The Russians Beat Trump To The Gulf Of America By 166 Years

- jim Young

“America, where are you now?

Don't you care about your sons and daughters?

Don't you know we need you now?

We can't fight alone against the monster.” - Jerry Edmonton & John Kay

Pierre Berton, as many of you may recall, was a Canadian historian, writer, journalist, broadcaster, panelist on the long running TV Show “Front Page Challenge” and of course a proud, very proud Canadian. 

Although I don’t recall all of the minor details, I once heard the following story about Berton. Someone (I don’t even recall if it was a celebrity or an admirer) once asked Pierre Berton if he was an American. “Yes,” Pierre Berton replied proudly, “I’m a North American.” He then went on to clarify, “I’m a Canadian.”

U.S. President Donald Trump seems to mistakenly think that the United States somehow has a monopoly on the word “America”.

Trump also mistakenly thinks that renaming the “Gulf Of Mexico” as the “Gulf Of America” is somehow going to make people think that the “Gulf Of Mexico” automatically becomes property of the United States. The name change itself isn’t even recognized in most of the world.

Due to Trump’s past proven ignorance of basic geography it’s hard to know whether or not he just doesn’t know any better or it’s just part of his disrespectful nature to assume that the word “America” automatically applies to the United States.

The “United States of America” should more accurately be named the “United States Of Some Of The Americas”.

First of all there is “North America”. And the United States doesn’t even cover the largest area of THAT! Canada covers the largest single area of North America and along with Mexico and Central America they make up almost 60% of the continent.

In addition to North America, there’s South America, Central America, Middle America and Latin America which are sometimes collectively referred to as Pan America.

The first known use of the name “America” was assigned to “South America” in 1507 in honour of the Italian explorer Amerigo Vespucci.

In all the inaccurate depictions of Columbus “discovering” America that the United States continues to perpetuate, Christopher Columbus himself never even heard of the “Americas”.

And long before the Trump family had left Germany for one of those “Americas”, the Russians were naming one of their bays the “Gulf Of America”. I guess, like Donald Trump, they too thought it “had a nice ring to it” almost 100 years before Donald Trump was even born. 

Known today as Nakhodka Bay or Nakhodka Gulf, but still historically referred to as the “Gulf Of America” this body of water opens to the Sea of Japan on the eastern coast of Russia.

Seeking shelter from a storm, Governor-General Nikolay Muravyov-Amursky of Eastern Siberia led his warship “Amerika” into the bay on June 17, 1859. During his stay he had a map drawn up and named the overall bay the “Gulf Of America” after his ship.

In the early 1900s a small village was established there that was named “Amerikanka” however many arrivals were so repulsed by the association of the name “America” with the United States that they refused to live there.

Both the village and the gulf were renamed but just as the “Gulf Of America” in the western world will remain known as the “Gulf Of Mexico” for most people for centuries to come, so too will the “Nakhodka Bay” in Russia continue to be known as the (first and only REAL) “Gulf Of America”.

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