UNESCO's World Heritage Committee approved the listing of the five Spanish Roman Catholic sites.

CBS News reports that the missions were the only site in the USA proposed for world heritage status at this year's meeting in Bonn, Germany.

Spain used the missions to convert indigenous people to Catholicism and make them Spanish subjects. The Alamo was the the best known of the missions and many credit the fall of the the Alamo to Mexican General Santa Anna as the inspiration for the people of Texas to join the uprising and beat the Mexican army a little more than a month later.

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