(12-08-2017 10:30 PM)georgewebb Wrote:  

(12-08-2017 12:46 PM)I45owl Wrote:  TDIL that Jean Lafitte was not the same person as Lafayette. I never really thought much about the two at the same time, but I thought it was just an "alternate" pronunciation... I heard about Lafitte when I was pretty young, and Lafayette much later in adulthood, but somehow conflated the two and thought Lafayette's main career was as a ship captain.

Ack!
(As a New Orleanian and history buff, I learned about both the Marquis de Lafayette and the buccaneer Jean Lafitte as a youngster. Such completely different characters! Lafayette was a national hero with places named after him all over the U.S., while Lafitte was very much a regional hero, and to a large extent a creature of legend. Interestingly, an American flag flies perpetually over Lafayette's grave in Paris.)

Sadly, my interest in Lafitte was probably stoked by one or two trips to Lafitte's restaurant in Downtown Denver as a child. To my recollection, that was regarded as the best restaurant in the city at that time...