USS Varuna (1861)
USS Varuna was a heavy steam-powered ship acquired by the Union Navy during the early days of the American Civil War. She was outfitted with powerful 8-inch guns and assigned, as a gunboat, to the Union blockade of the waterways of the Confederate States of America. Varuna, the first U. S. Navy ship to bear the name, was intended for merchant service between New York City and New Orleans, she was laid down in late January or early February 1861 at the Mallory Yard, Connecticut. On 10 February 1862, she was ordered to remain in New York until Monitor was ready for action so that she might escort the new ironclad from New York to Hampton Roads, Virginia, to protect the wooden-hulled Union blockaders there from the Southern armored ram, CSS Virginia. However, these orders were revoked that same day. En route south late in February, Varuna put into Port Royal, South Carolina, for repairs, where the ship's commanding officer, Commander Charles S. Boggs, assumed temporary command of the harbor on 24 February during Flag Officer Samuel F.
Du Pont's absence. The gunboat joined Rear Admiral David G. Farragut's West Gulf Blockading Squadron on 6 March. On 24 April 1862, Varuna was with the squadron during Farragut's daring nighttime dash past Confederate works guarding the Mississippi below New Orleans – Fort Jackson and Fort St. Philip. At the height of the melee, Varuna was rammed twice by the steamer CSS Governor Moore and struck twice again thereafter by the cotton-clad ram CSS Stonewall Jackson. After striking Varuna, CSN Lt. Beverly Kennon, in command of one of the Confederate warships, Governor Moore – found himself unable to depress his guns far enough to fire upon the Union vessel. So he used the resulting hole as a gun port. Fatally damaged, Varuna backed off from the Confederate vessels and continued to subject them to a withering fire until rising water silenced her guns. Eight sailors of the Varuna received the Medal of Honor for their actions during the battle: Seaman Thomas Bourne, Landsman Amos Bradley, Captain of the Forecastle John Greene, Third Class Boy George Hollat, Seaman William Martin, Quartermaster John McGowan, Coxswain William McKnight, Second Class Boy Oscar E. Peck.
Rear Admiral Farragut's stunning victory at and subsequent capture of New Orleans itself electrified the North. Varuna's part in the Union triumph was soon commemorated in George Henry Boker's poem, "The Varuna", which appeared in the Philadelphia Press on 12 May. United States Navy List of United States Navy ships Bibliography of early American naval history This article incorporates text from the public domain Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships; the entry can be found here
Levee
A levee, dyke, floodbank or stopbank is an elongated occurring ridge or artificially constructed fill or wall, which regulates water levels. It is earthen and parallel to the course of a river in its floodplain or along low-lying coastlines. Speakers of American English, use the word levee, from the French word levée, it originated in New Orleans a few years after the city's founding in 1718 and was adopted by English speakers. The name derives from the trait of the levee's ridges being raised higher than both the channel and the surrounding floodplains; the modern word dike or dyke most derives from the Dutch word dijk, with the construction of dikes in Frisia well attested as early as the 11th century. The 126 kilometres long Westfriese Omringdijk, completed by 1250, formed by connecting existing older dikes; the Roman chronicler Tacitus mentions that the rebellious Batavi pierced dikes to flood their land and to protect their retreat. The word dijk indicated both the trench and the bank, it parallels the English verb to dig.
In Anglo-Saxon, the word dic existed and was pronounced as dick in northern England and as ditch in the south. Similar to Dutch, the English origins of the word lie in digging a trench and forming the upcast soil into a bank alongside it; this practice has meant that the name may be given to the bank. Thus Offa's Dyke is a combined structure and Car Dyke is a trench - though it once had raised banks as well. In the midlands and north of England, in the United States, a dike is what a ditch is in the south, a property-boundary marker or small drainage-channel. Where it carries a stream, it may be called a running dike as in Rippingale Running Dike, which leads water from the catchwater drain, Car Dyke, to the South Forty Foot Drain in Lincolnshire; the Weir Dike is a soak dike in Bourne North Fen, near Twenty and alongside the River Glen, Lincolnshire. In the Norfolk and Suffolk Broads, a dyke may be a drainage ditch or a narrow artificial channel off a river or broad for access or mooring, some longer dykes being named, e.g. Candle Dyke.
