Frank Kell
Franklin Marian "Frank" Kell, along with his brother-in-law Joseph A. Kemp, was one of the two principal entrepreneurs in the early development of Wichita Falls, Texas; the son of Francis Marian Kell and the former Sarah Lucinda Potter, Kell was born of Irish descent in Clifton, Texas, a community founded by Norwegian settlers in the 1850s. His irregular formal education ended when, at the age of 18, he was hired to clerk in a store in Clifton, he soon relocated to Galveston, where he was employed in the export of grain, but he returned to Clifton to engage for a number of years there in the milling business. In 1885, Kell married the younger sister of Joseph Kemp. In 1896, the brothers-in-law Kell and Kemp purchased control of the Wichita Valley Milling Company, Frank and Lula Kell relocated from Clifton to Wichita Falls, where they spent the remainder of their lives. Joseph Kemp had moved to Wichita Falls in 1883. Kell became the manager of the milling firm, renamed the Wichita Elevator Company.
Despite a fire in 1900, Wichita Mill and Elevator Company managed to augment its daily capacity to a thousand barrels of grain. In 1905, Kell and W. O. Anderson purchased a mill in Vernon to the west of Wichita Falls in Wilbarger County. Kell's Wichita Mill and Elevator Company increased its daily capacity to 3,500 barrels. In 1918, Kell became the sole owner of the company. Thereafter, a hundred small-town grain elevators were constructed in the general region, plants were added at Waco, Oklahoma City, Perry, Oklahoma. In 1928, Kell sold the company to General Mills for stock holdings in that corporation. Kell engaged in the railroad business as either the owner or a partner in six rail lines, including: Wichita Falls Railway Wichita Falls and Southern Railroad Wichita Falls and Northwestern Railway Clinton-Oklahoma-Western Railroad Company of Texas San Antonio and Gulf Railroad Missouri and North Arkansas RailroadCollectively, the companies had more than 1,300 miles of track; the Wichita Falls and Northwestern and the Wichita Falls and Southern railroads reached into wheat and coal-producing areas.
In 1911, the Missouri-Kansas-Texas Railroad known as the Katy, purchased from Kemp and Kell the Wichita Falls Railway, which linked Wichita Falls with Henrietta in Clay County. Until his death in 1941 at the age of 81, Kell still managed 565 miles of railroad track; the Wichita Falls and Northwestern operated from 1906 to 1923 from Wichita Falls to Forgan in the Oklahoma Panhandle. Kell was further engaged in cattle ranching and the refining of petroleum and cottonseed oil. From 1914 to 1927, he was appointed as a director of the Eleventh District Federal Reserve Bank, based in Dallas, Texas. During World War I, he was the chairman of the milling division for both Texas and New Mexico under Food Administrator and U. S. President Herbert Hoover. In 1920, Kell was named a director of the United States Chamber of Commerce. One of Kell's sons-in-law, Orville Bullington, a Missouri native and lawyer and businessman in Wichita Falls, was the 1932 Republican nominee for governor of Texas, he polled some 38% of the general election vote against the Democrat former Governor Miriam Wallace "Ma" Ferguson as President Hoover was crushed in his re-election bid in Texas and nationally.
After Kell's death, Bullington became president of the Wichita Falls and Southern Railroad and was its executive at the time of its demise. Kell himself was involved with the Republican Party after his son-in-law, Orville Bullington in 1918 left the Democratic Party. In 1922, Kell was among the fundraisers for George Peddy, a native of Tenaha in Shelby County in East Texas, a former short-term member of the Texas House of Representatives, an assistant district attorney from Houston, who became a combination Republican/Independent candidate for the U. S. Senate. Peddy, was handily defeated by the Democratic nominee, Earle Bradford Mayfield of Overton in East Texas, in the general elect held on November 7. An outgoing member of the Texas Railroad Commission, Mayfield carried the backing of the Ku Klux Klan and the prohibition forces. For months thereafter, the election was disputed because of questions over filing deadlines which had forced Peddy to run as a write-in candidate. After a nine-month delay, the Senate awarded the seat to Mayfield, who beat Peddy by a two-to-one margin, an outcome attributed to party loyalty among the state's large mass of Democratic voters.
