I was sitting in Carl's Chop House (the best steakhouse EVER in Detroit) and saw the Hail Mary over my wife's shoulder on the TV over the bar and nearly choked on my pickled herring.

On June 13, 1777, a 19-year-old French teenager landed on a beach in South Carolina, uninvited, to fight in someone else's war. He would become one of the most important men in American history. The Marquis de Lafayette was one of the richest young aristocrats in France. He had a beautiful wife, a fortune, and zero reason to risk any of it. But he believed in the American cause so fiercely that when the French king forbade him from going, Lafayette bought his own ship and sailed anyway. He literally went AWOL from a life of luxury to bleed for a country that didn't exist yet. Congress was annoyed at first. Another foreign officer looking for a paycheck? Then Lafayette offered to serve for free and pay his own way. That got their attention. He met Washington and the two formed one of the great father-son bonds in American history. Washington had no biological children. Lafayette named his only son George Washington Lafayette. He took a bullet in the leg at Brandywine and kept rallying the retreat. He was instrumental at Yorktown, the battle that won the war. He went home a hero on two continents. A foreign teenager believed in America before America did. 249 years ago today.

This is the kind of detective work that I find interesting.