My wife and I are planning a trip to New York City and, as has become customary before every vacation we book, I thought it a good opportunity to dig up some fun facts about the Big Apple. 1. New York is a city of over eight million people, covering 301 square miles. 2. The area was first sighted almost 500 years ago by Giovanni da Verrazano. The Dutch first sent fur traders in 1621, but they lost the colony they dubbed New Amsterdam to the English in 1664. The settlement was re-christened New York, and the name stuck despite the English losing the colony in 1783 at the end of the Revolutionary War. 3. Manhattan was a forested land populated by Alngonquian-speaking Natives when the Dutch West India Company established a fur-trading post called New Amsterdam in 1625. In 1898, Manhattan was joined with the four outer boroughs to form the world's second-largest city. 4. From 1800 to 1900, the population in New York City swelled from almost 80,000 to 3 million people. New Yor...

If you had the opportunity to meet anyone -- dead or alive, past or present -- who would that person be? I would probably pick a historic figure like George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, or Abraham Lincoln. I think it would be fascinating to ask the individual what it was like to live in his day, through events that forever changed the course of history, such as The American Revolution and Civil War. Even better would be the ability to go back in time to Colonial America or the mid-19th century (Back to the Future, anyone?) and spend a day walking the streets and chatting with people from those eras. But that's just my my nerdy pick. I eat, sleep, and drink history, so there's no way I'd pass up the opportunity to meet a Founding Father or Honest Abe himself, for example. At least there's always a slim possibility you could still meet a living person. What's your pick? Who would you opt to meet? For prior entries, please click here:  How...