1.
Greenwich, Connecticut
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Greenwich /ˈɡrɛnᵻtʃ/ is a town in Fairfield County, Connecticut, United States. As of the 2010 census, the town had a population of 61,171. The largest town on Connecticuts Gold Coast, it is home to many hedge funds, Greenwich is the southernmost and westernmost municipality in Connecticut as well as the six-state region of New England. It takes roughly 40-50 minutes by train from Grand Central Terminal in Manhattan, cNN/Money and Money magazine ranked Greenwich first on its list of the 100 Best Places to Live in the United States in 2005. The town is named after Greenwich, a borough of London in the United Kingdom, the town of Greenwich was settled in 1640. One of the founders was Elizabeth Fones Winthrop, daughter-in-law of John Winthrop, founder, Greenwich was declared a township by the General Assembly in Hartford on May 11,1665. During the American Revolution, General Israel Putnam made an escape from the British on February 26,1779. Although British forces pillaged the town, Putnam was able to warn Stamford, p1270020-300x225. jpg | Putnam Hill, where General Putnam escaped. In 1974, Gullivers Restaurant and Bar, on the border of Greenwich and Port Chester, in 1983, the Mianus River Bridge, which carries traffic on Interstate 95 over an estuary, collapsed, resulting in the death of three people. For many years, Greenwich Point, was only to town residents. However, a lawyer sued, saying his rights to freedom of assembly were threatened because he was not allowed to go there, the lower courts disagreed, but the Supreme Court of Connecticut agreed, and Greenwich was forced to amend its beach access policy to all four beaches. According to the United States Census Bureau, the town has an area of 67.2 square miles, of which 47.8 square miles is land and 19.4 square miles. In terms of area, Greenwich is twice the size of Manhattan. The town is bordered to the west and north by Westchester County, New York, to the east by the city of Stamford, and faces the Village of Bayville to the south across the Long Island Sound. The Census Bureau recognizes seven CDPs within the town, Byram, Cos Cob, Glenville, Old Greenwich, Pemberwick, Riverside, the USPS lists separate zip codes for Greenwich, Cos Cob, Old Greenwich, and Riverside. Additionally, Greenwich is often divided into several smaller, unofficial neighborhoods. The Hispanic population is concentrated in the corner of the town. In 2011, numerous neighborhoods were voted by the Business Insider as being the richest neighborhoods in America, Byram, Cos Cob, Greenwich, Old Greenwich, and Riverside each have their own ZIP Codes and with the exception of Byram, each has a Metro North station
2.
Middle Ages
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In the history of Europe, the Middle Ages or Medieval Period lasted from the 5th to the 15th century. It began with the fall of the Western Roman Empire and merged into the Renaissance, the Middle Ages is the middle period of the three traditional divisions of Western history, classical antiquity, the medieval period, and the modern period. The medieval period is subdivided into the Early, High. Population decline, counterurbanisation, invasion, and movement of peoples, the large-scale movements of the Migration Period, including various Germanic peoples, formed new kingdoms in what remained of the Western Roman Empire. In the seventh century, North Africa and the Middle East—once part of the Byzantine Empire—came under the rule of the Umayyad Caliphate, although there were substantial changes in society and political structures, the break with classical antiquity was not complete. The still-sizeable Byzantine Empire survived in the east and remained a major power, the empires law code, the Corpus Juris Civilis or Code of Justinian, was rediscovered in Northern Italy in 1070 and became widely admired later in the Middle Ages. In the West, most kingdoms incorporated the few extant Roman institutions, monasteries were founded as campaigns to Christianise pagan Europe continued. The Franks, under the Carolingian dynasty, briefly established the Carolingian Empire during the later 8th, the Crusades, first preached in 1095, were military attempts by Western European Christians to regain control of the Holy Land from Muslims. Kings became the heads of centralised nation states, reducing crime and violence, intellectual life was marked by scholasticism, a philosophy that emphasised joining faith to reason, and by the founding of universities. Controversy, heresy, and the Western Schism within the Catholic Church paralleled the conflict, civil strife. Cultural and technological developments transformed European society, concluding the Late Middle Ages, the Middle Ages is one of the three major periods in the most enduring scheme for analysing European history, classical civilisation, or Antiquity, the Middle Ages, and the Modern Period. Medieval writers divided history into periods such as the Six Ages or the Four Empires, when referring to their own times, they spoke of them as being modern. In the 1330s, the humanist and poet Petrarch referred to pre-Christian times as antiqua, leonardo Bruni was the first historian to use tripartite periodisation in his History of the Florentine People. Bruni and later argued that Italy had recovered since Petrarchs time. The Middle Ages first appears in Latin in 1469 as media tempestas or middle season, in early usage, there were many variants, including medium aevum, or middle age, first recorded in 1604, and media saecula, or middle ages, first recorded in 1625. The alternative term medieval derives from medium aevum, tripartite periodisation became standard after the German 17th-century historian Christoph Cellarius divided history into three periods, Ancient, Medieval, and Modern. The most commonly given starting point for the Middle Ages is 476, for Europe as a whole,1500 is often considered to be the end of the Middle Ages, but there is no universally agreed upon end date. English historians often use the Battle of Bosworth Field in 1485 to mark the end of the period
3.