In parts of Britain Scotland, a dyke may be a field wall made with dry stone. The main purpose of artificial levees is to prevent flooding of the adjoining countryside and to slow natural course changes in a waterway to provide reliable shipping lanes for maritime commerce over time. Levees can be found along the sea, where dunes are not strong enough, along rivers for protection against high-floods, along lakes or along polders. Furthermore, levees have been built for the purpose of empoldering, or as a boundary for an inundation area; the latter can be a controlled inundation by the military or a measure to prevent inundation of a larger area surrounded by levees. Levees have been built as field boundaries and as military defences. More on this type of levee can be found in the article on dry-stone walls. Levees can be permanent earthworks or emergency constructions built hastily in a flood emergency; when such an emergency bank is added on top of an existing levee it is known as a cradge. Some of the earliest levees were constructed by the Indus Valley Civilization on which the agrarian life of the Harappan peoples depended.
Levees were constructed over 3,000 years ago in ancient Egypt, where a system of levees was built along the left bank of the River Nile for more than 600 miles, stretching from modern Aswan to the Nile Delta on the shores of the Mediterranean. The Mesopotamian civilizations and ancient China built large levee systems; because a levee is only as strong as its weakest point, the height and standards of construction have to be consistent along its length. Some authorities have argued that this requires a strong governing authority to guide the work, may have been a catalyst for the development of systems of governance in early civilizations. However, others point to evidence of large scale water-control earthen works such as canals and/or levees dating from before King Scorpion in Predynastic Egypt, during which governance was far less centralized. Another example of a historical levee that protected the growing city-state of Mēxihco-Tenōchtitlan and the neighbouring city of Tlatelōlco, was constructed during the early 1400s, under the supervision of the tlahtoani of the altepetl Texcoco, Nezahualcoyotl.
Its function was to separate the brackish waters of Lake Texcoco from the fresh potable water supplied to the settlements. However, after the Europeans destroyed Tenochtitlan, the levee was destroyed and flooding became a major problem, which resulted in the majority of The Lake to be drained in the 17th Century. Levees are built by piling earth on a cleared, level surface. Broad at the base, they taper to a level top, where temporary sandbags can be placed; because flood discharge intensity increases in levees on both river banks, because silt deposits raise the level of riverbeds and auxiliary measures are vital. Sections are set back from the river to form a wider channel, flood valley basins are divided by multiple levees to prevent a single breach from flooding a large area. A levee made from stones laid in horizontal rows with a bed of thin turf between each of them is known as a spetchel. Artificial levees require substantial engineering, their surface must be protected from erosion, so they are planted
David Farragut
David Glasgow Farragut was a flag officer of the United States Navy during the American Civil War. He was the first rear admiral, vice admiral, admiral in the United States Navy, he is remembered for his order at the Battle of Mobile Bay paraphrased as "Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead" in U. S. Navy tradition. Born near Knoxville, Farragut was fostered by naval officer David Porter after the death of his mother. Despite his young age, Farragut served in the War of 1812 under the command of his adoptive father, he received his first command in 1824 and participated in anti-piracy operations in the Caribbean Sea. He served in the Mexican–American War under the command of Matthew C. Perry, participating in the blockade of Tuxpan. After the war, he oversaw the construction of the Mare Island Naval Shipyard, the first U. S. Navy base established on the Pacific Ocean. Though Farragut resided in Norfolk, Virginia prior to the Civil War, he was a Southern Unionist who opposed Southern secession and remained loyal to the Union after the outbreak of the Civil War.