Mayfield, in turn, was unseated in the 1928 Democratic runoff election by U. S. Representative Tom Connally, a native of McLennan County. Kell's namesake grandson, Frank Kell Cahoon, left Wichita Falls as a young man to enter the oil and natural gas business in Midland and was in 1965 the only Republican member of the Texas House of Representatives, during a portion of his four-year stint in the chamber, he was the son of the former Sibyl Kell and Charles Wilbur Cahoon, Jr.. Prior to 1909, the Kells lived in a residence downtown on Scott Street, they moved into the Kell House, a two-story Victorian home constructed between 1908 and 1910 at 900 Bluff Street and located just east of the Central Freeway and across from the First Baptist Church in Wichita Falls. Lula Kemp Kell remained in the home until her death in 1957; the Kell House has unique features, including an elegant spiral staircase to the second floor. A formal parlor on the left side of the lo
Drilling rig
A drilling rig is a machine that creates holes in the earth's subsurface. Drilling rigs can be massive structures housing equipment used to drill water wells, oil wells, or natural gas extraction wells, or they can be small enough to be moved manually by one person and such are called augers. Drilling rigs can sample subsurface mineral deposits, test rock and groundwater physical properties, can be used to install sub-surface fabrications, such as underground utilities, tunnels or wells. Drilling rigs can be mobile equipment mounted on trucks, tracks or trailers, or more permanent land or marine-based structures; the term "rig" therefore refers to the complex equipment, used to penetrate the surface of the Earth's crust. Small to medium-sized drilling rigs are mobile, such as those used in mineral exploration drilling, blast-hole, water wells and environmental investigations. Larger rigs are capable of drilling through thousands of metres of the Earth's crust, using large "mud pumps" to circulate drilling mud through the drill bit and up the casing annulus, for cooling and removing the "cuttings" while a well is drilled.
Hoists in the rig can lift hundreds of tons of pipe. Other equipment can force acid or sand into reservoirs to facilitate extraction of the oil or natural gas. Marine rigs may operate thousands of miles distant from the supply base with infrequent crew rotation or cycle; until internal combustion engines were developed in the late 19th century, the main method for drilling rock was muscle power of man or animal. The technique of oil drilling through percussion or rotary drilling has its origins dating back to the ancient Chinese Han Dynasty in 500 BC, where percussion drilling was used to extract natural gas in the Sichuan province. Early oil and gas drilling methods were primitive as it required several technical skills; the skills involved the availability of heavy iron bits and long bamboo poles, the manufacturing of long and sturdy cables woven from bamboo fiber, levers. Heavy iron bits were attached to long bamboo cables suspended from bamboo derricks and were raised and dropped into a manually dug hole by having two to six men jumping on a lever.
Han dynasty oil wells made by percussion drilling was effective but only reached 10 meters deep and 100 meters by the 10th century. By the 16th century, the Chinese were drilling oil wells more than 2000 feet deep. A modernized variant of the ancient Chinese drilling technique was used by American businessman Edwin Drake to drill Pennsylvania's first oil well in 1859 using small steam engines to power the drilling process rather than by human muscle. In the 1970s, outside of the oil and gas industry, roller bits using mud circulation were replaced by the first pneumatic reciprocating piston Reverse Circulation drills, became obsolete for most shallow drilling, are now only used in certain situations where rocks preclude other methods. RC drilling proved much faster and more efficient, continues to improve with better metallurgy, deriving harder, more durable bits, compressors delivering higher air pressures at higher volumes, enabling deeper and faster penetration. Diamond drilling has remained unchanged since its inception.
