No, I'm not talking about making points in a game, or "making it" (sexually) with someone. It's the "twenty of something" score in honor of today's date.

Double twenty, as in twenty-twenty, and it says you can see pretty well. Actually, better than "pretty well."

Andrew Jackson's portrait adorns the twenty dollar bill. Known as "Old Hickory" he was elected president in 1828, succeeding John Quincy Adams, the first son of a former president to gain the office for himself. (Except John Quincy served only one term.)

Jackson, if I remember right, oversaw the "Trail of Tears," the term for the "resettlement" of the Cherokees from Georgia to the Oklahoma territory, where they were supposed to have title to the lands "in perpetuity." ("Perpetuity" meant until the white folks wanted the land.)

The Cherokees had written and adopted a constitution and declared themselves a domestic nation. Georgia ignored all sorts of treaties and seized their lands. The Supreme Court of the United States ruled that the Cherokees had unquestioned rights to their land, and were a "distinct political community" where the laws of Georgia could not be enforced.

Encouraged by President Jackson, Georgia ignored the Court and in 1835 coerced a group of Cherokee to sign a treaty.

7000 soldiers captured 15,000 Cherokees and imprisoned them in camps the soldiers had built. Of course, several hundred Cherokee died in the camps.

An 800 mile migration to Oklahoma began, mostly on foot and without shelter. At least 3,000 died along the way.

The Cherokee were not the only ones "relocated." The Choctaws were forced out of Mississippi and the Pottawattomies from Indiana.

Big problem when they arrived in Oklahoma--there were already Indian tribes there, who did not appreciate all these newcomers being forced on them.

Back before he was elected President, Andrew Jackson was the general who directed (led) the victory over the British at New Orleans. This was part of the War of 1812, and the victory came a couple of days after the treaty had been signed. When we lived here in the 1960s that date a state holiday. (So was June 4--Confederate Memorial Day.)

So, that's what "20" triggered in my strange and bizarre mind.

(I double-checked my memory with A College History of the United States, by David Burner, Wlizabeth Fox-Genovese, and Virginia Bernhard.)