Despite some doubts about Farragut's loyalty, Farragut was assigned command of an attack on the important Confederate port city of New Orleans. After fighting past Fort St. Philip and Fort Jackson, Farragut captured New Orleans in April 1862, he was promoted to rear admiral after the battle and helped extend Union control up along the Mississippi River, participating in the Siege of Port Hudson. With the Union in control of the Mississippi, Farragut led a successful attack on Mobile Bay, home to the last major Confederate port on the Gulf of Mexico. Farragut was promoted to Admiral following the end of the Civil War and remained on active duty until his death in 1870. Farragut was born in 1801 to Jordi Farragut, a native of Menorca and his wife Elizabeth, of North Carolina Scotch-Irish American descent, at Lowe's Ferry on the Holston River in Tennessee, it was a few miles southeast of Campbell's Station, near Knoxville. His father served as a cavalry officer in the Tennessee militia. Jordi Farragut, son of Antoni Farragut and Joana Mesquida, became a Spanish merchant captain from Menorca.
He joined the American Revolutionary cause after arriving in America in 1766, when he changed his first name to George. George was a naval lieutenant during the Revolutionary War, serving first with the South Carolina Navy the Continental Naval forces. George and Elizabeth had moved west to Tennessee after his service in the American Revolution. In 1805, George Farragut accepted a position at the U. S. port of New Orleans. He traveled there first and his family followed, in a 1,700-mile flatboat adventure aided by hired rivermen, the four-year-old Farragut's first voyage; the family was still living in New Orleans. His father made plans to place the young children with friends and family who could better care for them. David's birth name was James. In 1808, after his mother's death, he agreed to live with David Porter, a naval officer whose father had been friends with James's father, as Porter's foster son. In 1812, James adopted the name "David" in honor of his foster father, with whom he went to sea late in 1810.
David Farragut grew up in a naval family, as the foster brother of future Civil War admiral, David Dixon Porter, Commodore William D. Porter. David Farragut's naval career began as a midshipman when he was nine years old, continued for 60 years until his death at the age of 69; this included service in several wars, most notably during the American Civil War, where he gained fame for winning several decisive naval battles. Through the influence of his foster father, Farragut was commissioned a midshipman in the United States Navy on December 17, 1810, at the age of seven. A prize master by the age of 12, Farragut fought in the War of 1812, serving under Captain Porter, his foster father. While serving aboard USS Essex, Farragut participated in the capture of HMS Alert on August 13, 1812 helped to establish America's first naval base and colony in the Pacific, named Fort Madison, during the ill-fated Nuku Hiva Campaign in the Marquesas Islands. At the same time, the Americans battled the hostile tribes on the islands with the help of their Te I'i allies.
Farragut was 12 years old when, during the War of 1812, he was given the assignment to bring a ship captured by the Essex safely to port. He was wounded and captured while serving on the Essex during the engagement at Valparaíso Bay, against the British on March 28, 1814. Farragut was promoted to lieutenant during the operations against West Indian pirates. In 1824, he was placed in command of USS Ferret, his first command of a U. S. naval vessel. He served in the Mosquito Fleet, a fleet of ships fitted out to fight pirates in the Caribbean Sea. After learning his old captain, Commodore Porter, would be commander of the fleet, he asked for, received, orders to serve aboard Greyhound, one of the smaller vessels, commanded by John Porter, brother of David Porter. On February 14, 1823, the fleet set sail for the West Indies where, for the next six months, they would drive the pirates off the sea, rout them from their hiding places in among the islands, he was executive officer aboard the Experiment during its campaign in the West Indies fighting pirates.