Renaissance
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The Renaissance was a period in European history, from the 14th to the 17th century, regarded as the cultural bridge between the Middle Ages and modern history. It started as a movement in Italy in the Late Medieval period and later spread to the rest of Europe. This new thinking became manifest in art, architecture, politics, science, Early examples were the development of perspective in oil painting and the recycled knowledge of how to make concrete. Although the invention of movable type sped the dissemination of ideas from the later 15th century. In politics, the Renaissance contributed to the development of the customs and conventions of diplomacy, the Renaissance began in Florence, in the 14th century. Other major centres were northern Italian city-states such as Venice, Genoa, Milan, Bologna, the word Renaissance, literally meaning Rebirth in French, first appeared in English in the 1830s. The word also occurs in Jules Michelets 1855 work, Histoire de France, the word Renaissance has also been extended to other historical and cultural movements, such as the Carolingian Renaissance and the Renaissance of the 12th century. The Renaissance was a movement that profoundly affected European intellectual life in the early modern period. Renaissance scholars employed the humanist method in study, and searched for realism, however, a subtle shift took place in the way that intellectuals approached religion that was reflected in many other areas of cultural life. In addition, many Greek Christian works, including the Greek New Testament, were back from Byzantium to Western Europe. Political philosophers, most famously Niccolò Machiavelli, sought to describe life as it really was. Others see more competition between artists and polymaths such as Brunelleschi, Ghiberti, Donatello, and Masaccio for artistic commissions as sparking the creativity of the Renaissance. Yet it remains much debated why the Renaissance began in Italy, accordingly, several theories have been put forward to explain its origins. During the Renaissance, money and art went hand in hand, Artists depended entirely on patrons while the patrons needed money to foster artistic talent. Wealth was brought to Italy in the 14th, 15th, and 16th centuries by expanding trade into Asia, silver mining in Tyrol increased the flow of money. Luxuries from the Eastern world, brought home during the Crusades, increased the prosperity of Genoa, unlike with Latin texts, which had been preserved and studied in Western Europe since late antiquity, the study of ancient Greek texts was very limited in medieval Western Europe. One of the greatest achievements of Renaissance scholars was to bring this entire class of Greek cultural works back into Western Europe for the first time since late antiquity, Arab logicians had inherited Greek ideas after they had invaded and conquered Egypt and the Levant. Their translations and commentaries on these ideas worked their way through the Arab West into Spain and Sicily and this work of translation from Islamic culture, though largely unplanned and disorganized, constituted one of the greatest transmissions of ideas in history
4.
