miles in England would take 3 hours. Here it would take 2 hours or less. Their roads are narrow and somewhat winding, thus the lower speed limit. God bless the U.S. highway system !!
@@cherylflam3250 I think there are plenty of equivalencies between the US interstate system and European motorway systems. The one thing that's particularly nice about the US is that the roads are relatively empty outside of very urbanized areas. Europe is generally more densely populated.
Speaking of distance, there was a time I went out for a bike ride. Just me and a few thousand friends. We rode across Iowa, about 450 miles, in a week.
I'm from Chicago, and I was very excited to tell my Egyptian friend about the OLDEST building in Chicago. It's almost 150 years old!!! She was not impressed. She said that her childhood home was older than that, and that Egypt has the pyramids.
I grew up and "boring" Ohio next door and have visited The Great Serpent Mound many times. It is to believed to have been started around 300BC, before what we now call Paris, France.
Paris was not a very important place until the seventh century, when one of the multiple kings of Frankish Gaul lived there for a while. The main capital was at Metz.
My father was from Pennsylvania and my mother from Virginia. We lived in Northern Virginia. I remember one evening after dinner my father decided we needed to drive to Lancaster, PA for some of the best hoagies I have ever eaten. So off we went for a little over a 2 hour drive, got the hoagies (packed "to travel") and back home again because he had to work the next day.
I work in Lancaster, and I can tell you that hoagies (subs to most of the rest of the U.S.) are no different here than anywhere else. Same goes with cheesesteak sandwiches. I get hoagies at Central Market (the oldest farmer's market in the U.S.) relatively frequently, and while they're pretty good, they're nothing spectacular, either.
@@mournblade1066 I am talking about the V & S. They are better than any I have had in Virginia. Jersey Mike's is a close second. I only get the cold cuts.
In 1977 my wife and I were in a shop in Ireland (possibly County Tipp) and we purchased a wedgewood plate the was maybe 100 years old - so now 140 years. We referred to it an an antique but the owner said no, just an old plate. A nice one and worthy, but not "antique" but he did acknowledge that for Americans, it was antique.
There are definitely some buildings in the USA that are thousands of years old. The problem is, large numbers of Native American settlements were destroyed, abandoned or "relocated" (for lack of a better word) at some point. What you don't see in the USA very often are 500+ year old buildings still used and maintained within modern cities. Where I live, the oldest buildings were built in the 1800s.
The oldest building in my town was built in the 1860s. My town was settled in an effort to grow cotton and sell to the Union army, since the Confederacy obviously was off the market. The cotton-growing project didn't work out, but the town did.
I enjoyed the very dramatic “counterpoint” graphic interjections, which stayed on brand for a certain RUclips Sensation with the red spectacles theme. 😂👍
I'm amazed by the history of things in England still in use. My friend drank at a pub called the "new pub" by locals since it was built to replace the old pub that burned down, in the 13th century! But it's not a museum, it's still a pub. Also the book Three Men in a Boat, a humorous travel log of a boat trip on the Thames, mentions many pubs and inns, all of which are still open 133 years later. In my small American town, the oldest restaurants are less than 40 years. I think it's hard to find one older in a small town.
I-90 runs from Seattle Washington to Boston Massachusetts. Coincidentally, the Boston Red Sox are playing the Seattle Mariners in the second game of the "I-90 series" in about half an hour as I type this.
I-90 has got to be the most scenic interstate in the USA. I love it. Only takes four days coast to coast if you get up early, drive for two or three hours, stop for a breakfast at Denny's, and keep driving for the next ten hours.
I used to live in Seattle, which has very few buildings built before 1890. That's because old Seattle burned in a huge fire in 1889. But, there are is some deep history there. There are still a few old growth trees, giant red cedars, that were never cut down because they had minor imperfections back in the day.
Magnuson Park is old growth. There are other areas that are too - and it was because they were inaccessible. The old growth where I am is on steep slopes - so it wasn't logged.
I once had a conversation with a buddy of mine in Scotland regarding a trip I was taking within my own state at the time of Florida. I was travelling from South Florida to the far western tip of the panhandle. With stops it was going to take about 11 hours. We just could not wrap his head around that... I wasn't even leaving my state.
I too lived in South Florida and lived that experience, although I didn't have the ability to drive yet. Getting across is nothing, but going up and out is painfully long. And usually we would be going to Gatlinburg. I don't think there was ever a time we didn't have to stay the night in Georgia.
If you lived on Old Oregon Road in Hornbrook, CA, and really wanted Carl's Jr from your favorite very specific fast food location in San Ysidro, CA, it'd take you 12 hours and 19 minutes on I-5 heading South, clocking in at 794 miles. But if you wanted to see the coast, you could take most of the trip on Southbound 101 and bring that up to 13 hours and 23 minutes at a short 864 miles!
Having visited Taos, it's a weird vibe. It's obvious that there is a generation that is okay with living off tourists, but there's also a "We hate you for treating us as an object rather than as a people." vibe going on, which is totally legit.
It's the tourists who ruined things in Taos. When I was a kid in the 60's my family was friends with some folks from Taos and went to some festivals and such, they were totally cool with it. By the 70's no roundeyes were allowed no matter what the connections were. My daughter was friends with a San Felipe pueblo girl and was invited to dance at the Corn Maiden dance with her in the early 90's. It was cool.
Too many tourists (and Americans are NOTORIOUS for it) don't bother to explore and embrace a culture when they go. They treat it all like a spectacle or a theater show, and fail utterly to stop the respect the fact that this (whatever they see or experience) is a way of life for the people there. It's not a display just to draw their attention, and there's no "behind the scenes" lifestyle where these people take off the primitive crap and slide into their own jeans and leather jackets to ride their motorcycle or hop into the family van or stationwagon to go home to a modern ranch-style with privacy fence and a pool out back... When the tourists go home to their own lives the PEOPLE they met or interacted with or just watched from a distance still live that same way day in and day out... I noticed it in the Navy on tours. We get overseas, and everybody on the ship would share notes after the first day, where's the nearest Burger King and the McD's... Where can you find guides and translators... How to... When to.. If you just show respect... AND that's a somewhat subjective cultural thing... posture, language, tone... etc... BUT if you do your part to ask politely as much as possible, you CAN still have a pretty great time and actually LEARN something. Too many dumb-asses only want to travel to get a few selfies and then swear up and down about how they've "been there, done that, and got the damn T-shirt" when they didn't bother to learn a g** d*** thing. I'm not surprised about tourists getting hated and even restricted in a lot of countries. Parents and teachers (if we're honest) just don't teach the kids well about WHY being travelled well is some kind of advantage. It is, but ONLY if you bothered yourself to LEARN from the trip, and more than "pic's or it didn't happen"... ;o)
I always joked that in the US, everything was built yesterday (I'm American). It's also very common to see places torn down and something new built in its place. There's very few opportunities for things to get old.
As a Brit, I'm amazed how often the NFL and baseball teams replace their stadiums. Football/soccer stadiums over here tend to only get demolished and replaced when they are well over 50 years old, often because of a lack of space to expand.
Where I live, there are many historic buildings (though many aren't more than maybe 300 years old). There's a push at many places to keep old things, and they do bring in visitors too. The most amusing (to me) is the Watt & Shand façade in the middle of Lancaster City, PA. The façade is historic but the interior was NOT. They gutted the building, left the façade and built a Marriott and convention center in there. :B
Like you, I grew up on the east coast of the UK (Cleethorpes) and now live in Canada. We have dinosaur bones and old trees but I also miss historic buildings (and country pubs!)
Orkney is amazing! The Neolithic sites are mind blowing-I made it a point to reach down and run my hand over the top stones in the walls at Skara Brae, a village built 5000 years ago (just a few centuries after the Knap of Howar).
In the grand year of 2000(or is that two grand:) when I retired, I rode a bicycle from coast to coast at a diagonal starting in Southern California and ending in Connecticut. A distance of just slightly less than 4000 miles went under my wheels between those two points. I took about two months in the effort. The next year I met with some bicycling buddies in England, Leicester to be specific. They invited me to travel with them to another bicycling event in Brighton, and lent me a bicycle to do it. That roughly 200 miles in four days did indeed feel longer than the same distance traversed during the previous bicycle tour even though my average day then was 57 miles. Great trips both and very informative.
I met some rugby dudes from Grimsby when i visited friends in York. I was warned the Grimsby fellows were rough abd likely to start a scuffle. Instead, the biggest, loudest, drunkest Grimsby rugby player instantly noticed my american south accent and wanted to be my friend
I was rather surprised when I went to Boston in 2016 that I had several people say they liked my southern accent. It was a nice change from being made fun of for it! For all that's been said about the north, all the folks I talked to there were very nice and polite.
My partner commutes from N. Maryland to N. Virginia 5x a week. That's about 75 miles each way or 150 miles a day. But when I lived in El Paso TX, I regularly drove home on weekends over 250 miles... When I was getting my PhD, there was a student from GB studying voting records in Western States. He thought he could easily drive to all the various local records offices over 1 summer and have enough time to study at each. We showed him the map and the travel distances, and he quickly revised his plans.....
My father is still doing the commute from northern MD to NoVA in his 70s. Granted he's not as far north as he could be (thank God he didn't like the house they looked at in Emmitsburg), but it's still over an hour each way. And it's shorter than the commute he used to do, which took him either around or through DC and was just a pain in the backside for everyone involved.
Good one. When I was in UK (from Tucson) and rented a car to drive to Cornwall, every Brit I talked with in London were aghast: "You're going all the way out there!" Funny. I ❤ UK.
When I first went to Ireland, we went to a pub that was older than the United States. It was all original inside , other than modern lighting, cash machine, and beer taps. I barely cleared through the doorways, and I'm only 5'10 . Was crazy
@@avaggdu1 oh I know, but it was kinda crazy the first time, just knowing how old the building was. We have very little architecture that old over here.
More recently than that, there were tiny people. My house is 1870 and I hit my head on the light fixtures on the ceilings, and have to duck through doorways upstairs in my house. Were the people actually that small in 1870, or did they just like to duck all the time?
I live in rural Nevada. From my front door to the nearest pharmacy, or doctor, or Home Depot, or WalMart, or Super Market, or auto mechanic is 75 miles one way!
An example of the difference in size perspective: I live in the most densely populated state in America (NJ) and my brother (from Arizona) couldn’t believe that I was complaining about needing to run to the store for something I needed. There are convenience stores within minutes of any spot in my state, whereas people in some western states have to travel hours to get to ANY store!
