Season 22, Day 7 - "Reverse Spam"

It's John week, and today's quiz is inspired by John Smith.

John Smith

John Smith was an English explorer who was an early leader of the colony at Jamestown, Virginia (the first permanent English settlement in North America). Smith set off to sea at age 16 and became a mercenary, at first joining the cause of Dutch independence from King Philip II of Spain. While fighting for the Holy Roman Empire against the Ottoman Turks in Hungary, he was promoted to the rank of captain, which he would wear with pride for the rest of his life. In 1607 (the year Jamestown was established), Smith was captured by Native Americans while exploring the Chicahominy River and taken to Chief Powhatan. According to Smith, he was about to be killed when he was rescued by Powhatan’s young daughter, Pocahontas. However, since Smith’s is the only account of this event, some have doubted the story’s veracity (which he told in his 1624 book The Generall Historie of Virginia, New-England, and the Summer Isles). In 1608, Smith led an exploration of the Chesapeake Bay and its tributaries, becoming the first English explorer to map the area. The following year, Smith was injured by an accidental gunpowder explosion and forced to give up his leadership position in the colony and return to England. He came back to America in 1614 and made the first English maps of the region of New England (a name Smith himself coined). He again ended up back in England after being captured by pirates in 1615, where he lived out the rest of his days, but his books and maps were instrumental in advocating for English colonization of the New World. Smith is played by Colin Farrell in the 2005 Terrence Malick film The New World and voiced by Mel Gibson in the 1995 Disney movie Pocahontas.