American Revolution
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The British responded by imposing punitive laws on Massachusetts in 1774 known as the Coercive Acts, following which Patriots in the other colonies rallied behind Massachusetts. Tensions escalated to the outbreak of fighting between Patriot militia and British regulars at Lexington and Concord in April 1775, the conflict then developed into a global war, during which the Patriots fought the British and Loyalists in what became known as the American Revolutionary War. The Continental Congress determined King George IIIs rule to be tyrannical and infringing the rights as Englishmen. The Patriot leadership professed the political philosophies of liberalism and republicanism to reject monarchy and aristocracy, Congress rejected British proposals requiring allegiance to the monarchy and abandonment of independence. The British were forced out of Boston in 1776, but then captured and they blockaded the ports and captured other cities for brief periods, but failed to defeat Washingtons forces. After a failed Patriot invasion of Canada, a British army was captured at the Battle of Saratoga in late 1777, a combined American–French force captured a second British army at Yorktown in 1781, effectively ending the war in the United States. The Treaty of Paris in 1783 formally ended the conflict, confirming the new nations complete separation from the British Empire. The United States took possession of all the territory east of the Mississippi River and south of the Great Lakes, with the British retaining control of Canada. Among the significant results of the revolution was the creation of a new Constitution of the United States. Historians typically begin their histories of the American Revolution with the British victory in the French and Indian War in 1763, the lands west of Quebec and west of a line running along the crest of the Allegheny mountains became Indian territory, temporarily barred to settlement. For the prior history, see Thirteen Colonies, in 1764, Parliament passed the Currency Act to restrain the use of paper money which British merchants saw as a means to evade debt payments. Parliament also passed the Sugar Act, imposing customs duties on a number of articles, none did and Parliament passed the Stamp Act in March 1765 which imposed direct taxes on the colonies for the first time. All official documents, newspapers, almanacs, and pamphlets—even decks of playing cards—were required to have the stamps, the colonists did not object that the taxes were high, but because they had no representation in the Parliament. Benjamin Franklin testified in Parliament in 1766 that Americans already contributed heavily to the defense of the Empire, stationing a standing army in Great Britain during peacetime was politically unacceptable. London had to deal with 1,500 politically well-connected British officers who became redundant, in 1765, the Sons of Liberty formed. They used public demonstrations, boycott, violence, and threats of violence to ensure that the British tax laws were unenforceable, in Boston, the Sons of Liberty burned the records of the vice admiralty court and looted the home of chief justice Thomas Hutchinson. Several legislatures called for united action, and nine colonies sent delegates to the Stamp Act Congress in New York City in October 1765, moderates led by John Dickinson drew up a Declaration of Rights and Grievances stating that taxes passed without representation violated their rights as Englishmen. Colonists emphasized their determination by boycotting imports of British merchandise, the Parliament at Westminster saw itself as the supreme lawmaking authority throughout all British possessions and thus entitled to levy any tax without colonial approval
5.
Edwardian era
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The death of Queen Victoria in January 1901 marked the end of the Victorian era. The new king Edward VII was already the leader of an elite that set a style influenced by the art. The Liberals returned to power in 1906 and made significant reforms, below the upper class, the era was marked by significant shifts in politics among sections of society that had been largely excluded from wielding power in the past, such as common labourers. The Edwardian period is sometimes imagined as a golden age of long summer afternoons and garden parties. This perception was created in the 1920s and later by those who remembered the Edwardian age with nostalgia, the Edwardian age was also seen as a mediocre period of pleasure between the great achievements of the preceding Victorian age and the catastrophe of the following war. Recent assessments emphasise the differences between the wealthy and the poor during the Edwardian era and describe the age as heralding great changes in political and social life. Robert Tressells popular novel The Ragged-Trousered Philanthropists is an example of the eras social critique. Despite this, this type of perception has been challenged more recently by modern historians, the British historian Lawrence James has argued that, during the early 20th century, the British felt increasingly threatened by rival powers such as Germany, Russia, and the United States. There was a political awareness of the working class, leading to a rise in trade unions. The aristocracy remained in control of top government offices, the Conservatives – at the time called Unionists – were dominant from the 1890s to 1906. The party had many strengths, appealing to voters supportive of imperialism, tariffs, the Church of England, a powerful Royal Navy, and traditional hierarchical society. There was a powerful leadership base in the aristocracy and landed gentry in rural England, plus strong support from the Church of England. Historians have used election returns to demonstrate that Conservatives did surprisingly well in working-class districts and they had an appeal as well to the better-off element of traditional working class Britons in the larger cities. Nevertheless, the weaknesses were accumulating, and proved so overwhelming in 1906 that they did not return to power until 1922. The Conservative Party was losing its drive and enthusiasm, especially after the retirement of the charismatic Joseph Chamberlain, there was a bitter split on tariff reform, that drove many of the free traders over to the Liberal camp. Tariff reform was an issue that the Conservative leadership inexplicably clung to. Support among the top tier of the class, and in lower middle class weakened. The 1906 election was a landslide for the opposition, which saw its total vote jump 25 percent, the Liberal Party lacked a unified ideological base in 1906
6.
