- Seattle Neighborhoods: Green Lake — Thumbnail History (historylink.org)
In September 1855, surveyor David Phillips hacked his way through bushes to the muddy banks of a small lake north of Seattle’s Lake Union, and found a tired, postglacial lake. His team entered the name Green Lake into their field logs, which eventually reached their employer, the Surveyor General of the United States. Their late summer visit coincided with the appearance of seasonal algae blooms and may explain the name they entered on the survey map. Area visitors have been talking about the foul smelling green stuff for the past 80 years.
- Martin Van Buren (Wikipedia)
Martin Van Buren (/væn ˈbjʊərən/ van BURE-ən; Dutch: Maarten van Buren [ˈmaːrtə(ɱ) vɑm ˈbyːrə(n)]; December 5, 1782 – July 24, 1862) was the eighth president of the United States, serving from 1837 to 1841. A primary founder of the Democratic Party, he served as New York’s attorney general and U.S. senator, then briefly as the ninth governor of New York before joining Andrew Jackson’s administration as the tenth United States secretary of state, minister to Great Britain, and ultimately the eighth vice president from 1833 to 1837, after being elected on Jackson’s ticket in 1832. Van Buren won the presidency in 1836 against divided Whig opponents. Van Buren lost re-election in 1840, and failed to win the Democratic nomination in 1844. Later in his life, Van Buren emerged as an elder statesman and an anti-slavery leader who led the Free Soil Party ticket in the 1848 presidential election.