washington thought and what type of man he was, i became fascinated about all the stories that surrounded him, all the legends. at the washington paper we get so many queries from the people and the general public. many of them are interesting and serious queries about what washington did or who he was but we get the occasional whacky email or whacky phone call or piece of correspondence that asks about whether for example, somebody asked me did washington really die on an engineering expedition in russia. or another question, did washington really say this? did washington really say that? i began to wonder where does all this stuff come from? where this all this folk-lore and legends originated and i thought it would be fun to take a somewhat lighthearted look at the washington legends. host: uh-huh. did you have a particular goal in mind in addition to simply letting your readers how widespread these stories were? was there a specific goal that you wanted the reader to