Mardi Gras

On the evening of March 2, 1699—Fat Monday, the night before Mardi Gras—two brothers from the French colony of New France steered a small boat into the muddy mouth of the Mississippi River, hunting for a waterway that earlier expeditions had failed to find and hold. Pierre Le Moyne d'Iberville and his younger brother Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne de Bienville were…