Distances between things like that get comically larger the further West you go in the USA. I live in the middle. (Southern Minnesota) and both far West and Far East seem foreign to me as I found out during road trips I took in my 20s and 30s.
I had no idea NJ was the most populated state! It sure feels like it! It basically ruins any and every activity! I miss walking alone on a beach, on a street, I miss silence… as an European!
My favorite exception to this is in my hometown, Milwaukee. We have St Joan of Arc Chapel built in the 1420s making it one of the oldest buildings in the Western Hemisphere. It just was originally built in Lyon, France and was moved here after WWI.
I think there may be a few Mayans and Incas who might disagree with that statement, not to mention the Native American cliff-dwellers in the Southwest.
The majority of christmases, me and my parents drive from the suburbs of Chicago, to West Palm Beach, Florida to see family. It's a 20 hour drive and usually takes us 3 days, where 2 nights we sleep in hotels on the way. As the crow flies, it's over 1000 miles or 1600 km. Not to mention that the first day often requires us to drive through snow until we go far enough south
When my husband had to go to California to be trained for his job he visited the La Brea Tar Pits and was able to look at the bones of animals that lived tens of thousands of year ago. We do have history and it is really interesting.
I wasn't sure about Pt. Arena to Quoddy Head being the longest drive so I checked Neah Bay, Washington to Florida City, Florida. It freaked me out when the distance was 3527... EXACTLY the same as the one you said! Now... if we were to count Key West, Florida then that to Neah Bay would win as it is a drive of 3653 miles.
I'm curious as to your route. I put in Cape Flattery (8 1/2 miles west of Neah Bay) to Key West, and only got 3615 (or up to 41++ if you go through LA). But the route it gave me for Pt Arena to Quoddy Head was 3,4++ miles. (and a couple other routes that were 3,7++ miles)
Mexican has some Mayan structures dating to 1000 BC/BCE and some ruins that might be as old as 3000 BC/BCE, the later 500 years before the Great Pyramids at Giza and also pyramidal. Since Mexico is technically an Americas country, North or Meso in particular....
No, Mexico is a country in North America, and the United States of America is also a North American county that's usually just called America due to the shortness. There is NO continent that's called America.
@@davidcosta2244 I suspect you failed geography or never had a globe growing up. "The Americas" is a universally accepted collectve name for North and South American continents. If there is no Americas then alot of treaties need to be torn up! Look up those "Americas" treaties but I suspect you don't care.
About 30 years ago, my husband and I were camping along the St. Lawrence Seaway (river that separates the US from Canada) the young couple camping next to us were from Sweden, on their honeymoon. They were gifted a year's exploration of the US from one of their family members. They started their adventure in Maine, and planned on visiting most of the US over the course of a year. They were a few weeks into their travels when they realized that they were going to need more than a year. It took them almost 3 weeks wandering around Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, and Northern New York, before we met them. They had no set itinerary, but they did have golden passes to all the National parks, and many state passes for state parks. They were astounded at how far they had driven, yet, had not yet reached the west coast yet, ☺️. They wanted to see Alaska as well while they were here. We tried to explain that just covering the lower 48 would be an accomplishment in this trip. That Alaska and Hawaii might be better saved for milestone anniversaries. 😃
Nearly every weekend during the summers growing up in Minnesota, my family drove a couple hundred miles up north to the family lakeplace, driving up Friday, driving back Sunday. And doing that is pretty common in Minnesota culture, although the frequency varies. I knew other kids whose family lakeplaces were in Canada.
It was quite a shock to land in Rome and realize how old most of it was. I knew places like the colosseum were ancient, obviously, but I couldn’t get over walking down alleys and consistently finding myself in 900 year old churches. It doesn’t help that so many technological advancements happened so recently, either. My great grandmother was born in a house without electricity and died after we’d been to space.
I live in Denmark but have never been to Rome. Our eldest cathedral is almost 800 years old. We also have several smaller churches built in the 1100s og 1200s; but they have been modified over time and only parts are original.
The industrial revolution only started in 1709, in a village in England. Not that long ago considering man's development. It's from there that all we have today developed.
@@fuglbird I live in the US, and have been to Rome. The Coliseum was really cool and all, but nothing beats the lasagna I had at a little sidewalk cafe.
For me, it was my grandmother. Born in a house without electricity, helped build the first atomic bomb, saw people walk on the moon, and had an email address. My grandfather was a better cook, though. And he killed Nazis and put out fires.
If you think Rome is old, you should definitely visit Israel. That's OLD. I nearly fell out of the little safari bus when the driver nonchalantly gestured to a point somewhere outside to his left and said "And that's the tomb of the prophet Samuel." That dates from c. 3000 BCE. They were writing the Psalms when my British Isles ancestors were living in daub and wattle huts and painting themselves blue. It puts things in perspective in a hurry.
When I lived in England my English neighbors were shocked that my wife and I thought nothing of driving over 100 miles away to do some activity then drive back the same day. Great thing about England is how easy it is to get anywhere in a day’s drive.
It’s different all over. I grew up in an area of NJ that was close to the beach & only an hour from NYC. Because most of our parents still worked in the city or had relatives, we thought nothing of going there. But I met kids who could see NYC from some beach towns & had never been & had no desire to go. Move to PA & I’m still commuting to the city. Locals complained about driving 30 miles to work! Too funny.
A friend of mine came to visit from NZ. He, too, thought 2 hrs was too long to drive to get somewhere. 2 hrs is nothing! That's just a hop, skip, & a jump away.
100 miles of US roads are relatively open and straight-ish though, getting through 100 miles of rural Norfolk (UK) is technically easy but feels like an absolute ballache.
@@BoomBoomBrucey I know what you mean. I lived In Suffolk for 4 years and drove all over Norfolk. England has very nice motorways though. The “A” roads aren’t bad. After “B” the quality drops off
I feel like the idea that Americans think 100 miles is a relatively short distance may depend on the American and where they grew up. I grew up in the Midwest, and I still remember how shocked my East Coast roommates were in college when I mentioned that a three and a half hour trip (one way) sounded like a reasonable day trip! 😂
I was used to making car trips of at least 1h each way to the nearest town (there's a lot of nature and some villages surrounding my hometown) for shopping at specific stores. The hubby, before we started dating, always felt like any car trip longer than 20-30 min is far. Ever since we've driven between our house and my parents' who still live in my hometown, 1h30 and up only seems long because we now have a toddler haha. For anyone curious, the distance for that trip to my family is over 1k miles, about 17-18h.
That’s true! In the past I would be coordinating staffing for certain projects at work, and people on the East Coast had no concepts of distances between cities in the Midwest/Western states. Like they thought it was just a quick drive between Chicago to Minneapolis, or Detroit to KC. Because they can easily get between Philly/ DC / NYC, they think all major cities are just as close by car/train. And forget telling them how far things are apart in CA (LA to SF is not just a quick drive).
Back in my college days, living in TX, my friends and I considered a drive from Dallas to Austin (just shy of 200 miles) for an evening blues concert a totally normal thing to do.
There're a few American states where depending on where you start and where you are going, you can still be in the same state after a full day of just driving. I had that experience in Texas a number of times. A few times I drove from Dallas to El Paso and made it there in time for dinner.
To drive from the western UP (upper peninsula of Michigan) to Temperance, MI (just across the boarder from Toledo, OH takes about 9 hours. At least it used too. People drive much faster these days. The UP part of the trip doesn't have any freeway until you hit the Machinac Bridge at St. Ignace.
I lived in Fort Washington, PA, we have the ruins of a flour mill that was built in the late 1600's... Now 'THAT'S OLD', at least in the NE U.S., it is😅
There is nothing like watching you argue with yourself 🤣 You made some good points, but ultimately, you proved (and disproved) you point beautifully! Great video as usual!
People like to bicycle across the US also, and I happen to live along one of the popular transnational bicycle routes, so it is common for me to see people on bicycles with saddle bags whenever there is nice weather.
I used to drive an average of 650 miles a day, 5 to 7 days a week. When I moved to being a regional driver, I could sometimes snap at the fact that I was only driving through the same 11 western states, as if I was fiending for some Chicago or Atlanta traffic. I also felt like I was losing my mind when I moved to New England from Oklahoma, and could be in an entirety different state in less than 30 minutes. But now I live in one of the younger homes in my neighborhood, as it's only about 200 years old. My mom's house was built in the 1850's, and my sister's in the 1700's. Appreciation for the differences of various places is a good thing.
It's no more of a patchwork than any other collection of states in the US. Unless you're trying to transport large quantities of firearms or cigarettes across borders, hardly anyone is affected.
@@rucker69 so don't go there , I guess? I had a great time visiting and my friends who live there aren't worried about it because most American's don't leave their own town or city much less the entire state.
@@aazhiedid you really just say most Americans don't leave their town or state? That's an insane statement... I'm 40 years old, and I've never met anyone who didn't leave their city, and have only met a few people who didn't leave their state (and that was usually because they were incredibly poor, or they were in incredibly bad health). Sometimes it's best to just not respond to people, in case you end up sounding just as silly as they did 😬...
As a kid/teen/young adult in the 80s and 90s a hundred years ago was the late 19th century. Steam trains were the norm for long distance travel and horses were still in common use, and electric light was the hot new thing while gas lamps were the established method of illumination. This was always my notion of “a hundred years ago,” basically the Victorian age but American. Then, last summer, I read The Great Gatsby almost exactly a hundred years after it was set. I realized then that people a hundred years ago drove around in cars, listened to the radio, went to movies, talked on the telephone, and in general seemed a lot less hundred-years-ago than those Victorians of my youth. A hundred years ago now means the 1920s and all that entails and it won’t be long until a hundred years ago will mean WWII with its tanks and its bombs and its guns (in your head). It’s a moving target and I don’t think I am quite ready yo face up to that.
Actually, army tanks predate Gatsby, they were created for and used in in WW1 with first use in action being September 1916. First fixed-wing airline in the US also predates Gatsby, was in January 1914, the "St. Petersburg--Tampa Airboat Line". Went out of business after only 4 months.
It's worth noting that in the 1920s most movies were still silent (the first talkie came out in 1927), and radio wasn't what it is today. Radio receivers were expensive back then and most of them were relatively hard to use until the 1930s. What was common back then was listening to records.