Oil and natural gas drilling rigs are used not only to identify geologic reservoirs but to create holes that allow the extraction of oil or natural gas from those reservoirs. In onshore oil and gas fields once a well has been drilled, the drilling rig will be moved off of the well and a service rig, purpose-built for completions will be moved on to the well to get the well on line; this frees up the drilling rig to drill another hole and streamlines the operation as well as allowing for specialization of certain services, i.e. completions vs. drilling. Mining drilling rigs are used for two main purposes, exploration drilling which aims to identify the location and quality of a mineral, production drilling, used in the production-cycle for mining. Drilling rigs used for rock blasting for surface mines vary in size dependent on the size of the hole desired, is classified into smaller pre-split and larger production holes. Underground mining uses a variety of drill rigs dependent on the desired purpose, such as production, bolting and tunnelling.
In early oil exploration, drilling rigs were semi-permanent in nature and the derricks were built on site and left in place after the completion of the well. In more recent times drilling rigs are expensive custom-built machines that can be moved from well to well; some light duty drilling rigs are like a mobile crane and are more used to drill water wells. Larger land rigs must be broken apart into sections and loads to move to a new place, a process which can take weeks. Small mobile drilling rigs are used to drill or bore piles. Rigs can range from 100 ton continuous flight auger rigs to small air powered rigs used to drill holes in quarries, etc; these rigs use the same equipment as the oil drilling rigs, just on a smaller scale. The drilling mechanisms outlined below differ mechanically in terms of the machinery used, but in terms of the method by which drill cuttings are removed from the cutting face of the drill and returned to surface. There are many types and designs of drilling rigs, with many drilling rigs capable of switching or combining different drilling technologies as needed.
Drilling rigs can be described using any of the following attributes: Mechan
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
Wichita Falls, Texas
Wichita Falls is a city in and the county seat of Wichita County, United States. It is the principal city of the Wichita Falls Metropolitan Statistical Area, which encompasses all of Archer and Wichita Counties. According to the 2010 census, it had a population of 104,553, making it the 38th-most populous city in Texas. In addition, its central business district is 5 miles from Sheppard Air Force Base, home to the Air Force's largest technical training wing and the Euro-NATO Joint Jet Pilot Training program, the world's only multinationally staffed and managed flying training program chartered to produce combat pilots for both USAF and NATO; the city is home to the Newby-McMahon Building, constructed downtown in 1919 and featured in Robert Ripley's Ripley's Believe It or Not!. The Choctaw Native Americans settled the area in the early 19th century from their native Mississippi area once Americans negotiated to relocate them after the Treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek. American settlers arrived in the 1860s to form cattle ranches.
The city was titled Wichita Falls on September 27, 1872. On that day, a sale of town lots was held at what is now the corner of Seventh and Ohio Streets – the birthplace of the city; the Fort Worth & Denver City Railway arrived in September 1882, the same year the city became the county seat of Wichita County. The city grew westwards from the original FW&DC train depot, located at the northwest corner of Seventh Street and the FW&DC; this area is now referred to as the Depot Square Historic District, declared a Texas Historic Landmark. The early history of Wichita Falls well into the 20th century rests on the work of two entrepreneurs, Joseph A. Kemp and his brother-in-law, Frank Kell. Kemp and Kell were pioneers in food processing and retailing, flour milling, cattle and oil. A flood in 1886 destroyed. After nearly 100 years of visitors wanting to visit the nonexistent falls, the city built an artificial waterfall beside the river in Lucy Park; the recreated falls are recirculate at 3,500 gallons per minute.
They are visible to south-bound traffic on Interstate 44. The city is seeking funding to rebuild and restore the downtown area. Downtown Wichita Falls was the city's main shopping area for many years, but lost ground to the creation of new shopping centers throughout the city beginning with Parker Square in 1953 and other similar developments during the 1960s and 1970s, culminating with the opening of Sikes Senter Mall in 1974. Wichita Falls was once home to offices of several oil companies and related industries, along with oil refineries operated by the Continental Oil Company until 1952 and Panhandle Oil Company American Petrofina) until 1965. Both firms continued to use a portion of their former refineries as gasoline/oil terminal facilities for many years. A devastating tornado hit the north and northwest portions of Wichita Falls along with Sheppard Air Force Base during the afternoon of April 3, 1964; as the first violent tornado on record to hit the Wichita Falls area, it left seven dead and more than 100 injured.
