ILLINOIS STATE MILITARY MUSEUM
The British Museum in London is home to the Rosetta Stone, while the Mona Lisa hangs on the walls of the Louvre in Paris, but on the outskirts of Springfield, Illinois, is an object that might almost seem at home in TV’s The Simpsons’ hometown of Springfield, State Unknown. It’s an object that was actually fictionalized in another animated TV series, King of the Hill.
It’s the prosthetic cork leg worn by Antonio de Padua María Severino López de Santa Anna y Pérez de Lebrón — more commonly known as Santa Anna, the Mexican politician and general who fought to defend royalists in New Spain and later for Mexican independence, before fighting against Texas Revolutionaries and then the French and finally the United States.
During the brief Pastry War with France in 1838, Santa Anna was hit in the
