Walter Raleigh impossible for Raleigh to have discovered the potato in the places he visited. Due to Raleigh's role in the popularisation of smoking, John Lennon humorously referred to him as "such a stupid get" in the song "I'm So Tired" on the "White Album" "The Beatles" (1968). Various colourful stories are told about him, such as laying his cloak over a puddle for the Queen, but they are probably apocryphal. Walter Raleigh Sir Walter Raleigh (; (or 1554)29 October 1618), also spelled Ralegh, was an English landed gentleman, writer, poet, soldier, politician, courtier, spy and explorer. He was cousin to Sir
Sir Walter Raleigh (essay) Sir Walter Raleigh (essay) Sir Walter Raleigh is an essay by Henry David Thoreau that has been reconstructed from notes he wrote for an 1843 lecture and drafts of an article he was preparing for "The Dial". It was first published in 1950, in a collection of Thoreau's writings edited by Henry Aiken Metcalf. Another version, with significant differences, can be found in "Henry D. Thoreau: Early Essays and Miscellanies", edited by Joseph J. Moldenhauer and Edwin Moser, with Alexander C. Kern. Metcalf writes in his introduction that he knew of three drafts of this essay, and he drew on