In 1847, now a commander, took command of the sloop-of-war USS Saratoga when she was recommissioned at Norfolk Navy Yard in Norfolk, Virginia. Assigned to the Home Squadron for service in the Mexican–American War, Saratoga departed Norfolk on March 29, 1847 bound for the Gulf of Mexico under Farragut's command and upon arriving off Veracruz, Mexico, on April 26, 1847 reported
2010 United States Census
The 2010 United States Census is the twenty-third and most recent United States national census. National Census Day, the reference day used for the census, was April 1, 2010; the census was taken via mail-in citizen self-reporting, with enumerators serving to spot-check randomly selected neighborhoods and communities. As part of a drive to increase the count's accuracy, 635,000 temporary enumerators were hired; the population of the United States was counted as 308,745,538, a 9.7% increase from the 2000 Census. This was the first census in which all states recorded a population of over half a million, as well as the first in which all 100 largest cities recorded populations of over 200,000; as required by the United States Constitution, the U. S. census has been conducted every 10 years since 1790. The 2000 U. S. Census was the previous census completed. Participation in the U. S. Census is required by law in Title 13 of the United States Code. On January 25, 2010, Census Bureau Director Robert Groves inaugurated the 2010 Census enumeration by counting World War II veteran Clifton Jackson, a resident of Noorvik, Alaska.
More than 120 million census forms were delivered by the U. S. Post Office beginning March 15, 2010; the number of forms mailed out or hand-delivered by the Census Bureau was 134 million on April 1, 2010. Although the questionnaire used April 1, 2010 as the reference date as to where a person was living, an insert dated March 15, 2010 included the following printed in bold type: "Please complete and mail back the enclosed census form today." The 2010 Census national mail participation rate was 74%. From April through July 2010, census takers visited households that did not return a form, an operation called "non-response follow-up". In December 2010, the U. S. Census Bureau delivered population information to the U. S. President for apportionment, in March 2011, complete redistricting data was delivered to states. Identifiable information will be available in 2082; the Census Bureau did not use a long form for the 2010 Census. In several previous censuses, one in six households received this long form, which asked for detailed social and economic information.
The 2010 Census used only a short form asking ten basic questions: How many people were living or staying in this house, apartment, or mobile home on April 1, 2010? Were there any additional people staying here on April 1, 2010 that you did not include in Question 1? Mark all that apply: Is this house, apartment, or mobile home – What is your telephone number? What is Person 1's name? What is Person 1's sex? What is Person 1's age and Person 1's date of birth? Is Person 1 of Hispanic, Latino, or Spanish origin? What is Person 1's race? Does Person 1 sometimes live or stay somewhere else? The form included space to repeat all of these questions for up to twelve residents total. In contrast to the 2000 census, an Internet response option was not offered, nor was the form available for download. Detailed socioeconomic information collected during past censuses will continue to be collected through the American Community Survey; the survey provides data about communities in the United States on a 1-year or 3-year cycle, depending on the size of the community, rather than once every 10 years.
A small percentage of the population on a rotating basis will receive the survey each year, no household will receive it more than once every five years. In June 2009, the U. S. Census Bureau announced. However, the final form did not contain a separate "same-sex married couple" option; when noting the relationship between household members, same-sex couples who are married could mark their spouses as being "Husband or wife", the same response given by opposite-sex married couples. An "unmarried partner" option was available for couples; the 2010 census cost $13 billion $42 per capita. Operational costs were $5.4 billion under the $7 billion budget. In December 2010 the Government Accountability Office noted that the cost of conducting the census has doubled each decade since 1970. In a detailed 2004 report to Congress, the GAO called on the Census Bureau to address cost and design issues, at that time, had estimated the 2010 Census cost to be $11 billion. In August 2010, Commerce Secretary Gary Locke announced that the census operational costs came in under budget.
Locke credited the management practices of Census Bureau director Robert Groves, citing in particular the decision to buy additional advertising in locations where responses lagged, which improved the overall response rate. The agency has begun to rely more on questioning neighbors or other reliable third parties when a person could not be reached at home, which reduced the cost of follow-up visits. Census data for about 22% of U. S. househol
County seat
A county seat is an administrative center, seat of government, or capital city of a county or civil parish. The term is used in Canada, Romania and the United States. County towns have a similar function in the United Kingdom and Republic of Ireland, in Jamaica. In most of the United States, counties are the political subdivisions of a state; the city, town, or populated place that houses county government is known as the seat of its respective county. The county legislature, county courthouse, sheriff's department headquarters, hall of records and correctional facility are located in the county seat though some functions may be located or conducted in other parts of the county if it is geographically large. A county seat is but not always, an incorporated municipality; the exceptions include the county seats of counties that have no incorporated municipalities within their borders, such as Arlington County, Virginia. Ellicott City, the county seat of Howard County, is the largest unincorporated county seat in the United States, followed by Towson, the county seat of Baltimore County, Maryland.