World War I
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World War I, also known as the First World War, the Great War, or the War to End All Wars, was a global war originating in Europe that lasted from 28 July 1914 to 11 November 1918. More than 70 million military personnel, including 60 million Europeans, were mobilised in one of the largest wars in history and it was one of the deadliest conflicts in history, and paved the way for major political changes, including revolutions in many of the nations involved. The war drew in all the worlds great powers, assembled in two opposing alliances, the Allies versus the Central Powers of Germany and Austria-Hungary. These alliances were reorganised and expanded as more nations entered the war, Italy, Japan, the trigger for the war was the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria, heir to the throne of Austria-Hungary, by Yugoslav nationalist Gavrilo Princip in Sarajevo on 28 June 1914. This set off a crisis when Austria-Hungary delivered an ultimatum to the Kingdom of Serbia. Within weeks, the powers were at war and the conflict soon spread around the world. On 25 July Russia began mobilisation and on 28 July, the Austro-Hungarians declared war on Serbia, Germany presented an ultimatum to Russia to demobilise, and when this was refused, declared war on Russia on 1 August. Germany then invaded neutral Belgium and Luxembourg before moving towards France, after the German march on Paris was halted, what became known as the Western Front settled into a battle of attrition, with a trench line that changed little until 1917. On the Eastern Front, the Russian army was successful against the Austro-Hungarians, in November 1914, the Ottoman Empire joined the Central Powers, opening fronts in the Caucasus, Mesopotamia and the Sinai. In 1915, Italy joined the Allies and Bulgaria joined the Central Powers, Romania joined the Allies in 1916, after a stunning German offensive along the Western Front in the spring of 1918, the Allies rallied and drove back the Germans in a series of successful offensives. By the end of the war or soon after, the German Empire, Russian Empire, Austro-Hungarian Empire, national borders were redrawn, with several independent nations restored or created, and Germanys colonies were parceled out among the victors. During the Paris Peace Conference of 1919, the Big Four imposed their terms in a series of treaties, the League of Nations was formed with the aim of preventing any repetition of such a conflict. This effort failed, and economic depression, renewed nationalism, weakened successor states, and feelings of humiliation eventually contributed to World War II. From the time of its start until the approach of World War II, at the time, it was also sometimes called the war to end war or the war to end all wars due to its then-unparalleled scale and devastation. In Canada, Macleans magazine in October 1914 wrote, Some wars name themselves, during the interwar period, the war was most often called the World War and the Great War in English-speaking countries. Will become the first world war in the sense of the word. These began in 1815, with the Holy Alliance between Prussia, Russia, and Austria, when Germany was united in 1871, Prussia became part of the new German nation. Soon after, in October 1873, German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck negotiated the League of the Three Emperors between the monarchs of Austria-Hungary, Russia and Germany
7.
Maurice Wertheim
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Maurice Wertheim was an American investment banker, chess player, chess patron, environmentalist, and philanthropist. Wertheim founded Wertheim & Co. in 1927, born to Jacob Wertheim of Hartford, Connecticut, and his wife, Hannah Frank of Hoboken, New Jersey, Wertheim was educated at the Sachs School in New York. He then graduated from Harvard University in 1906 with a B. A. in his freshman year, he lived in Matthews Hall in Harvard Yard. He began work at his fathers firm, the United Cigar Manufacturers Company and he would later inherit nearly half a million dollars from his father, due to his success with the company. In 1915, he entered into a career as an investment banker in New York and he founded his own firm Wertheim & Company in 1927, developing a very successful business in mergers and acquisitions, and becoming wealthy in the process. During World War II, he served as a man on the War Production Board in the administration of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Wertheim served on boards and as a trustee for various organizations. He was trustee of the Federation of Jewish Philanthropies of New York, Mount Sinai Hospital and he also served as president of the American Jewish Committee. Wertheim was a chess player and patron of the game. He served as the president of the Manhattan Chess Club, which he assisted financially, Chess Championship match between Samuel Reshevsky and I. A. Horowitz, which was won by Reshevsky and he paid for all the costs, and personally led the team at the tournament. He was also interested in art, fishing, nature conservancy. He was a supporter of the New York Theatre Guild. He acquired 1,800 acres of land along the Carmans River on eastern Long Island for personal use to conserve waterfowl, in his will, he arranged for the donation of his collection of French Impressionist paintings to the Fogg Art Museum at Harvard University. After his death from an attack in 1950, a memorial Maurice Wertheim chess tournament was organized in 1951 in New York in his memory. In 1963, Wertheims daughter, Barbara, established the Wertheim Study Room in the New York Public Library in honor of her father and he married Alma Morgenthau in 1909, and had three daughters, Josephine, historian Barbara W. Tuchman, and Anne. He began his marriage in March 1930 to Ruth White, they did not have children. He then remarried for a time in 1944 to Cecile Berlage
8.
