Today I learned of an interesting person in history whose name was William Lewis Herndon. He lived from 1813 to 1857 to the age of 44.

He was in the U.S. Navy, a captain, and an explorer. In fact, while I was watching History's Mysteries today @ 1pm on the History Channel. The program told about the sinking of a ship that contained millions of dollars worth of gold from the gold rush in California. It went down in a hurricane in 1857.

Herndon was more than just a heroic captain that fought to keep his ship afloat in perilious conditions. He was an author. A few years before his death he explored along the Amazon River. His report which was 414 pages long then became a book. This book heightened the excitement of those who were able to get access to it. In fact, according to the history program Mark Twain read the book, Exploration of the Valley of the Amazon, became so inspired that he wrote Tom Sawyer.

You could say, Herndon's book was a best seller of his time. It's still on sale today. What a great way to get your hands on first-hand history. As you read through it you may even pretend you were from that time period. It might put history into an even better perspective.

Like I said earlier, Herndon was also involved in another interesting occurrence in history, the sinking of the Central America in 1857. He was the captain of the Central America ship. The wrecked ship was recently discovered with all of its huge amounts of gold on board. The documentary said it was 20% of the amount of gold that is in America!!

Oh, BTW, if you personally know of a good book about the sinking of the Central America, please comment to let me know.