Some county seats may not be incorporated in their own right, but are located within incorporated municipalities. For example, Cape May Court House, New Jersey, though unincorporated, is a section of Middle Township, an incorporated municipality. In some of the colonial states, county seats include or included "Court House" as part of their name. In the Canadian provinces of Prince Edward Island, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, the term "shire town" is used in place of county seat. County seats in Taiwan are the administrative centers of the counties. There are 13 county seats in Taiwan, which are in the forms of county-administered city, urban township or rural township. Most counties have only one county seat. However, some counties in Alabama, Georgia, Kentucky, Mississippi, New Hampshire, New York, Vermont have two or more county seats located on opposite sides of the county. An example is Harrison County, which lists both Biloxi and Gulfport as county seats; the practice of multiple county seat towns dates from the days.
There have been few efforts to eliminate the two-seat arrangement, since a county seat is a source of pride for the towns involved. There are 36 counties with multiple county seats in 11 states: Coffee County, Alabama St. Clair County, Alabama Arkansas County, Arkansas Carroll County, Arkansas Clay County, Arkansas Craighead County, Arkansas Franklin County, Arkansas Logan County, Arkansas Mississippi County, Arkansas Prairie County, Arkansas Sebastian County, Arkansas Yell County, Arkansas Columbia County, Georgia Lee County, Iowa Campbell County, Kentucky Kenton County, Kentucky Essex County, Massachusetts Middlesex County, Massachusetts Plymouth County, Massachusetts Bolivar County, Mississippi Carroll County, Mississippi Chickasaw County, Mississippi Harrison County, Mississippi Hinds County, Mississippi Jasper County, Mississippi Jones County, Mississippi Panola County, Mississippi Tallahatchie County, Mississippi Yalobusha County, Mississippi Jackson County, Missouri Hillsborough County, New Hampshire Seneca County, New York Bennington County, Vermont In New England, the town, not the county, is the primary division of local government.
Counties in this region have served as dividing lines for the states' judicial systems. Connecticut and Rhode Island have no county level of thus no county seats. In Vermont and Maine the county seats are designated shire towns. County government consists only of a Superior Court and Sheriff, both located in the respective shire town. Bennington County has two shire towns. In Massachusetts, most government functions which would otherwise be performed by county governments in other states are performed by town or city governments; as such, Massachusetts has dissolved many of its county governments, the state government now operates the registries of deeds and sheriff's offices in those counties. In Virginia, a county seat may be an independent city surrounded by, but not part of, the county of which it is the administrative center. Two counties in South Dakota have their county seat and government services centered in a neighboring county, their county-level services are provided by Fall River Tripp County, respectively.
In Louisiana, divided into parishes rather than counties, county seats are referred to as parish seats. Alaska is divided into boroughs rather than counties; the Unorganized Borough, which covers 49 % of Alaska's area, has equivalent. The state with the most counties is Texas, with 254, the state with the fewest counties is Delaware, with 3. County seat war Administrative center County town, administrative centres in Ireland and the UK Chef-lieu, administrative centres in Algeria, Luxembourg, France and Tunisia Municipality, equivalent to county in many c
Hurricane Camille
Hurricane Camille was the second most intense tropical cyclone on record to strike the United States. The most intense storm of the 1969 Atlantic hurricane season, Camille formed as a tropical depression on August 14 south of Cuba from a long-tracked tropical wave. Located in a favorable environment for strengthening, the storm intensified into a Category 2 hurricane before striking the western part of Cuba on August 15. Emerging into the Gulf of Mexico, Camille underwent another period of rapid intensification and became a Category 5 hurricane the next day as it moved northward towards the Louisiana–Mississippi region. Despite weakening on August 17, the hurricane re-intensified back to a Category 5 hurricane before it made landfall in Pass Christian, Mississippi early on August 18, at peak intensity, with a minimum pressure of 900 mbar; this was the second-lowest pressure recorded for a US landfall. Only the 1935 Labor Day hurricane had a lower pressure at landfall; as Camille pushed inland, it weakened and was a tropical depression by the time it was over the Ohio Valley.