Henry Morgenthau Sr.
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Henry Morgenthau was an American lawyer, businessman and United States ambassador, most famous as the American ambassador to the Ottoman Empire during the First World War. As ambassador to the Ottoman Empire, Morgenthau has come to be identified as the most prominent American to speak about the Armenian Genocide, Morgenthau was the father of the politician Henry Morgenthau Jr. His grandchildren included Robert M. Morgenthau, District Attorney of Manhattan for 35 years, Morgenthau was born, the ninth of 11 living children, in Mannheim, Grand Duchy of Baden, in 1856 into an Ashkenazi Jewish family. He was the son of Lazarus and Babette Morgenthau and his father was a successful cigar manufacturer who had cigar factories at Mannheim, Lorsch and Heppenheim, employing as many as 1,000 people. Lazarus Morgenthau was able to stave off failure and stabilize his income by becoming a fundraiser for Jewish houses of worship, Henry attended City College of New York, where he received a BA, and later graduated from Columbia Law School. He began his career as a lawyer, but he made a fortune in real estate investments. He married Josephine Sykes in 1882 and had four children, Helen, Alma, Henry Jr. Morgenthau built a successful career as a lawyer and served as the leader of the Reform Jewish community in New York. Morgenthaus career enabled him to contribute handsomely to President Woodrow Wilsons election campaign in 1912 and he had hoped for a cabinet post as well, but was not successful in gaining one. Though no Zionist himself, Morgenthau cared fervidly about the plight of his coreligionists and he initially rejected the position, but following a trip to Europe, and with the encouragement of his pro-Zionist friend Rabbi Stephen Wise, he reconsidered his decision and accepted Wilsons offer. Appointed as U. S. Ambassador to the Ottoman Empire in 1913, after the outbreak of war in 1914, the U. S. Faced with the evidence, he officially informed the U. S. government of the activities of the Ottoman government. The American government however, not wanting to get dragged into disputes, remained a power in the conflict at the time. Morgenthau held high-level meetings with the leaders of the Ottoman Empire to help alleviate the position of the Armenians and he famously admonished the Ottoman Interior Minister Talaat Pasha, stating, Our people will never forget these massacres. Through his friendship with Adolph Ochs, publisher of the New York Times, Morgenthau also ensured that the continued to receive prominent coverage. Exasperated with his relationship with the Ottoman government, he resigned from the ambassadorship in 1916, looking back on that decision in his The Murder of a Nation, he wrote he had come to see Turkey as a place of horror. I had reached the end of my resources, I found intolerable my further daily association with men, however gracious and accommodating…who were still reeking with the blood of nearly a million human beings. He published his conversations with Ottoman leaders and his account of the Armenian genocide in 1918 under the title Ambassador Morgenthaus Story. In March 1919, as President Woodrow Wilson was leaving for the Conference, congressman Julius Kahn, he and many other prominent Jewish representatives attended the Conference
9.
Henry Morgenthau Jr.