Lawrence, I must ask, if you went and experienced Cahokia Mounds, did you come up into Alton, Illinois to see the Piasa Bird? It was a painting left by the Native Americans, on the bluff wall near a cave, just outside of Alton. We are lucky to have our own version and legend of a “Dragon” tied to this community. Look it up!
The two oldest continuously inhabited communities with definitive dates are the Oraibi Hopi village in Arizona and the Acoma pueblo in New Mexico which were both established around 13th century (800 years ago) While archeological digs suggest that Tucson is one of the oldest continuously inhabited communities in North America dating back almost 4,000 years but there's no definitive date there. I live just a few minutes from the Casa Grande ruins which dates back to 1150 CE We do have old stuff here. Just not modern stuff. I think New York City or Providence may be as old as the late 1500's - early 1600's sometime But I'm fairly certain anything from that timeframe was demolished to build modern things throughout the ages.
Several years ago, there was a stoplight on Interstate 90 in Idaho, for some unknown reason. After it was taken down, I-90 became the longest continuous road in the US. I lived in Seattle for decades, where I-90 starts, so it was fun to hook up on it here in Ohio to drive to New Hampshire (well, we took it till I-495, bypassing Boston).
I recall stoplights along I90. It's because they hadn't built the section that went around the town where the stoplight was. Gilman Blvd in Issaquah WA was I90, once upon a time . . . And the back-up in North Bend. . . It was so nice when 101 finally went around Sequim . . . .
@@LythaWausW Yes. Boehm's candy factory was right off I90 - now. . . it's the part of Gilman that doesn't get much traffic because it turns into a dead end.
This area of Massachusetts was settled by Puritans in the 1630s and is deeply tied in some unobvious ways to the English Revolution. In fact, after the Revolution was over and it was cool to be Puritan in England again there were calls for colonists to return to England and in fact I found that many of the owners of the original houses in my little town actually returned to England after Cromwell took over.
Not really native but the ancestors of the Mongols (and other nearby tribes) that crossed the land that once was several hundred miles wide between Asia and what is now Alaska.
But you don't have the written history dating backto the Roman's or the rich history we are surrounded by in our ancient churches , cathedrals , homes , landscapes within ancient burial mounds , stone circles etc you see it everywhere . I love the fact I can go visit a castle that's nearly a thousand yrs old . 😊
@@bobwallace9814it was my understanding that the land bridge between Siberia and Alaska is unsubstantiated. Comparing Mongolian DNA with Navajo DNA would be interesting.
I love the fact you now said "Us Americans" and also congratulations. I know a few people who have gone through the process and they all know so much more US history than most born here
When I lived in North Carolina I commuted 100 miles one way from Charlotte to Bellews Creek for work. I rode my motorcycle which made it awesome, I got to ride 1000 miles a week on my bike AND get a full week of work in.
American here. Escape to the Country is one of my favorite shows. It still blows my mind when I would hear "This home is near the town pub, which has been open since 1631 and the weekly farmers market, which has happened every Wednesday since 1472."
Thanks Lawrence for the shout out to native peoples living across the Americas a long time ago and well before any Euro government took possession of it.
Not mentioning the people who were here before even the native Americans took possession of the land through brutal and barbaric force? Shocking. It really is tiresome that people conveniently forget that before the modern age, every group of people took possession of the land from a people that were there before them, and they did it through the "might makes right" train of thought. This way of acquiring land still occurs in modern times throughout the world, but morally uppity people sometimes try to interfere and end up helping the wrong people keep/attain power. So, good on Lawrence for mentioning the native tribes, but did he go back far enough for everyone to feel acknowledged?
The thing about the British yew trees is that people actually knew they were there and have always interacted with them. They are regarded in Celtic mythology as the gateway to the world of the dead. Most old churchyards have an old yew tree that usually predates the church showing how the new religion of Christianity supplanted older sacred sites. The American bristlecone pines just grew and were ignored until Edmund Schulman discovered their longevity in the 1950s.
America has plenty of historic trees that have been regarded as such for many generations, whether by Native Americans or by colonists and their descendants, even if not specifically the bristlecone pines.
When we visited Ipswich, we foolishly thought that we could just drive to Scotland and visit🤣🤣🤣 because distance wise what’s a few hundred miles? yeah Britain’s roads don’t work like our roads. I think it took us three hours to get only 50 miles away. Every road is only two lanes and super narrow ithrough Village after a village.
This is the big difference which is key to note. My son has just repatriated after 3 years living in the USA. He is still finding it hard to get used to English roads. Remote Scottish & Welsh roads, and English roads around the edges (near the seaside) can be worse still. In some of those areas planning a journey you’d better expect an average speed of 30mph. Sometimes the roads are single track for traffic in BOTH directions! So if someone is coming in the opposite direction one of you has to find a passing place and pull in! But oh the joys! Roads like that are usually in the most stunning areas of beauty, like over mountains or through protected areas or remote areas where digging wider roads is not justified by the traffic. Or transporting road-building materials just has never been a priority. I love that sort of driving. There is often grass growing in the middle of the road. Quite different from what an American might expect when planning a trip though, by the sounds of it?
@@nigelwylie01 most of our narrow roads are ancient and not built for cars but we like to keep them as they are I guess we are used to driving in them .
Maddening to have a road six feet wide and a lorrie coming at you so you have to back up and cram yourself into a hedgerow if you can find one with a space to let the lorrie pass with an inch to spare. . British politeness disappears when Britons behind the wheel. In America, where pedestrians always have the right of way except on divided highways, can be very difficult. I was very nearly killed stepping off the curb outside a Sainsbury market when a car came hurtling by going at least 40 mph, maybe 50, and the driver gave me a rude blast on the horn for good measure, besides nearly running me down. Being American, I assumed he would at least slow down. No such thing. I decided the normally restrained British work ouit their frustrations behind the steering wheel. And as for roundaboiuts in Britain, those are positively suicidal. On the plus side, I do love the public footpaths that are everywhere in Britain.
I meant to say, being a pedestrian in Britain can e an exercise in staying alive when you are near automobile traffic. They don't stop for pedestrians, or even slow down, they drive like maniacs on the motorways, and they are rude while driving. But as soon as they get out of their vehicles, they revert to typical British politeness. Visiting Britain is fun, but Britain does have its quirks, and Americans should be especially careful on roads and in carparks. No such thing as a four-way stop in Britain, that's for sure.
This pithy quote is 100% accurate. I had a dear friend visit me from Kings Lynn in England, after ONE day driving my route to work of 135 miles round trip, he thought I was driving him to his death which was totally normal for me. The flip side is I can't comprehend seeing a building or structure past 2/3HUNDRED years old... Anything beyond that scrambles the brain. It's fascinating this dichotomy honestly.
At 9:30 you show a map of the longest distance between 2 cities in the continuous USA but some of the route cuts through Ontario Canada. Also depending on what you classify as a city the longest distances between 2 citys would be between Blaine WA and Key West FL which is 3560 miles
I have BritBox b/c I like some of the classic Brit comedies such as Allo Allo, Are You Being Served?, and Red Dwarf to name a few. I think you should do a video or a series of videos where you review some of your and or your wife's favorite shows that are on BritBox, I think a lot of your viewers would like something like that.
Disney got me thinking I'd go to Europe to explore medieval fairy tale forests until I realized they were all chopped down long ago. Then I went to Olympic National Forrest in Washington and realized that is a true magical ancient forest. Thank goodness somebody thought to preserve so much of this continent's natural beauty before chopping everything down and paving over it like they've done in Europe.
Yes! I was so so sad when I realized so much of the (I imagined) magical forests in Europe were chopped down ages ago : '(. And also yes, as a westcoaster, I am so thankful for the big swaths of protected natural land here. There's nothing like standing deep in a grove of giant redwoods in California, and some of the most stunning nature I've ever seen were sky-high forests filled with waterfalls in the Pacific Northwest 😍🌳🌳🌲🌴
I'm sure it was more luck than judgement that these forests were saved. With Europe being made up of lots of small countries it was inevitable that population growth would lead to deforestation, to provide extra agricultural and housing land.
No they weren’t, there’s Sherwood Forest, the New Forest and the Forest of Dean here in UK, there’s the Ardennes in Belgium and the Black Forest in Germany, and that’s just the ones I know about
@@pH7oslo Lol. I actually have been considering moving to Europe and looking at Norway and Sweden for that very reason. Though I'm leaning toward Germany as possibly a slightly easier transition for and American.
Been to West Quoddy Head many times - That's the name of the lighthouse on the eastern-most point in the States. The little town nearby is Lubec. It's a beautiful spot.
Grimsby UK is also home to Alexandra Dock and has an interesting history. Originally it was served by a massive railway yard along with timber depots and sawmills. As shipping changed, cranes advanced and containerization, most of the historic details are gone. Now the Alexandra Dock serves the automotive transport industry and the rail sidings and timber depots are now massive car parks for new automobiles.
Before I retired a few years ago, my commute to work and home was about the same distance as going from the center of London to the center of Sheffield. Drove through 3 counties and from Missouri to Kansas and back. Never thought much of it being that far.
That's crazy I live in buffalo,ny and drove 312 miles to get our new puppies not only did it take 5 hour's but we didn't even get to the bottom of New York state.
Favorite London filmed series has to be New Tricks. Especially the years John Halford was there. Brian, Jack, and Gerry Standing with Sandra Pullman, what a great cast for a great show. I hope your promo for britbox is still good, I really miss my British TV that we used to get for free on PBS back in Oregon. I have decided to subscribe.
Hi Lawrence, the M1 has come a long way in the last decade, now the A1M runs from Leeds to Newcastle and Durham. I live in Leeds and have a holiday home in Durham and I can complete the journey in less tan 1.5 hrs (if I put my foot down!). It's great, no more roundabouts lol x
A fair number of years ago, I used to live in Eastern Utah. And from the small cluster of homes that was called Lawrence, it was about 40 miles to the nearest Walmart, in the next county. But we never thought, " it's 40 miles to we always converted the miles into the amount of time it took to travel there. So it took us 45 minutes to drive there from our small ranch. And if it was snowing, it might take a bit longer. I still do this now in North Carolina. So if I need to drive to Asheville for an appointment I know it's going to take me about an hour and 15mins to get there. 😮 Or in my case, the drive to Atlanta, GA, is about 2 hours. 😊 Here's one, we call the the rolling basket you put stuff in while shopping a shopping cart, and in the UK, it's called........?
