Kansas City, spread over an area of 827 square kilometers, is the largest city in the US state of Missouri. About 15 km 2 of this, however, is occupied by water bodies. The city lies in a very undulating terrain, surrounded by limestone to the north and bedrock to the south. Currently, around 448 thousand inhabitants live here.
The first European explorer of the area was Étienne de Veniard – Sieur de Bourgmont. It was he who managed to better explore the lower reaches of the Missouri River. However, he was attacked for his harsh treatment of the native Indians. During the attack on Fort Detroit, he abandoned his post as commander of the fort and thus evaded the French authorities. Bourgmont then lived with his wife in a Missouri Indian village about 140 km to the east, near Brunswick, and illegally traded furs. Kansas City was founded in 1838 at the confluence of the Missouri and Kansas rivers. However, it was incorporated into the state only in 1850.
It is also called the “City of Fountains” because there are around two hundred of them in the city. You can only find more of them in Rome, Italy. The city is known primarily for its popular jazz and blues music style, but also for its specific cuisine. In the city center there are apartments, offices, a swimming pool, a theater and a newly created shopping and entertainment center. The urban core is made up of a number of urban neighborhoods, including historic ones such as Westport, Ivanhoe, Hyde Park, Squire Park, Crossroads Arts District, 18th and Vine Historic District, Pendleton Heights, Quility Hill, West Bottoms, and River Market.
Kansas City’s most prominent landmarks include the iconic Liberty Memorial, the KCTV-TV Tower, the Municipal Auditorium, the Bartle Hall Convention Center, the Irish Museum and Cultural Center, the American Jazz Museum, and the JC Nichols Memorial Fountain. You will also find a number of cultural facilities, museums, galleries and sports fields.
George Washington Carver National Monument
According to iamaccepted, George Washington Carver was born in 1864 and was an African-American botanist who worked as a farmer in the southern United States. He took care of former black slaves and taught them to farm the land and also taught them self-sufficiency. He is best known himself for inventing more than 325 uses for hazelnuts and other plants. His discoveries helped increase the profitability of farming.
George was born a slave in Marion Township, Diamond Grove, Missouri. It was owned by German immigrant Moses Carver, who bought George’s mother Maria from William P. McGinnis on October 9, 1855 for just $7. The identity of George’s father is unknown, it is said that he was a slave from a neighboring farm who died shortly after George’s birth. George then had three more sisters and one brother, but they all died prematurely. When George was still a small child, he and his mother were kidnapped by Confederate night raiders and sold to Arkansas. It was nothing special at the time.
However, the real owner, Moses Carver, hired a man to find them. However, only George managed to track him down, he did not find his mother – she either died or was taken by soldiers to the north of the country. George himself was found at the last moment, he was on the verge of death, having contracted whooping cough. For having Gorge returned to him, Carver rewarded his rescuer with his best mare, who later became the mother of winning racehorses. However, George was constantly struggling with health problems, having respiratory attacks and having a weakened immune system. Due to this indisposition, he could not do manual work, so he spent his time wandering around the fields and observing various types of wild plants. Gradually, he managed to acquire so much knowledge that the neighbors began to call him the “plant doctor”.
When he was sent to a neighbor one day to help him plant plants, he saw something in his house that changed his life. In the kitchen, he saw beautiful pictures of flowers on the walls, and from that moment it was clear to him that he wanted to be an artist and a botanist at the same time. Once slavery was abolished, Moses Carver and his wife adopted George and his brother Jim as their own sons. They taught them to read and write and encouraged them in their hobbies and intellectual abilities. Blacks were not allowed to attend school in Diamond Grove, a school for them had been set up about ten miles south of the town of Neoshe, so he decided to go there. He then attended high school in Fort Scott, Kansas. After witnessing a black man being beaten to death by a group of whites, George left Fort Scott. He eventually graduated from high school in Minneapolis, Kansas.
Eventually, however, he returned to botany, and in 1903 George Washington Carver began researching peanuts at Alabama’s Tuskeegee Institute and came up with more than 300 uses for them, including shaving cream and shoe polish. To this day, he is therefore considered the “father of peanuts” and has also received several patents for the production of cosmetics. According to historians, he is said to have discovered more than three hundred different uses for peanuts and hundreds of uses for soybeans, pecans, and sweet potatoes. He adhered to the motto: “When you do ordinary things in an extraordinary way, you attract the attention of the whole world”. And he really succeeded. Today, visitors can visit the place of his childhood in Missouri and the house in which young George lived together with Moses Carver’s family. This site is considered a National Monument and is under the auspices of the National Park Service.
