Nicolaus Copernicus is known that Copernicus knew Polish on a par with German and Latin. Historian Michael Burleigh describes the nationality debate as a "totally insignificant battle" between German and Polish scholars during the interwar period. Polish astronomer Konrad Rudnicki calls the discussion a "fierce scholarly quarrel in ... times of nationalism" and describes Copernicus as an inhabitant of a German-speaking territory that belonged to Poland, himself being of mixed Polish-German extraction. Czesław Miłosz describes the debate as an "absurd" projection of a modern understanding of nationality onto Renaissance people, who identified with their home territories rather than with a nation. Similarly,
Nicolas Perrot Nicolas Perrot Nicolas Perrot (c.1644–1717), a French explorer, fur trader, and diplomat, was one of the first European men to travel in the Upper Mississippi Valley, in what is now Wisconsin and Minnesota. Nicolas Perrot was born in France between 1641 and 1644, perhaps at Darcey in Burgundy, where his father was lieutenant of justice. Perrot traveled to New France around 1660 with the Jesuit missionaries. He journeyed with several to the Western Great Lakes, where they intended to preach to the Native Americans, reaching present-day Wisconsin in 1665. He earned the friendship of the natives by swapping furs for