Additionally, the tornado caused $15 million in property damage with about 225 homes destroyed and another 250 damaged. It was rated as an F5, the highest rating on the Fujita scale, but it is overshadowed by the 1979 tornado. An F4 tornado struck the populated southern sections of Wichita Falls in the late afternoon on Tuesday, April 10, 1979, it was part of an outbreak. Despite having nearly an hour's advance warning that severe weather was imminent, 42 people were killed and 1,800 were injured because it arrived just in time for many people to be driving home from work, it left 20,000 people homeless and caused $400 million in damage, a U. S. record not topped by an individual tornado until the F5 Moore-Oklahoma City tornado of May 3, 1999. Wichita Falls is about 15 miles south of the border with Oklahoma, 115 mi northwest of Fort Worth, 140 mi southwest of Oklahoma City. According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of 70.71 square miles, of which 70.69 square miles are land and 0.02 square miles is covered by water.
Wichita Falls experiences a humid subtropical climate, featuring long hot and humid summers, cool winters. The city has some of the highest summer daily maximum temperatures in the entire U. S. outside of the Desert Southwest. Temperatures have hit 100 °F as early as March 27 and as late as October 17, but more reach that level on 28 days annually, with 102 days of 90 °F or higher annually. However, 59 to 60 nights of freezing lows occur, an average of 4.8 days where the high does not rise above freezing. The monthly daily average temperature ranges from 42.0 °F in January to 84.4 °F in July. Extremes in temperature have ranged from −12 °F on January 4, 1947, to 117 °F on June 28, 1980. Snowfall is sporadic and averages 4.1 in per season, while rainfall is greatest in early summer. In September 2011, Wichita Falls became the first Texas city to have 100 days of 100 °F in one year. During the 2015 Texas–Oklahoma floods, Wichita Falls broke its all-time record for the wettest month, with 17.00 inches of rain recorded in May 2015.
Wichita Falls is no longer experiencing drought conditions. During a three-week period in May 2015, 17 inches of rain
Joseph A. Kemp
Joseph Alexander Kemp, sometimes known as Jodie Kemp, was an entrepreneur and investor who along with his brother-in-law Frank Kell is considered one of the modern founders of Wichita Falls, Texas. Kemp was born in Clifton in Bosque County in Central Texas, he was the second of eight children of William T. Kemp from Tennessee, the former Emma Frances Stinnett, a native of Missouri. William Kemp arrived in Clifton in 1856, where he became a prosperous merchant and served as the Bosque County tax assessor; the senior Kemp died in Clifton at the age of forty-four. The third Kemp child, William Clinton Kemp, died in early childhood. In 1878, Joseph Kemp graduated from Clifton High School and took over operation of his father's general store. Within two years, Kemp sold his interest in the store at a profit to a partner. While Kemp moved to Wichita Falls in 1883, Frank Kell and his wife Lula, Kemp's sister, both of whom were born in Clifton, did not relocate to Wichita Falls until 1896. Kemp established a small wholesale and retail business that furnished supplies for area residents and ranchers as well as the Indian reservation at nearby Fort Sill in the Indian Territory, now Oklahoma.
He sold that business in 1887. In 1890, Kemp launched the J. A. Kemp Wholesale Grocery Company, with headquarters in what is now Depot Square in downtown Wichita Falls, he established branch stores throughout West Texas. This enterprise helped to make Wichita Falls into an important regional trade center. In 1903, Kemp sold controlling interest in the grocery company but maintained the title of company vice president. From 1891 to 1914, Kemp was president of the former City National Bank, founded in 1890 in Wichita Falls. Frank Kell played a similar role with the American National Bank and Trust Company, which maintains a downtown branch at 719 Scott Avenue. In 1894, Kemp assumed the presidency of the Wichita Falls Railway. After the sale of $20,000 worth of stock and $250,000 in bonds, construction began to link Wichita Falls with the tracks of the Missouri-Kansas-Texas Railroad called the Katy, at Henrietta in Clay County some twenty miles to the southeast. Missouri-Kansas-Texas officials built in Wichita Falls a station, offices, a roundhouse, three switching tracks.
