Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Miscellaneous/2015 August 9

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August 9

Source sought for fact in Duff Green bio

On your page about Duff Green, there is this line:

After the close of the war with Mexico, Green was sent to that country in 1849 by President Taylor to negotiate concerning the moneys which, by the treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, the United States had agreed to pay; and he saved his country a considerable sum by arranging for payment in exchange instead of in specie.

I cannot find any other reference anywhere that Green did any of this. Can you provide a source? Thanks. Hezekiah-S (talk) 00:21, 9 August 2015 (UTC)

It's directly copied from the 11th edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica. See the link at the bottom of the article. Rojomoke (talk) 04:18, 9 August 2015 (UTC)

Good catch, maybe superficially true but misleading.

the U.S. government appointed Green an official agent for making arrangements with Mexico for the payment of the indemnity. The Mexican government, in turn, hired his son Benjamin for the same purpose. The Greens attempted to arrange a deal whereby the U.S. government would accept Mexican bills of exchange, instead of sending specie...just when the bills of exchange were being forwarded to the Mexican minister in Washington, the president died. The new president, Millard Fillmore, and his new secretary of state, Daniel Webster, disavowed the payment plan...senator Thomas Bayly bitterly attacked the Greens for their role in the entire affair...Congress threatened the Greens with prosecution under the Logan Act...In the end, Mexico itself requested that the indemnity be paid by agents other than the Greens...

Belko, W. S. (2006). The invincible Duff Green: Whig of the West. pp. 413-4.—eric 05:15, 9 August 2015 (UTC)

• This has been up long enough to bring up the obvious; Duff Green is people-beer. It's people! μηδείς (talk) 18:04, 11 August 2015 (UTC)

Circle next to Stonehenge on Aerial Views.

What is the ringlike structure at 120 to 150m distance from the centre of the Stonehenge circle, in the direction of approx 100deg (i.e. slightly "below" due east)? It is clearly visible on Google and Bing Maps, immediately south of the road running roughly west to east, and yields the coordinate of 51.178659, -1.823641 Christom (talk) 16:01, 9 August 2015 (UTC)

It's a bell barrow or bowl barrow, listed as 'Amesbury 11' (as it is the 11th they numbered around Amesbury). You can see it on Google Streetview here and more images here. Nanonic (talk) 16:24, 9 August 2015 (UTC)

Some more information about it at Pastscape. DuncanHill (talk) 17:54, 9 August 2015 (UTC)