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At Lyndon Johnson’s request, President John Kennedy named John Connally Secretary of the Navy in 1961. Connally resigned eleven months later to run for the Texas governorship. Connally fought hard to protect the Navy’s role in the national space program, having vigorously opposed assigning most space research to the United States Air Force. He managed one of the largest employers in the world. The Navy had an annual budget of $14 billion, and had more than 600,000 in uniform and 650,000 civilian … [Read more...] about Texas History – Do You Know Who Was the First Texan Appointed Secretary to the Navy?

Alonso Alvarez de Pineda was the Spanish explorer who first mapped the coastline of Texas. Alvarez de Pineda left Jamaica in early 1519 and sailed west to follow the northern coastline of the Gulf. He sailed west from the Florida Keys to hug the Gulf Coast. The expedition established the remainder of the boundaries of the Gulf of Mexico, while disproving the idea of sea passage to Asia and verifying that Florida was a peninsula instead of an island. His map is the first known document of Texas … [Read more...] about Texas History – Do You Know the Spanish Explorer Who Mapped the Coastline of Texas?

Only two (2) of the signers of the Texas Declaration of Independence were Native Texans - Jose Antonio Navarro and Jose Francisco Ruiz. Jose Antonio Navarro was an early proponent of Texas independence. He took part in the 1812-1813 Magee, Gutierrez and Toledo resistance movements and later served as leader in the Texas Revolution. Jose Francisco Ruiz allied himself with the Texas Revolution in 1835 and traveled to Washington-on-the-Brazos in late February 1836 as a delegate to the Convention of … [Read more...] about Texas History – Do You Know How Many of the 61 Signers of the Texas Declaration of Independence Were Native Texans?