In britain we have listed buildings, churches,cathedrals,town halls,houses,etc,which for historical reasons, can't be demolished...That's why the countries towns and cities ain't full of modern,indistinguishable metal and glass boxes.
The same, of course, exists in the US. I happen to live in a neighborhood that is on the National Historic Register. Alterations to homes, including mine, cannot really happen. Updates must be historically accurate. This isn’t all that unusual. You clearly are uninformed.
@@Kibannn City planning wasn't really a thing; the layout of roads was through necessity and convenience *for the time*. Like Broadway in Manhattan which doesn't follow the usual block layout because it was the path used to drive cattle. My home city still has roads called Hound's Gate, Goose Gate, Bridlesmith Gate, Whitefriar's Lane, etc. which made perfect sense when the (then) town revolved around the castle and the market place.
When I found out that it took the Top Gear team 35+ hours to drive from London to one of the Scottish isles, I couldn't believe it. Then someone reminded me they had to take a ferry or two
From the southeastern most point (near Toledo, OH) in Michigan’s Lower Peninsula to the westernmost point of Ironwood, in the Upper Peninsula is about a 630-mile trip. It is 616 miles from Ironwood to St. Louis, Missouri.
As a BritBox fan and consumer of British crime dramas I think it would be compelling to discuss the differences in the response to emergency services - both in traffic and in person. Thoughts?
Try some true crime stories to find out. My first trip to the UK started in my friend's home town. She didn't bother telling me she'd stolen 50K from her gangster boyfriend. He beat the shit out of her infront of 100 people in a night club where he worked. I was screaming "CALL THE POLICE' when they arrived she was bloody, clothes torn , beaten and dirty from being thrown in the street and dragged. The police advised we go home and stay away from the city center! They didn't even speak to anyone including her attacker, whom they new by name. Happy Holidays!!!
@@fowleheidi482 You followed up the police I take it? You assume a lot. How do you know the police didn't question him or investigate this crime later?
That's how it is in Florida. The Panhandle is quite long. It's nothing compared to a Pensacola to Key West drive, which is one of the longest single state drives one can make.
I once drove through 5 countries in Europe in one day on one tank of gas (thanks Prius). I couldn't believe it. That last bit was on a ferry to England but we still had gas in the tank.
When I was in Greece we went to the Acropolis. It blew my mind that we were walking on a structure that was 3000 years old!!! It was hard to wrap your head around it.
@@k.chriscaldwell4141I’m a bit of a history buff but as an American I can safely say I’m jealous of European history buffs I couldn’t even begin to count of all the places and sites I’d love to visit
@@zacharymacadam7416 Of all my travels in Europe, the remnants of an aqueduct just outside Rome is the most memorable. I almost missed my train to Florence because I stood so long admiring it. I mean, you see and read of the aqueducts in textbooks, but to stand before one?! The Colosseum is, sorry to say, just a building. An aqueduct, on the other hand, is piece of civilization. I guess it's the practical in me.
There is a state park in the Colorado Springs area (don't recall which town) with petrified trees. They have a sign indicating that the pebbles we were walking on were over a trillion years old. They were pretty pink stones.
The other point about distance is that USA had wide open spaces to build straight open roads. Road in UK were bendy sheep trails that were paved after. Or at least, if it's similar to Ireland. The word bóthar in irish means the cow's way, so it was wherever they walked from A to B. Makes for some difficult driving sometimes, especially with the weather.
Michigan as a state has more coast line than the ENTIRE east coast of the US. Any point in Michigan, you are no less than 5 miles from any body of water.
There is a pub in Athlone that is 900 years old. Not much of it is original now but there has been a pub on that spot since before there was bridge across the Shannon there.
![Seungmin "그렇게, 천천히, 우리(As we are)" | [Stray Kids : SKZ-PLAYER]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/kAzmhLHePqU/mqdefault.jpg)
“America is also the place where they found most of the dinosaurs… and I’m not just talking about the Senate.” Great line!
It was funny.
I was also thinking about how England had dinosaurs too. I believe fossils of the Megalosaurus (not megalodon), and Baryonyx were found on the island. (Which brings me to the conclusion that when they were digging the foundations for those ancient structures, they found fossils of those dinosaurs and thought they found dragons, tell me how a Baryonyx skull doesn't look like a depiction of a dragon)
Proof that Laurence is really an American citizen. 😁😁
I loved it.
You left out current President!
Is this the bit where we scream "Retire, Diane!" and "Die horribly of an incredibly painful ass cancer as your dementia only allows you to feel and remember the pain and nothing else, Mitch!"?
Speaking of old trees, 2 miles from the house where I grew up in Florida, was a huge 3500 year old Bald Cypress named "The Senator" in a place called "Big Tree Park". It was, I believe, the 2nd oldest tree in America, and 8th oldest in the world. We knew that native peoples in the Florida Peninsula visited the tree as far back as the stone age, leaving many artifacts around it. The tree had a large crack in its trunk, big enough to crawl in and hide, which is what a junkie was doing one night in 2012, when she decided to have a smoke of some crystal meth and set a small fire in there so she could see. Rather than putting out her fire, she took pics and videos with her phone and then left, and a few days later the entire tree had burned from the inside out, killing it. Fortunately, the Senator's sister tree, a 2000 year old Cypress named "Lady Liberty" still stands, about a hundred feet away. The county had a few 20 year old clones of The Senator, so they planted one (already 50 feet tall) in its place, and named it The Phoenix. Maybe in a few thousand years it will be the size of its dad.
In Australia there's the King's Holly, which cannot reproduce sexually so existing trees are the offshoots of the original tree which is estimated to be between 42,000 and 135,000 years old. It's rarely considered to be the world's oldest tree as it's not a single independant plant but rather a network of genetically identical clones. It all depends on how you define "a tree"; if "The Senator" had new growth from the root stock, would it still be the same tree, or a whole new one?
That's wigging me out man
@@avaggdu1 There are forests in North America that are all clones of some ancient ancestor. They vibrate sympathetically, somehow. It's weird.
@@magnificentfailure2390 Probably due to a mycorrhizal (shared) root system. Maybe not a good idea to watch The Happening before hiking in them!
@@avaggdu1 Putting an age on any tree that does have a historical record is mostly speculative, as trees don't always produce one ring per year, and other methods are impossible to prove. It's best to just wonder that they're ancient.
Ooooh Dinosaurs in the Senate, Lawrence? That's an insult to dinosaurs.
He's an American citizen now and it shows 😂.
Dinosaurs, at least, were honest about their predation.
I live in Wisconsin now. We moved here in 2005. My mother in Ireland used call us whenever there was a Hurricane in Florida. She couldn't understand the size of the US.
I grew up in NJ, half hour to the beach & only one & a half to the mountains. We had friends in Cali whose daughter was staying in state for school. Still needed to take a plane! I forgot how big CA is
A foreign exchange student on my dorm floor in college at the start of the new semester absolutely freaked the heck out about Hurricane Katrina. While, yes, that was definitely no storm to shake a stick at, we were in _Kansas_ 😊
😂❤
Yup, that' s me.
Ask her how the weather is in Morocco.
It's close to the same distance.
THANK YOU so much for mentioning Cahokia!!!! It’s the birthplace of 5 tribes including the Cherokee. The legend handed down vs scientific verification is fascinating to me
I once drove across Texas on I-10 from Houston to El Paso (877 miles of I-10 in Texas alone). When I saw mile markers that were in the 870's while driving ON THE SAME ROAD the entire time, I finally realized just how big Texas really is.
@kimberlysimpson343 I don't know if you know the band The Indigo Girls, but I always think of their song Southland in the Springtime when I think I of driving across Texas...
Maybe we'll make Texas by the morning
Light the bayou with our taillights in the night
Eight hundread miles to El Paso from the state line
And we never have the money for the flight
Reminds me of when I was stationed at Fort Bliss in El Paso, Tx, I took a couple of trips back home in South Carolina. Texas alone was half of the 1600 mile drive. When I moved back to TX the second time (Austin this time), the 1000 mile journey didn't seem so bad.
@@MudderToad It's always relative, right? lol
I did the same many years ago. Now, I live in central Texas and visit my in-laws in California via I10. It is still 567 miles from central Texas to El Paso.
Texas(which I've unfortunately had to drive through more than once) is the state where you drive for two solid days and you're still in Texas. Of course nothing compares with Alaska. HUGE. So big you have to use airplanes to get anywhere.
I’ve visited the Pueblo Indian cliff dwellings at Mesa Verde, which were built about 600 years before the United States was founded. They’re not exactly in the middle of a typical American town, but they’re still awesome to see.
In the center of the city I live in, there is something that we call "the mystery Tower". It's made of stones cemented together, and they believe that it predates colonial times, as they have found remnants that are older
There’s also Taos Pueblo, still inhabited, almost 1,000 years later.
I think that Mesa Verde is closed for this year and next year for infrastructure improvements but I would really love to go there. I did some reading and although they were not the same people that built the actual dwellings/buildings, there’s been human activity in that region as far back as 9500 BC. It was a lot greener and had more water in area area back then because the Ice Age ice was still receding. I would love to have ability to travel through time at will and experience what this part of the American west was like.
I was just there 2 weeks ago. It was open, but they did have it down to a single lane for a very short distance. I toured Cliff Palace. It was pretty cool.
Oooooh Laurence. Your post is just what I need today. Added: I would disappoint my fellow Texans if I failed to note it is a shorter distance from Texarkana, Texas to Chicago than it is from Texarkana to El Paso, Texas. Thank you for another fine post.
It's shorter from El Paso to LA than it is from Texarkana to El Paso.
European visitors sometimes have amazingly impractical/nearly impossible travel itineraries. I've heard of some planning to visit New York City, Chicago, Los Angeles, Washington D.C. and Disney World in seven days, by Bus/Train/Automobile! Natives usually bring out a map of the continental U.S. and point out that this itinerary spans over thousands of Miles/Kilometers and would be a challenge for even "Jet Set" travelers via scheduled airliners.
My German friends often did the same. They just had no idea of the scale of America. Visit NYC and Disney World by car in a week?! LOL.
A German once, upon overhearing a discussion by me on the scale of America, asked me to quit saying hours instead of distances. I think he wanted to compute the times himself. Anyways, I told him that time is how Americans measure distance in America. That I, and most Americans, almost exclusively use time as distance.
