ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY.

On this day in 1812, the first steamboat to ply the Ohio and Mississippi arrived in New Orleans, which was named in its honor. The craft had left Pittsburgh with a great fanfare two and a half months earlier, but naysayers insisted that, though it could float downstream, the thing could never make it upstream against the powerful currents. A crowd is still standing on the Mon Wharf in Pittsburgh waiting for the boat to come back and prove the naysayers wrong.