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Henry Morgenthau Jr. was the U. S. Secretary of the Treasury during the administration of Franklin D. Roosevelt. He played a role in designing and financing the New Deal. After 1937, while still in charge of the Treasury, he played the role in financing US participation in World War II. Morgenthau was the father of Robert M. Morgenthau, who was District Attorney of Manhattan for 35 years and Henry Morgenthau III, an American author and television producer. Morgenthau was born into a prominent Jewish family in New York City, the son of Henry Morgenthau, Sr. a real estate mogul and diplomat and he attended the Dwight School, then studied architecture and agriculture at Cornell University. In 1913, he met and became friends with Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt and he operated a farm named Fishkill Farms near the Roosevelt estate in upstate New York, specializing, like FDR, in growing Christmas trees. He was concerned about distress among farmers, who comprised over a fourth of the population, in 1922 he took over the American Agriculturalist magazine, making it a voice for reclamation, conservation, and scientific farming. In 1929, Roosevelt, as Governor of New York, appointed him chair of the New York State Agricultural Advisory Committee, in 1933, Roosevelt became President and appointed Morgenthau governor of the Federal Farm Board. Morgenthau was nonetheless involved in monetary decisions, Roosevelt adopted the idea of raising the price of gold to inflate the currency and reverse the debilitating deflation of prices. The idea came from Professor George Warren of Cornell University, Morgenthau wrote in his diary, Saturday - Went to the White House and met Jones there. I said to the President that we did not buy any gold last night, Harrison called up and spoke to Jesse. I could not make out whether he spoke to the President. Then Harrison urged that inasmuch as Saturday was only half a day that they should not buy any gold, both the President and Jones said that they thought they made a mistake by agreeing with Harrison. I believe it was on Friday that we raised the price 21¢, if anybody ever knew how we really set the gold price through a combination of lucky numbers, etc. I think that really would be frightened. Saturday we increased the price 10¢, I stayed after Jones left and had a good half hour talk in which most of the time Louis Howe was present. In 1934, when William H. Woodin resigned because of health, Roosevelt appointed Morgenthau Secretary of the Treasury. Morgenthau used his position as Treasury chief to investigate organized crime, Treasury Intelligence and other agencies were uncoordinated in their efforts, efforts to create a super-agency were stalled by J. Edgar Hoover, who feared his FBI would be overshadowed
10.
Robert M. Morgenthau
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Robert Morris Morgenthau is an American lawyer. From 1975 until his retirement in 2009, he was the District Attorney for New York County and he is the third-longest serving district attorney in United States history, only E. Michael McCann of Milwaukee County and Henry Wade of Dallas served longer. Morgenthau was born in 1919 in New York City into a prominent Ashkenazi Jewish family that had emigrated from Baden in 1866 and he is the son of Elinor and long-time Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morgenthau, Jr. His maternal great grandfather was Mayer Lehman, a co-founder of Lehman Brothers and his grandfather, Henry Morgenthau, Sr. was United States Ambassador to the Ottoman Empire during World War I. Before going into service, Henry Morgenthau, Sr. had made a fortune in real estate. His paternal grandmother was born in Montgomery, Alabama, from his earliest days, the Morgenthau family was well-connected politically. The family home was near Franklin Delano Roosevelts Springwood Estate at Hyde Park, New York, after graduating from the New Lincoln School, Deerfield Academy, and Amherst College, he enlisted in the United States Navy, serving for four and a half years during World War II. He attained the rank of lieutenant commander and served as the executive officer of both the USS Lansdale and the USS Harry F. Bauer. He saw action in both the Mediterranean and Pacific theaters, mostly aboard destroyers, Morgenthau graduated from Yale Law School in 1948, and joined the New York law firm of Patterson, Belknap & Webb, becoming a partner in 1954. In 1961, after 12 years of practicing law, Morgenthau accepted an appointment from President John F. Kennedy as United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York. In 1962, he was the Democratic nominee for Governor of New York, after his defeat by the incumbent Governor Nelson Rockefeller, Morgenthau was reappointed U. S. Attorney and served for the remainder of the Kennedy and Johnson administrations. In January 1969, following the election of President Richard M. Nixon, Morgenthau remained in office and he retained support from New Yorks liberal Republican U. S. Senators Jacob K. Javits and Charles Goodell, nonetheless, Morgenthaus position became increasingly untenable. Morgenthau was less successful in raising funds and developing support than were two candidates, Arthur Goldberg and Howard Samuels, and within weeks, he withdrew from the race. Goldberg won the nomination and was defeated by Rockefeller. Morgenthau returned to life until 1974, when he was elected to the office of District Attorney of New York County. This was a special election caused by the death of Frank Hogan, Morgenthau defeated Hogans interim successor, Richard Kuh. He was elected to a term in 1977 and was re-elected seven times