NYC is 17 hours distant to Chicago. Denver another 17. Etc.
@@k.chriscaldwell4141I heard a British you tuber comment that traveling 150 miles in England would take 3 hours. Here it would take 2 hours or less. Their roads are narrow and somewhat winding, thus the lower speed limit. God bless the U.S. highway system !!
@@k.chriscaldwell4141 I grew up understanding that Los Angeles was nine hours from Tucson, except it is now seven hours. Still 500 miles.
@@cherylflam3250 it feels like 90%+ of traffic, including trucks, are speeding at every single moment too.
@@cherylflam3250 I think there are plenty of equivalencies between the US interstate system and European motorway systems.
The one thing that's particularly nice about the US is that the roads are relatively empty outside of very urbanized areas. Europe is generally more densely populated.
Speaking of distance, there was a time I went out for a bike ride. Just me and a few thousand friends. We rode across Iowa, about 450 miles, in a week.
I've done that ride myself! 🚵♂️
Oh are you talking about Ragbrai? I went to college at Drake University in Des Moines and remember Ragbrai.
A Brit I know did the Great Divide - 2,696 miles from Banff in Canada to the US/Mexico border. And climbs a total of 45.6 miles, on the way.
I'm from Chicago, and I was very excited to tell my Egyptian friend about the OLDEST building in Chicago. It's almost 150 years old!!! She was not impressed. She said that her childhood home was older than that, and that Egypt has the pyramids.
I grew up and "boring" Ohio next door and have visited The Great Serpent Mound many times. It is to believed to have been started around 300BC, before what we now call Paris, France.
Paris was not a very important place until the seventh century, when one of the multiple kings of Frankish Gaul lived there for a while. The main capital was at Metz.
My father was from Pennsylvania and my mother from Virginia. We lived in Northern Virginia. I remember one evening after dinner my father decided we needed to drive to Lancaster, PA for some of the best hoagies I have ever eaten. So off we went for a little over a 2 hour drive, got the hoagies (packed "to travel") and back home again because he had to work the next day.
And, you could have gone through DC and of course Maryland on the way.
I work in Lancaster, and I can tell you that hoagies (subs to most of the rest of the U.S.) are no different here than anywhere else. Same goes with cheesesteak sandwiches. I get hoagies at Central Market (the oldest farmer's market in the U.S.) relatively frequently, and while they're pretty good, they're nothing spectacular, either.
@@mournblade1066 I am talking about the V & S. They are better than any I have had in Virginia. Jersey Mike's is a close second. I only get the cold cuts.
@@boomergames8094 Yes, we did.
If you ever visit again, try Bruno's. They're the best I've ever eaten, yum. But they are only open 10-2 and I think there's only one location now.
In 1977 my wife and I were in a shop in Ireland (possibly County Tipp) and we purchased a wedgewood plate the was maybe 100 years old - so now 140 years. We referred to it an an antique but the owner said no, just an old plate. A nice one and worthy, but not "antique" but he did acknowledge that for Americans, it was antique.
853 miles is roughly the distance from Orange, TX to El Paso, TX on Interstate 10.
The sun is riz, the sun is set and we ain't out of Texas yet.
Not Jeff here. The California coastline is about 840 miles,according to Wikipedia.
Texhoma, Texas all the way down to South Padre Island, Texas: 900 miles
Yeah, Britain is tiny compared to the USA or Canada. And extremely crowded. I'm happy to be living in America.
There are definitely some buildings in the USA that are thousands of years old. The problem is, large numbers of Native American settlements were destroyed, abandoned or "relocated" (for lack of a better word) at some point. What you don't see in the USA very often are 500+ year old buildings still used and maintained within modern cities. Where I live, the oldest buildings were built in the 1800s.
The oldest building in my town was built in the 1860s. My town was settled in an effort to grow cotton and sell to the Union army, since the Confederacy obviously was off the market. The cotton-growing project didn't work out, but the town did.
I enjoyed the very dramatic “counterpoint” graphic interjections, which stayed on brand for a certain RUclips Sensation with the red spectacles theme. 😂👍
I'm amazed by the history of things in England still in use. My friend drank at a pub called the "new pub" by locals since it was built to replace the old pub that burned down, in the 13th century! But it's not a museum, it's still a pub. Also the book Three Men in a Boat, a humorous travel log of a boat trip on the Thames, mentions many pubs and inns, all of which are still open 133 years later. In my small American town, the oldest restaurants are less than 40 years. I think it's hard to find one older in a small town.
I-90 runs from Seattle Washington to Boston Massachusetts. Coincidentally, the Boston Red Sox are playing the Seattle Mariners in the second game of the "I-90 series" in about half an hour as I type this.
I-90 has got to be the most scenic interstate in the USA. I love it. Only takes four days coast to coast if you get up early, drive for two or three hours, stop for a breakfast at Denny's, and keep driving for the next ten hours.
I used to live in Seattle, which has very few buildings built before 1890. That's because old Seattle burned in a huge fire in 1889. But, there are is some deep history there. There are still a few old growth trees, giant red cedars, that were never cut down because they had minor imperfections back in the day.
Magnuson Park is old growth. There are other areas that are too - and it was because they were inaccessible. The old growth where I am is on steep slopes - so it wasn't logged.
I once had a conversation with a buddy of mine in Scotland regarding a trip I was taking within my own state at the time of Florida. I was travelling from South Florida to the far western tip of the panhandle. With stops it was going to take about 11 hours. We just could not wrap his head around that... I wasn't even leaving my state.
I too lived in South Florida and lived that experience, although I didn't have the ability to drive yet. Getting across is nothing, but going up and out is painfully long. And usually we would be going to Gatlinburg. I don't think there was ever a time we didn't have to stay the night in Georgia.
UK is 837 miles north to south. Minneapolis to Dallas is 939 miles on just I-35. This really is kind of crazy.
And the distance between Dallas, Tx and Brownsville,Tx is 545 miles.
If you lived on Old Oregon Road in Hornbrook, CA, and really wanted Carl's Jr from your favorite very specific fast food location in San Ysidro, CA, it'd take you 12 hours and 19 minutes on I-5 heading South, clocking in at 794 miles. But if you wanted to see the coast, you could take most of the trip on Southbound 101 and bring that up to 13 hours and 23 minutes at a short 864 miles!
@@texasflood1295 El Paso to Brownsville is 830 MILES.
Driving through the entirety of Nebraska alone on I80 is almost 500 miles
I've made that drive quite a few times over the years. I-35 plus the flat terrain makes it an easy, if long, drive.
Having visited Taos, it's a weird vibe. It's obvious that there is a generation that is okay with living off tourists, but there's also a "We hate you for treating us as an object rather than as a people." vibe going on, which is totally legit.
It's the tourists who ruined things in Taos. When I was a kid in the 60's my family was friends with some folks from Taos and went to some festivals and such, they were totally cool with it. By the 70's no roundeyes were allowed no matter what the connections were.
My daughter was friends with a San Felipe pueblo girl and was invited to dance at the Corn Maiden dance with her in the early 90's. It was cool.
Too many tourists (and Americans are NOTORIOUS for it) don't bother to explore and embrace a culture when they go. They treat it all like a spectacle or a theater show, and fail utterly to stop the respect the fact that this (whatever they see or experience) is a way of life for the people there. It's not a display just to draw their attention, and there's no "behind the scenes" lifestyle where these people take off the primitive crap and slide into their own jeans and leather jackets to ride their motorcycle or hop into the family van or stationwagon to go home to a modern ranch-style with privacy fence and a pool out back... When the tourists go home to their own lives the PEOPLE they met or interacted with or just watched from a distance still live that same way day in and day out...
I noticed it in the Navy on tours. We get overseas, and everybody on the ship would share notes after the first day, where's the nearest Burger King and the McD's... Where can you find guides and translators... How to... When to..
If you just show respect... AND that's a somewhat subjective cultural thing... posture, language, tone... etc... BUT if you do your part to ask politely as much as possible, you CAN still have a pretty great time and actually LEARN something. Too many dumb-asses only want to travel to get a few selfies and then swear up and down about how they've "been there, done that, and got the damn T-shirt" when they didn't bother to learn a g** d*** thing.
I'm not surprised about tourists getting hated and even restricted in a lot of countries. Parents and teachers (if we're honest) just don't teach the kids well about WHY being travelled well is some kind of advantage. It is, but ONLY if you bothered yourself to LEARN from the trip, and more than "pic's or it didn't happen"... ;o)
I always joked that in the US, everything was built yesterday (I'm American). It's also very common to see places torn down and something new built in its place. There's very few opportunities for things to get old.
I'm on the east coast, and colonial buildings and history is a good draw for tourism
Growing up in the southwest was a bit of a trip. Nothing was torn down to build something new, there was always some empty land to build on.
As a Brit, I'm amazed how often the NFL and baseball teams replace their stadiums. Football/soccer stadiums over here tend to only get demolished and replaced when they are well over 50 years old, often because of a lack of space to expand.
Where I live, there are many historic buildings (though many aren't more than maybe 300 years old). There's a push at many places to keep old things, and they do bring in visitors too. The most amusing (to me) is the Watt & Shand façade in the middle of Lancaster City, PA. The façade is historic but the interior was NOT. They gutted the building, left the façade and built a Marriott and convention center in there. :B
It's kind of sad to see many old buildings getting torn down.
Like you, I grew up on the east coast of the UK (Cleethorpes) and now live in Canada. We have dinosaur bones and old trees but I also miss historic buildings (and country pubs!)
Orkney is amazing! The Neolithic sites are mind blowing-I made it a point to reach down and run my hand over the top stones in the walls at Skara Brae, a village built 5000 years ago (just a few centuries after the Knap of Howar).
In the grand year of 2000(or is that two grand:) when I retired, I rode a bicycle from coast to coast at a diagonal starting in Southern California and ending in Connecticut. A distance of just slightly less than 4000 miles went under my wheels between those two points. I took about two months in the effort. The next year I met with some bicycling buddies in England, Leicester to be specific. They invited me to travel with them to another bicycling event in Brighton, and lent me a bicycle to do it. That roughly 200 miles in four days did indeed feel longer than the same distance traversed during the previous bicycle tour even though my average day then was 57 miles. Great trips both and very informative.
I am seriously impressed with your adventure.