Once it emerged offshore, Camille was able to restrengthen to a strong tropical storm, before it became extratropical on August 22. Camille was subsequently absorbed by a frontal storm over the North Atlantic on the same day. Camille caused tremendous damage in its wake, produced a peak official storm surge of 24 feet; the hurricane flattened nearly everything along the coast of the US state of Mississippi, caused additional flooding and deaths inland while crossing the Appalachian Mountains of Virginia. In total, Camille caused $1.43 billion in damages. In the 1960s, Atlantic hurricane names consisted of women's names which were reused every fourth year; the practice of retiring hurricane names was meant to be temporary, with the guideline that a name be retired for ten years. When'Carla' was retired in 1961 it was replaced on the 1965 list with'Carol', a name retired in 1954 when its namesake devastated New England. Since over a decade had passed, Carol was eligible for reuse. Carol entered the 1969 list, but scientists from the National Hurricane Research Laboratory asked the naming committee in January 1969 to permanently retire Carol and Hazel since papers were still being written about the storms.
The committee needed a replacement ` C' name. John Hope's daughter Camille was involved in an advanced science and math program in high school and had carried out a required independent research project. John Hope asked Dr. Banner Miller to mentor her in her investigation of hurricanes and long-term atmospheric trends. Miller suggested her name for the list. "We kept it quiet for many years", Camille said in a phone interview circa 2014. The origins of Hurricane Camille were from a tropical wave off the western coast of Africa on August 5, 1969, it tracked westward along the 15th parallel north, a tropical disturbance became identifiable on satellite imagery on August 9. By that time, the thunderstorm activity concentrated into a circular area of convection; the next day, it moved through the Lesser Antilles, although there was no evidence of a closed circulation. On August 13, the wave passed near or over the southern coast of Jamaica as its convection spread northeastward through the Bahamas.
Subsequently, it began a slower motion to the northwest. It is believed that a tropical depression formed shortly thereafter, early on August 14, it became a tropical storm a few hours later. On the morning of August 14, the Hurricane Hunters flew to investigate for a closed circulation near the Bahamas and near the Cayman Islands; the crew observed a developing center in the western Caribbean, winds had reached tropical storm status. By the storm had strengthened into a strong tropical storm with winds of 60 mph, about 50 miles west-northwest of Grand Cayman. Upon first being classified as a tropical storm, Camille was located in an area favorable for further strengthening, although it intensified, it was located within an area of light wind shear and an overall warm environment. Additionally, the storm developed strong low-level inflow from the deep southern Caribbean, which continuously brought moisture into the storm. Throughout its duration, it was a small tropical cyclone, although with a radius of gale-force winds spreading 100 miles to the north, the storm's thunderstorm area spread over Cuba.
As the storm approached the western coast of Cuba, it began rapid deepening, reaching hurricane status and less than 12 hours attained winds of 110 mph. Prior to landfall, its eye was tracked by radar from Havana. Camille was a small hurricane as it crossed western Cuba, its winds decreased to 105 mph over land before it emerged into the Gulf of Mexico. Hurricane Camille was forecast to turn northeastward toward the Florida panhandle. Instead, it continued northwestward and intensified after leaving Cuba, its eye contracted to a diameter of less than 8 miles, strong rainbands developed around the entire hurricane. Due to the small eye, Hurricane Hunters at first had difficulties in determining the strength. At the time, it was not expected to intensify further. However, a subsequent Hurricane Hunters flight early on August 17 recorded a pressure of 905 mbar (hPa
