1 According to a report in the New England Journal of Medicine, homeless people spent an average of four days longer per hospital visit than comparable non-homeless people. 2  This extra cost, approximately $2,414 per hospitalization, is attributable to homelessness.1.
On March 2, 1699, French-Canadian explorer Jean Baptiste Le Moyne Sieur de Bienville arrived at a plot of ground 60 miles directly south of New Orleans, and named it Pointe du Mardi Gras when his men realized it was the eve of the festive holiday.
Mardi Gras celebrations first came to what is now Alabama with the early French explorers, who were led by Pierre Le Moyne d'Iberville. He recorded the first observance of Mardi Gras in Mobile in his journal in 1699. Men in the camp marked the occasion with feasts, dancing, and a night of masked revelry.