I met some rugby dudes from Grimsby when i visited friends in York. I was warned the Grimsby fellows were rough abd likely to start a scuffle. Instead, the biggest, loudest, drunkest Grimsby rugby player instantly noticed my american south accent and wanted to be my friend
The first time I read your post, I thought you had written "some ugly dudes" 😅
@@LindaC616 🤣🤣🤣
I was rather surprised when I went to Boston in 2016 that I had several people say they liked my southern accent. It was a nice change from being made fun of for it! For all that's been said about the north, all the folks I talked to there were very nice and polite.
rugby dudes are generally gentlemen that play a hooligan sport. in 3 years of playing the sport I rarely met anyone who was an absolute shit.
My partner commutes from N. Maryland to N. Virginia 5x a week. That's about 75 miles each way or 150 miles a day. But when I lived in El Paso TX, I regularly drove home on weekends over 250 miles... When I was getting my PhD, there was a student from GB studying voting records in Western States. He thought he could easily drive to all the various local records offices over 1 summer and have enough time to study at each. We showed him the map and the travel distances, and he quickly revised his plans.....
My father is still doing the commute from northern MD to NoVA in his 70s. Granted he's not as far north as he could be (thank God he didn't like the house they looked at in Emmitsburg), but it's still over an hour each way. And it's shorter than the commute he used to do, which took him either around or through DC and was just a pain in the backside for everyone involved.
The M6 would fit entirely within my state (Oklahoma) if you put it in at an angle.
Good one. When I was in UK (from Tucson) and rented a car to drive to Cornwall, every Brit I talked with in London were aghast: "You're going all the way out there!" Funny. I ❤ UK.
When I first went to Ireland, we went to a pub that was older than the United States. It was all original inside , other than modern lighting, cash machine, and beer taps. I barely cleared through the doorways, and I'm only 5'10 . Was crazy
We've got several, the oldest being from 1189AD built inside a cave under the castle. To be fair, most cities in the UK have pubs that are pre-1700's.
@@avaggdu1
White Horse Tavern in Newport, Rhode Island, USA, has been there since 1673. 🙂
@@avaggdu1 oh I know, but it was kinda crazy the first time, just knowing how old the building was. We have very little architecture that old over here.
Is this a leprechaun joke?
Lol, just kidding ;)
More recently than that, there were tiny people. My house is 1870 and I hit my head on the light fixtures on the ceilings, and have to duck through doorways upstairs in my house. Were the people actually that small in 1870, or did they just like to duck all the time?
I live in rural Nevada. From my front door to the nearest pharmacy, or doctor, or Home Depot, or WalMart, or Super Market, or auto mechanic is 75 miles one way!
An example of the difference in size perspective: I live in the most densely populated state in America (NJ) and my brother (from Arizona) couldn’t believe that I was complaining about needing to run to the store for something I needed. There are convenience stores within minutes of any spot in my state, whereas people in some western states have to travel hours to get to ANY store!
A VERY few people in some areas of Western states have to travel over an hour to get to a food store.
True, some of our rural areas are way more sparse than parts of rural britain
But in NJ the traffic can make a two mile ride take an hour, so there’s that.
Distances between things like that get comically larger the further West you go in the USA. I live in the middle. (Southern Minnesota) and both far West and Far East seem foreign to me as I found out during road trips I took in my 20s and 30s.
I had no idea NJ was the most populated state! It sure feels like it! It basically ruins any and every activity! I miss walking alone on a beach, on a street, I miss silence… as an European!
My favorite exception to this is in my hometown, Milwaukee. We have St Joan of Arc Chapel built in the 1420s making it one of the oldest buildings in the Western Hemisphere. It just was originally built in Lyon, France and was moved here after WWI.
I think there may be a few Mayans and Incas who might disagree with that statement, not to mention the Native American cliff-dwellers in the Southwest.
@@pacmanc8103and the Incas took over a lot of theirs from the Mochi
@@pacmanc8103 Oh yes the first illegal Asian immigrants without passports. I read about them in a book once.
@@pacmanc8103I was looking for your comment! Thank you! ❤
@@pacmanc8103they did say one of the oldest, not the oldest, but I get your point because those would be far older.
The majority of christmases, me and my parents drive from the suburbs of Chicago, to West Palm Beach, Florida to see family. It's a 20 hour drive and usually takes us 3 days, where 2 nights we sleep in hotels on the way. As the crow flies, it's over 1000 miles or 1600 km. Not to mention that the first day often requires us to drive through snow until we go far enough south
When my husband had to go to California to be trained for his job he visited the La Brea Tar Pits and was able to look at the bones of animals that lived tens of thousands of year ago. We do have history and it is really interesting.
I wasn't sure about Pt. Arena to Quoddy Head being the longest drive so I checked Neah Bay, Washington to Florida City, Florida. It freaked me out when the distance was 3527... EXACTLY the same as the one you said! Now... if we were to count Key West, Florida then that to Neah Bay would win as it is a drive of 3653 miles.
I'm curious as to your route. I put in Cape Flattery (8 1/2 miles west of Neah Bay) to Key West, and only got 3615 (or up to 41++ if you go through LA).
But the route it gave me for Pt Arena to Quoddy Head was 3,4++ miles. (and a couple other routes that were 3,7++ miles)
Neah Bay is quaint place. I've enjoyed my trips there. It is Native American land and reservation of the Makah People
Oooh Laurence! It seems you've made another awesome video!
Mexican has some Mayan structures dating to 1000 BC/BCE and some ruins that might be as old as 3000 BC/BCE, the later 500 years before the Great Pyramids at Giza and also pyramidal. Since Mexico is technically an Americas country, North or Meso in particular....
No, Mexico is a country in North America, and the United States of America is also a North American county that's usually just called America due to the shortness. There is NO continent that's called America.
@@davidcosta2244 I suspect you failed geography or never had a globe growing up. "The Americas" is a universally accepted collectve name for North and South American continents. If there is no Americas then alot of treaties need to be torn up! Look up those "Americas" treaties but I suspect you don't care.
About 30 years ago, my husband and I were camping along the St. Lawrence Seaway (river that separates the US from Canada) the young couple camping next to us were from Sweden, on their honeymoon. They were gifted a year's exploration of the US from one of their family members. They started their adventure in Maine, and planned on visiting most of the US over the course of a year. They were a few weeks into their travels when they realized that they were going to need more than a year. It took them almost 3 weeks wandering around Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, and Northern New York, before we met them. They had no set itinerary, but they did have golden passes to all the National parks, and many state passes for state parks. They were astounded at how far they had driven, yet, had not yet reached the west coast yet, ☺️. They wanted to see Alaska as well while they were here. We tried to explain that just covering the lower 48 would be an accomplishment in this trip. That Alaska and Hawaii might be better saved for milestone anniversaries. 😃
Nearly every weekend during the summers growing up in Minnesota, my family drove a couple hundred miles up north to the family lakeplace, driving up Friday, driving back Sunday. And doing that is pretty common in Minnesota culture, although the frequency varies. I knew other kids whose family lakeplaces were in Canada.
It was quite a shock to land in Rome and realize how old most of it was. I knew places like the colosseum were ancient, obviously, but I couldn’t get over walking down alleys and consistently finding myself in 900 year old churches.
It doesn’t help that so many technological advancements happened so recently, either. My great grandmother was born in a house without electricity and died after we’d been to space.
I live in Denmark but have never been to Rome. Our eldest cathedral is almost 800 years old. We also have several smaller churches built in the 1100s og 1200s; but they have been modified over time and only parts are original.
The industrial revolution only started in 1709, in a village in England. Not that long ago considering man's development. It's from there that all we have today developed.
@@fuglbird I live in the US, and have been to Rome. The Coliseum was really cool and all, but nothing beats the lasagna I had at a little sidewalk cafe.
For me, it was my grandmother. Born in a house without electricity, helped build the first atomic bomb, saw people walk on the moon, and had an email address.
My grandfather was a better cook, though. And he killed Nazis and put out fires.
If you think Rome is old, you should definitely visit Israel. That's OLD. I nearly fell out of the little safari bus when the driver nonchalantly gestured to a point somewhere outside to his left and said "And that's the tomb of the prophet Samuel." That dates from c. 3000 BCE. They were writing the Psalms when my British Isles ancestors were living in daub and wattle huts and painting themselves blue. It puts things in perspective in a hurry.
When I lived in England my English neighbors were shocked that my wife and I thought nothing of driving over 100 miles away to do some activity then drive back the same day. Great thing about England is how easy it is to get anywhere in a day’s drive.
It’s different all over. I grew up in an area of NJ that was close to the beach & only an hour from NYC. Because most of our parents still worked in the city or had relatives, we thought nothing of going there. But I met kids who could see NYC from some beach towns & had never been & had no desire to go. Move to PA & I’m still commuting to the city. Locals complained about driving 30 miles to work! Too funny.
A friend of mine came to visit from NZ. He, too, thought 2 hrs was too long to drive to get somewhere. 2 hrs is nothing! That's just a hop, skip, & a jump away.
100 miles of US roads are relatively open and straight-ish though, getting through 100 miles of rural Norfolk (UK) is technically easy but feels like an absolute ballache.
@@BoomBoomBrucey I know what you mean. I lived In Suffolk for 4 years and drove all over Norfolk. England has very nice motorways though. The “A” roads aren’t bad. After “B” the quality drops off
I feel like the idea that Americans think 100 miles is a relatively short distance may depend on the American and where they grew up. I grew up in the Midwest, and I still remember how shocked my East Coast roommates were in college when I mentioned that a three and a half hour trip (one way) sounded like a reasonable day trip! 😂
I was used to making car trips of at least 1h each way to the nearest town (there's a lot of nature and some villages surrounding my hometown) for shopping at specific stores. The hubby, before we started dating, always felt like any car trip longer than 20-30 min is far.
Ever since we've driven between our house and my parents' who still live in my hometown, 1h30 and up only seems long because we now have a toddler haha. For anyone curious, the distance for that trip to my family is over 1k miles, about 17-18h.
🤣🤣🤣🤣
That’s true! In the past I would be coordinating staffing for certain projects at work, and people on the East Coast had no concepts of distances between cities in the Midwest/Western states. Like they thought it was just a quick drive between Chicago to Minneapolis, or Detroit to KC. Because they can easily get between Philly/ DC / NYC, they think all major cities are just as close by car/train.
And forget telling them how far things are apart in CA (LA to SF is not just a quick drive).
