U.S. congressman Lucas M. Miller of Wisconsin was an odd dude. He served just one term in the House, and when you look at the bills he introduced it's easy to guess why. Back in 1893, Miller proposed abolishing the Army and Navy, wiping out pension laws, and even wanted to amend the U.S. Constitution to rename the United States of America to something a bit more sci-fi: "The United States of Earth."


Why would he want to do this? Was it some proto-hippie way of saying that the U.S. was just part of a larger global community? Nope. It was because Miller believed that the U.S. empire would expand so much that it would eventually swallow up the entire world.

From the August 3, 1987 New York Times:

In 1893, Representative Lucas Miltiades Miller of Wisconsin proposed renaming the country the United States of the Earth, since, he argued, ''it is possible for the Republic to grow through the admission of new States into the Union until every Nation on Earth has become part of it.'' The resolution outlining the administration of this vast new nation has a provision that ''the House and Senate would vote by electricity.''


Needless to say, Representative Miller's proposed amendment didn't get very far.

Illustration of Miller via FindaGrave