We're fine admitting this: the title "Platt Amendment" tells us exactly diddly-squat about this piece of legislation. It could be about the mining of unobtainium on Pandora, for all we know.

Remember, Platt is simply the last name of the Senator who brought this document to the floor of Congress. He didn't write it, he just introduced it.

So if the Platt Amendment is about rules for the independence of Cuba, why wasn't it called something more obvious? Well actually, the Platt Amendment was part of a larger piece of legislation going through Congress at the time called the "Army Appropriations Bill." You can at least guess what that bill was about—getting funding for the military. The Platt Amendment was tacked on in a wily bit of Congressional wheeling and dealing, because that's what Congress does.

But still, why not call it the "Cuban Independence Amendment" or "Rules and Regulations for Cuba?" Your guess is as good as ours.

Maybe Congress didn't want to call that much attention to it. Or maybe they wanted these rules to fly under the radar a bit and only be known by the government powers and not the public. One thing is for sure—by using such a mundane name, very little attention was called to the amendment in American society.

Quite the opposite of, say, the Declaration of Independence. You knew what you were getting with the Declaration of Independence.