Back in my college days, living in TX, my friends and I considered a drive from Dallas to Austin (just shy of 200 miles) for an evening blues concert a totally normal thing to do.
You mean it's not a reasonable day trip?
There're a few American states where depending on where you start and where you are going, you can still be in the same state after a full day of just driving. I had that experience in Texas a number of times. A few times I drove from Dallas to El Paso and made it there in time for dinner.
And there's a joke that goes "I had a car like that once, too!"
To drive from the western UP (upper peninsula of Michigan) to Temperance, MI (just across the boarder from Toledo, OH takes about 9 hours. At least it used too. People drive much faster these days. The UP part of the trip doesn't have any freeway until you hit the Machinac Bridge at St. Ignace.
I lived in Fort Washington, PA, we have the ruins of a flour mill that was built in the late 1600's... Now 'THAT'S OLD', at least in the NE U.S., it is😅
There is nothing like watching you argue with yourself 🤣
You made some good points, but ultimately, you proved (and disproved) you point beautifully!
Great video as usual!
Glad to see you patting your cat Lawrence! Seems like you forget that. It's also okay to show your dog some affection! 😃
Your opening quote is, indeed, profound. Nicely done.
People like to bicycle across the US also, and I happen to live along one of the popular transnational bicycle routes, so it is common for me to see people on bicycles with saddle bags whenever there is nice weather.
I used to drive an average of 650 miles a day, 5 to 7 days a week. When I moved to being a regional driver, I could sometimes snap at the fact that I was only driving through the same 11 western states, as if I was fiending for some Chicago or Atlanta traffic. I also felt like I was losing my mind when I moved to New England from Oklahoma, and could be in an entirety different state in less than 30 minutes. But now I live in one of the younger homes in my neighborhood, as it's only about 200 years old. My mom's house was built in the 1850's, and my sister's in the 1700's. Appreciation for the differences of various places is a good thing.
Yeah, but New England is just terrible. A patchwork of laws where one thing that's legal in one state is illegal in the next. What a nightmare.
It's no more of a patchwork than any other collection of states in the US. Unless you're trying to transport large quantities of firearms or cigarettes across borders, hardly anyone is affected.
@@rucker69 so don't go there , I guess? I had a great time visiting and my friends who live there aren't worried about it because most American's don't leave their own town or city much less the entire state.
@@aazhiedid you really just say most Americans don't leave their town or state? That's an insane statement... I'm 40 years old, and I've never met anyone who didn't leave their city, and have only met a few people who didn't leave their state (and that was usually because they were incredibly poor, or they were in incredibly bad health).
Sometimes it's best to just not respond to people, in case you end up sounding just as silly as they did 😬...
As a kid/teen/young adult in the 80s and 90s a hundred years ago was the late 19th century. Steam trains were the norm for long distance travel and horses were still in common use, and electric light was the hot new thing while gas lamps were the established method of illumination. This was always my notion of “a hundred years ago,” basically the Victorian age but American.
Then, last summer, I read The Great Gatsby almost exactly a hundred years after it was set. I realized then that people a hundred years ago drove around in cars, listened to the radio, went to movies, talked on the telephone, and in general seemed a lot less hundred-years-ago than those Victorians of my youth. A hundred years ago now means the 1920s and all that entails and it won’t be long until a hundred years ago will mean WWII with its tanks and its bombs and its guns (in your head). It’s a moving target and I don’t think I am quite ready yo face up to that.
Actually, army tanks predate Gatsby, they were created for and used in in WW1 with first use in action being September 1916. First fixed-wing airline in the US also predates Gatsby, was in January 1914, the "St. Petersburg--Tampa Airboat Line". Went out of business after only 4 months.
And don't forget about jet airplanes and atomic bombs.
It's worth noting that in the 1920s most movies were still silent (the first talkie came out in 1927), and radio wasn't what it is today. Radio receivers were expensive back then and most of them were relatively hard to use until the 1930s. What was common back then was listening to records.
Great video. Thank you. Your success with this channel is well deserved.
Lawrence, I must ask, if you went and experienced Cahokia Mounds, did you come up into Alton, Illinois to see the Piasa Bird? It was a painting left by the Native Americans, on the bluff wall near a cave, just outside of Alton. We are lucky to have our own version and legend of a “Dragon” tied to this community. Look it up!
The two oldest continuously inhabited communities with definitive dates are the Oraibi Hopi village in Arizona and the Acoma pueblo in New Mexico which were both established around 13th century (800 years ago) While archeological digs suggest that Tucson is one of the oldest continuously inhabited communities in North America dating back almost 4,000 years but there's no definitive date there.
I live just a few minutes from the Casa Grande ruins which dates back to 1150 CE We do have old stuff here. Just not modern stuff. I think New York City or Providence may be as old as the late 1500's - early 1600's sometime But I'm fairly certain anything from that timeframe was demolished to build modern things throughout the ages.
Several years ago, there was a stoplight on Interstate 90 in Idaho, for some unknown reason. After it was taken down, I-90 became the longest continuous road in the US. I lived in Seattle for decades, where I-90 starts, so it was fun to hook up on it here in Ohio to drive to New Hampshire (well, we took it till I-495, bypassing Boston).
I recall stoplights along I90. It's because they hadn't built the section that went around the town where the stoplight was. Gilman Blvd in Issaquah WA was I90, once upon a time . . . And the back-up in North Bend. . .
It was so nice when 101 finally went around Sequim . . . .
The Idaho town was Wallace. The freeway there was completed in 1991.
@@kristend344 Gilman Blvd was i90? What a great piece of my history to learn: ) I live in Germany but I was just there.
@@LythaWausW Yes. Boehm's candy factory was right off I90 - now. . . it's the part of Gilman that doesn't get much traffic because it turns into a dead end.
This area of Massachusetts was settled by Puritans in the 1630s and is deeply tied in some unobvious ways to the English Revolution. In fact, after the Revolution was over and it was cool to be Puritan in England again there were calls for colonists to return to England and in fact I found that many of the owners of the original houses in my little town actually returned to England after Cromwell took over.
My ancestors founded the town of Sudbury. Being from the western part of the state, the towns surrounding Boston feel especially old to me.
Thank you for acknowledging Native American history on this continent.
Not really native but the ancestors of the Mongols (and other nearby tribes) that crossed the land that once was several hundred miles wide between Asia and what is now Alaska.
Agreed, @zippidyzay!
But you don't have the written history dating backto the Roman's or the rich history we are surrounded by in our ancient churches , cathedrals , homes , landscapes within ancient burial mounds , stone
circles etc you see it everywhere . I love the fact I can go visit a castle that's nearly a thousand yrs old . 😊
@@bobwallace9814By that logic, no non-Ethiopian is native to anywhere
@@bobwallace9814it was my understanding that the land bridge between Siberia and Alaska is unsubstantiated. Comparing Mongolian DNA with Navajo DNA would be interesting.
I love the fact you now said "Us Americans" and also congratulations. I know a few people who have gone through the process and they all know so much more US history than most born here
Oooh Laurence! Key West FL to Bellingham WA is longer than what you stated as the longest distance - 3539 miles!
And even longer to Blaine, WA.
When I lived in North Carolina I commuted 100 miles one way from Charlotte to Bellews Creek for work.
I rode my motorcycle which made it awesome, I got to ride 1000 miles a week on my bike AND get a full week of work in.
American here. Escape to the Country is one of my favorite shows. It still blows my mind when I would hear "This home is near the town pub, which has been open since 1631 and the weekly farmers market, which has happened every Wednesday since 1472."
Thanks Lawrence for the shout out to native peoples living across the Americas a long time ago and well before any Euro government took possession of it.
Rifle beats spear. Get over it.
@@md_vandenberg Not the discussion.
Do you mean the brutal Imperialistic Oppressor?
Not mentioning the people who were here before even the native Americans took possession of the land through brutal and barbaric force? Shocking.
It really is tiresome that people conveniently forget that before the modern age, every group of people took possession of the land from a people that were there before them, and they did it through the "might makes right" train of thought. This way of acquiring land still occurs in modern times throughout the world, but morally uppity people sometimes try to interfere and end up helping the wrong people keep/attain power.
So, good on Lawrence for mentioning the native tribes, but did he go back far enough for everyone to feel acknowledged?
@@elfdogre2181 you mean other indigenous peoples...
Thank you. It is important that every count is given a good pointer-count
The thing about the British yew trees is that people actually knew they were there and have always interacted with them. They are regarded in Celtic mythology as the gateway to the world of the dead. Most old churchyards have an old yew tree that usually predates the church showing how the new religion of Christianity supplanted older sacred sites. The American bristlecone pines just grew and were ignored until Edmund Schulman discovered their longevity in the 1950s.
America has plenty of historic trees that have been regarded as such for many generations, whether by Native Americans or by colonists and their descendants, even if not specifically the bristlecone pines.
I am in love with your 'counterpoint' sound effects! More sound effects....moar ...moar.
When we visited Ipswich, we foolishly thought that we could just drive to Scotland and visit🤣🤣🤣 because distance wise what’s a few hundred miles? yeah Britain’s roads don’t work like our roads. I think it took us three hours to get only 50 miles away. Every road is only two lanes and super narrow ithrough Village after a village.
This is the big difference which is key to note. My son has just repatriated after 3 years living in the USA. He is still finding it hard to get used to English roads. Remote Scottish & Welsh roads, and English roads around the edges (near the seaside) can be worse still. In some of those areas planning a journey you’d better expect an average speed of 30mph. Sometimes the roads are single track for traffic in BOTH directions! So if someone is coming in the opposite direction one of you has to find a passing place and pull in! But oh the joys! Roads like that are usually in the most stunning areas of beauty, like over mountains or through protected areas or remote areas where digging wider roads is not justified by the traffic. Or transporting road-building materials just has never been a priority. I love that sort of driving. There is often grass growing in the middle of the road. Quite different from what an American might expect when planning a trip though, by the sounds of it?
@@nigelwylie01 most of our narrow roads are ancient and not built for cars but we like to keep them as they are I guess we are used to driving in them .
Maddening to have a road six feet wide and a lorrie coming at you so you have to back up and cram yourself into a hedgerow if you can find one with a space to let the lorrie pass with an inch to spare. . British politeness disappears when Britons behind the wheel. In America, where pedestrians always have the right of way except on divided highways, can be very difficult. I was very nearly killed stepping off the curb outside a Sainsbury market when a car came hurtling by going at least 40 mph, maybe 50, and the driver gave me a rude blast on the horn for good measure, besides nearly running me down. Being American, I assumed he would at least slow down. No such thing. I decided the normally restrained British work ouit their frustrations behind the steering wheel. And as for roundaboiuts in Britain, those are positively suicidal. On the plus side, I do love the public footpaths that are everywhere in Britain.
