1671? How long ago was that?

Hi kids!

Here's a picture of the front of the town hall in Vinyard Haven.
Vinyard Haven is one of the towns on The island of Martha's Vinyard.
If you look close you can see the numbers 1 6 7 1. That's the year the
town was started. Wow! How long ago was that? How should you know?
You're first graders. You can't even count that high let alone do
subtraction! Get the teacher to figure it out for you. (Hint: it's
338 years) the people of the town take a certain pride in having such
a long history. It makes them want to preserve their town kinda like
it was, to honor their history. The reason they could start their
town back then was because the settlers were REAL careful to be
friendly with the native Americans. Because in those days if the
native Americans didn't want you around they would tell you to leave.
They did that a lot to European settlers who weren't careful to be
REAL nice. That's why it was 179 years between Columbus finding
America and these settlers starting their town. European settlers are
slow learners, it seems.

Ok, kids. Try hard in school. Be REAL nice to the teacher and try not
to be slow learners!