Welcome back to another installment of the Watercooler, RedState’s daily Open Thread! Today, we’ve got…

Travels

This week, we’re starting a new Recurring Feature on the Watercooler, one I hope the rest of the team and the readership will join in on. “Travels” is intended to highlight some of the more odd, quirky, out-of-the-way or less-well-known museums, historic sites and other attractions that could be called “hidden gems” I’ve visited over the years when out on the open road.

Arabia Steamboat Museum, Kansas City, Missouri – Devoted to an unlikely find, a steamboat wreck buried under a cornfield since 1856–appropriately, the museum is in the old City Market area, within easy walking distance of the dock where the steamer made her last port call. The Arabia lost none of her passengers or crew other than a mule, but the wreck became a perfect “time capsule” for her 200 tons of mercantile goods until its discovery in 1988. Many of these artifacts are exhibited in a mercantile store-inspired display, and a personal highlight for me was that the preservation lab is on-site so you can actually watch the process of protecting these treasures of a bygone era for future generations. I was here in 2002 on my way to Wichita for the B-52 50th Birthday party, and it’s only gotten better since, including feature in both US News & World Report and Don Wildmon’s “Mysteries at the Museum” on Travel Channel.

Contact Info: 400 Grand Boulevard, Kansas City, MO 64106. Telephone 816-471-1856; website http://www.1856.com.

Audience Participation Encouraged–please don’t hesitate to share the various out-of-the-way interesting sites you’ve found over the years.

This Week In History

• Sunday, 1/21: First Battle of Sabine Pass, 1863; Alger Hiss convicted, 1950; Siege of Khe Sanh begins, 1968; Carter pardons draft-dodgers, 1977
• Monday, 1/22: Tory outlaw Claudius Smith hanged, 1779; Columbia Phonograph [aka Columbia Records] formed, 1889; 747 enters revenue service, 1970; Roe v. Wade, 1973
• Tuesday, 1/23: Georgetown University founded, 1789; Marias Massacre, 1870; first Frisbees, 1957; 24th Amendment bans poll taxes, 1964
• Wednesday, 1/24: Gold found in California, 1848; first canned beer, 1935; third-to-last WWII Japanese holdout Shoichi Yokoi captured, 1972; Apple Macintosh released, 1984
• Thursday, 1/25: Largest confrontation of Shays’s Rebellion, 1787; first transcon phone service, 1915; Battle of the Bulge ends, 1945; first live-TV Presidential press conference, 1961
• Friday, 1/26: Tennessee enacts first alcohol prohibition, 18938; First Battle of Seattle, 1856;  Burnside relived and Hooker takes command, 1863; first WWII US forces reach Europe, 1942
• Saturday, 1/27: Knox’s artillery reaches Cambridge, 1776; Congress approves Indian Territory, 1825; first American bombing raid on Germany, 1943; Apollo1 fire, 1967

Today’s Birthdays: Actor Ernest Borgnine, 1917 (Happy Birthday, McHale!); evangelist Oral Roberts, 1918; singers Ray Stevens, 1939, Neil Diamond, 1941 and Warren Zevon, 1947; comedian Yakov Smirnoff (“America, votta country!”), 1951.

In Memoriam: Sir Winston Churchill, today in 1965–fifty years to the day after his father Lord Randolph Churchill.

Holidays Around the World: It’s Unification Day in Romania.

This Week In History is compiled with assistance from History.com and Wikipedia. Something interesting not listed here? Please share in the Comments section–this is an Audience Participation Encouraged featurette.

Gratuitous Gun Giveaways

• *American Handgunner magazine, for a Les Baer Premier II longslide 1911 or SCCY CPX-3 .380 pistol package: http://americanhandgunner.com/giveaway/
• *Guns Magazine, for a Ruger Mk IV scoped .22 target pistol, Devil Dog Arms RIS-15 AR-pattern rifle or Auto-Ordnance 1911BKOW WWII-style .45 pistol package: http://gunsmagazine.com/giveaway/
• Davidson’s Gallery of Guns, for an ATI replica WWII MP40 or 9mm AR15 pistol: https://ggg.galleryofguns.com/Aero Precision, for a custom AR15: http://gvwy.io/kcq7rcw
• GrabAGun, for a Springfield TRP Operator 10mm 1911 pistol: http://grabagun.com/giveaway
• Springfield Armory, for a 911 .380 pocket-pistol, or a Saint 5.56mm AR15 pistol and two XD-S Mod.2 compact .45s: http://www.springfield-armory.com/resources/giveaways/

*Note: FMG Publishing giveaways require you to provide an FFL dealer’s info at entry. Aero Precision and Primary Arms giveaways give me one entry each per person who uses my referral link.

Quote of the Day

If you would persuade, you must appeal to interest rather than intellect.–Benjamin Franklin

As always, the Watercooler is an Open Thread. And as so eloquently coined by ntrepid, “Thanks for the click! Your effort helps fund future posts of this nature.”

“It is dangerous to be right in matters on which the established authorities are wrong.”–Voltaire

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