I meant to say, being a pedestrian in Britain can e an exercise in staying alive when you are near automobile traffic. They don't stop for pedestrians, or even slow down, they drive like maniacs on the motorways, and they are rude while driving. But as soon as they get out of their vehicles, they revert to typical British politeness. Visiting Britain is fun, but Britain does have its quirks, and Americans should be especially careful on roads and in carparks. No such thing as a four-way stop in Britain, that's for sure.
Im glad you mentioned Cahokia. I dont hear much about it on tv on youtube and probably woudlnt even know if it wasnt just across the river.
This pithy quote is 100% accurate. I had a dear friend visit me from Kings Lynn in England, after ONE day driving my route to work of 135 miles round trip, he thought I was driving him to his death which was totally normal for me. The flip side is I can't comprehend seeing a building or structure past 2/3HUNDRED years old... Anything beyond that scrambles the brain. It's fascinating this dichotomy honestly.
At 9:30 you show a map of the longest distance between 2 cities in the continuous USA but some of the route cuts through Ontario Canada. Also depending on what you classify as a city the longest distances between 2 citys would be between Blaine WA and Key West FL which is 3560 miles
When you consider how young our country is, maybe it's not so strange that we tend to go on about our ancestry.
I have BritBox b/c I like some of the classic Brit comedies such as Allo Allo, Are You Being Served?, and Red Dwarf to name a few. I think you should do a video or a series of videos where you review some of your and or your wife's favorite shows that are on BritBox, I think a lot of your viewers would like something like that.
Disney got me thinking I'd go to Europe to explore medieval fairy tale forests until I realized they were all chopped down long ago. Then I went to Olympic National Forrest in Washington and realized that is a true magical ancient forest. Thank goodness somebody thought to preserve so much of this continent's natural beauty before chopping everything down and paving over it like they've done in Europe.
Yes! I was so so sad when I realized so much of the (I imagined) magical forests in Europe were chopped down ages ago : '(. And also yes, as a westcoaster, I am so thankful for the big swaths of protected natural land here. There's nothing like standing deep in a grove of giant redwoods in California, and some of the most stunning nature I've ever seen were sky-high forests filled with waterfalls in the Pacific Northwest 😍🌳🌳🌲🌴
I'm sure it was more luck than judgement that these forests were saved. With Europe being made up of lots of small countries it was inevitable that population growth would lead to deforestation, to provide extra agricultural and housing land.
No they weren’t, there’s Sherwood Forest, the New Forest and the Forest of Dean here in UK, there’s the Ardennes in Belgium and the Black Forest in Germany, and that’s just the ones I know about
There's still a bit of Norway left that's not yet paved over - better hurry, though, if you want to check it out before it's all one flat parking lot!
@@pH7oslo Lol. I actually have been considering moving to Europe and looking at Norway and Sweden for that very reason. Though I'm leaning toward Germany as possibly a slightly easier transition for and American.
Been to West Quoddy Head many times - That's the name of the lighthouse on the eastern-most point in the States. The little town nearby is Lubec. It's a beautiful spot.
The Senate Chamber joke took me out 😭😭🤣
That was a good one.😂
Agreed! 😀
He's an American citizen now and it shows. 😂
Grimsby UK is also home to Alexandra Dock and has an interesting history. Originally it was served by a massive railway yard along with timber depots and sawmills. As shipping changed, cranes advanced and containerization, most of the historic details are gone. Now the Alexandra Dock serves the automotive transport industry and the rail sidings and timber depots are now massive car parks for new automobiles.
Grimsby also was the birthplace of a musician and composer who wrote much of the most successful and highest selling record of all time.
Before I retired a few years ago, my commute to work and home was about the same distance as going from the center of London to the center of Sheffield. Drove through 3 counties and from Missouri to Kansas and back. Never thought much of it being that far.
That's crazy I live in buffalo,ny and drove 312 miles to get our new puppies not only did it take 5 hour's but we didn't even get to the bottom of New York state.
NY state is huge
Truth!! And I've never been to NYC lol
Favorite London filmed series has to be New Tricks. Especially the years John Halford was there. Brian, Jack, and Gerry Standing with Sandra Pullman, what a great cast for a great show. I hope your promo for britbox is still good, I really miss my British TV that we used to get for free on PBS back in Oregon. I have decided to subscribe.
Looks like you're having a lot of fun with all these videos. Keep it up.
You are amazing. Thank you for pointing out some things that we have come to just accept as normal, when in fact they are extraordinary!
Hi Lawrence, the M1 has come a long way in the last decade, now the A1M runs from Leeds to Newcastle and Durham. I live in Leeds and have a holiday home in Durham and I can complete the journey in less tan 1.5 hrs (if I put my foot down!). It's great, no more roundabouts lol x
A fair number of years ago, I used to live in Eastern Utah. And from the small cluster of homes that was called Lawrence, it was about 40 miles to the nearest Walmart, in the next county. But we never thought, " it's 40 miles to we always converted the miles into the amount of time it took to travel there. So it took us 45 minutes to drive there from our small ranch. And if it was snowing, it might take a bit longer.
I still do this now in North Carolina. So if I need to drive to Asheville for an appointment I know it's going to take me about an hour and 15mins to get there. 😮 Or in my case, the drive to Atlanta, GA, is about 2 hours. 😊
Here's one, we call the the rolling basket you put stuff in while shopping a shopping cart, and in the UK, it's called........?
In britain we have listed buildings, churches,cathedrals,town halls,houses,etc,which for historical reasons, can't be demolished...That's why the countries towns and cities ain't full of modern,indistinguishable metal and glass boxes.
It's also partially because the original city planning was absolute shit though, to be fair
The same, of course, exists in the US. I happen to live in a neighborhood that is on the National Historic Register. Alterations to homes, including mine, cannot really happen. Updates must be historically accurate. This isn’t all that unusual. You clearly are uninformed.
my brother lives in a house in the US that is eligible for such a listing. it was built in 1910
@@Kibannn City planning wasn't really a thing; the layout of roads was through necessity and convenience *for the time*. Like Broadway in Manhattan which doesn't follow the usual block layout because it was the path used to drive cattle. My home city still has roads called Hound's Gate, Goose Gate, Bridlesmith Gate, Whitefriar's Lane, etc. which made perfect sense when the (then) town revolved around the castle and the market place.
@@Kibannn There were no cars etc to worry about when originally planning the cities and towns, just horses and carts.
What a fun channel!
Oooooo we love Lawrence...
When I found out that it took the Top Gear team 35+ hours to drive from London to one of the Scottish isles, I couldn't believe it. Then someone reminded me they had to take a ferry or two
From the southeastern most point (near Toledo, OH) in Michigan’s Lower Peninsula to the westernmost point of Ironwood, in the Upper Peninsula is about a 630-mile trip. It is 616 miles from Ironwood to St. Louis, Missouri.
As a BritBox fan and consumer of British crime dramas I think it would be compelling to discuss the differences in the response to emergency services - both in traffic and in person. Thoughts?
Let's not, EMS restrictions are extremely sad. Let's just keep it happy .
Try some true crime stories to find out. My first trip to the UK started in my friend's home town. She didn't bother telling me she'd stolen 50K from her gangster boyfriend. He beat the shit out of her infront of 100 people in a night club where he worked. I was screaming "CALL THE POLICE' when they arrived she was bloody, clothes torn , beaten and dirty from being thrown in the street and dragged.
The police advised we go home and stay away from the city center! They didn't even speak to anyone including her attacker, whom they new by name. Happy Holidays!!!
Let's talk about the sirens.
I think this is a great idea. I, too, subscribe to BritBox.
@@fowleheidi482 You followed up the police I take it? You assume a lot. How do you know the police didn't question him or investigate this crime later?
reminds me of a great line i heard years ago to put distance into perspective......."you wouldn't want to be dragged that far by your knackers"
I've driven more than 100 miles one way for a day trip. And I didn't even leave the state I'm currently residing in.
That's how it is in Florida. The Panhandle is quite long. It's nothing compared to a Pensacola to Key West drive, which is one of the longest single state drives one can make.
I once drove through 5 countries in Europe in one day on one tank of gas (thanks Prius). I couldn't believe it. That last bit was on a ferry to England but we still had gas in the tank.
Bangor's airport is a trip when you're used to O'Hare. Love the hell out of the town though. Literally walking through a King novel.
I love the history of England
Dry British humor is the best!
Just started watching this channel and I'm hooked.
When I was in Greece we went to the Acropolis.
It blew my mind that we were walking on a structure that was 3000 years old!!!
It was hard to wrap your head around it.
Ditto. Also, I lived in Germany in a town with a church some 900-years old. That took over 250-years to build. It’s mind blowing for an American.
@@k.chriscaldwell4141I’m a bit of a history buff but as an American I can safely say I’m jealous of European history buffs I couldn’t even begin to count of all the places and sites I’d love to visit
@@zacharymacadam7416 Of all my travels in Europe, the remnants of an aqueduct just outside Rome is the most memorable. I almost missed my train to Florence because I stood so long admiring it.
I mean, you see and read of the aqueducts in textbooks, but to stand before one?! The Colosseum is, sorry to say, just a building. An aqueduct, on the other hand, is piece of civilization. I guess it's the practical in me.
There is a state park in the Colorado Springs area (don't recall which town) with petrified trees. They have a sign indicating that the pebbles we were walking on were over a trillion years old. They were pretty pink stones.
The other point about distance is that USA had wide open spaces to build straight open roads. Road in UK were bendy sheep trails that were paved after. Or at least, if it's similar to Ireland. The word bóthar in irish means the cow's way, so it was wherever they walked from A to B. Makes for some difficult driving sometimes, especially with the weather.
Michigan as a state has more coast line than the ENTIRE east coast of the US. Any point in Michigan, you are no less than 5 miles from any body of water.
Second longest coastline behind Alaska.
Michigan is a beautiful state!
I remember looking up what state had the most lighthouses, it was Michigan.
There is a pub in Athlone that is 900 years old. Not much of it is original now but there has been a pub on that spot since before there was bridge across the Shannon there.