This Day in History December 11, 1816

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It was on this date in 1816, that Indiana became the eighteenth state admitted into the Union.  Its name means "Indian Land," and it was incorporated in 1800.  It is estimated that the earliest peoples that lived there were around 800 B.C.--the Paleo Indians.  The Indians were removed from this area during the 1830's due to the Indian Removal Act.  The Indy500 is probably what Indiana is best known for.

For more information:
http://famousdaily.com/history/indiana-19th-state.html
http://www.enchantedlearning.com/usa/states/indiana/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indiana

This Day in History November 21, 1789

By Alexrk2 (Own work) [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html) or CC-BY-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

North Carolina was one of the original thirteen colonies, but it was number twelve to ratify the constitution. It was on this date in 1789, that it became the twelfth state to enter the union.  Interestingly enough, North Carolina actually was the site of two colonies twenty years before Jamestown, Virginia (even though they survived only briefly).  It did take two sessions of meeting after the Revolutionary War to ratify the constitution.  They did not do things quickly because they had some issues and concerns over too much power from the federal government.

For more information, please check out:

http://www.northcarolinahistory.org/encyclopedia/50/entry

http://www.secretary.state.nc.us/kidspg/history.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_North_Carolina

http://famousdaily.com/history/north-carolina-12th-us-state.html

This Day in History December 29, 1845

Well, this one is kind of interesting for me.  Since I lived, worked, and was a resident of Texas for a number of years, it was neat to discover that on this date in1845, Texas became the 28th state.  I did not know until I lived in Texas that it was the only state that actually was its own country--the Republic of Texas.  Then a lot of things made sense.  I understood why Texas did things so differently from other parts of the country!

It should come as no surprise that this move by President Polk angered Mexico.  And they were further angered when the Rio Grande was announced as the boundary.  It did require some military influence to "settle" the issue.  And is wasn't too many years later the Civil War broke out with Texas as a slave state.

For those of you who would like more information, please check out these links:
http://www.texasalmanac.com/topics/history/timeline/annexation-and-statehood
https://www.tsl.state.tx.us/ref/abouttx/annexation/index.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_Annexation
http://timelines.com/1845/12/29/texas-is-the-28th-state-admitted-to-the-union