In 1906, Kemp chartered the Wichita Falls and Northwest Railway Company of Texas and constructed a rail line into the wheat-producing region of Oklahoma, when it became the Wichita Falls and Northwestern Railway. Kemp organized the Wichita Falls and Southern Railroad, which connected Wichita Falls with the coal fields around Newcastle near Graham in Young County, Texas, he established the Wichita Falls and Wellington, which linked Wichita Falls and Wellington in Collingsworth County, Texas. Kemp served as president of each of these rail companies. In 1911, the Missouri-Kansas-Texas purchased Kemp's remaining lines, including the eighteen miles of the Wichita Falls Railway. Kemp hence helped to make Wichita Falls the hub city of western Texas railroads. In 1918, Kemp and two partners established the K-M-A Oil Company, he subsequently became a major shareholder and vice president of the Texhoma Oil and Refining Company a corporation now based in Tishomingo in Johnston County in southern Oklahoma.
In 1910, Kemp's Wichita Falls Traction Company established an electric rail line. He founded and served as president of both the Wichita Falls Glass and the Wichita Bottle Manufacturing companies, he established the Wichita Motor Truck Company, which manufactured and sold the durable Wichita trucks throughout the United States and Canada from 1911 until the company closed in 1931. The plant is now inhabited by the Wichita Energy Company; these Kemp endeavors as a whole worked to establish Wichita Falls as a manufacturing center. In 1915, Kemp introduced Guernsey cattle into North Texas. From 1883, when he arrived in Wichita Falls, until 1885, Kemp served on the board of the Wichita Falls Independent School District, he was appointed Wichita County treasurer and won election as a Democrat to two consecutive terms in that position. Kemp was a regent of the University of Texas in Austin from October 1917 through May 1921 under appointment of Governor William P. Hobby, Sr. of Houston. In 1917, Kemp and his wife donated a library building and books to Wichita Falls, now the Kemp Center for the Arts located on Lamar Street across from the office of the Times Record News.
The Wichita Falls Public Library today is located a few blocks north of the original Kemp building. In 1887, Kemp proposed a bond issue to finance the construction of a dam and a reservoir on Holliday Creek. However, the Texas Constitution of 1876 prohibited such bond issues; when lobbying trips to Austin and Washington, D. C. failed to secure backing for a constitutional amendment, Kemp moved to establish Lake Wichita through the Lake Wichita Irrigation and Water Company, which with a partner from Galveston financed the construction of a dam and a reservoir just south of Wichita Falls. In 1923, voters approved a constitutional amendment to permit the use of bonds to finance irrigation projects. In time more than $4 million was spent to establish two dams on the Wichita River for dual purposes of irrigation and flood control. Lake Kemp, located near Seymour, Texas, in Baylor County forty miles west of Wichita Falls, is named in his honor. In 1882, Kemp married in Clifton the former Flora Ann Anderson.
The couple had five children, all born in Wichita Falls: Emma Sibyl Kemp Maer, the wife of William Newton Maer, Mary Jewell Kemp Langford, wife of William Smith Langford, Flora Charlotte Kemp (1890-
Marriage
Marriage called matrimony or wedlock, is a or ritually recognised union between spouses that establishes rights and obligations between those spouses, as well as between them and any resulting biological or adopted children and affinity. The definition of marriage varies around the world not only between cultures and between religions, but throughout the history of any given culture and religion, evolving to both expand and constrict in who and what is encompassed, but it is principally an institution in which interpersonal relationships sexual, are acknowledged or sanctioned. In some cultures, marriage is recommended or considered to be compulsory before pursuing any sexual activity; when defined broadly, marriage is considered a cultural universal. A marriage ceremony is known as a wedding. Individuals may marry for several reasons, including legal, libidinal, financial and religious purposes. Whom they marry may be influenced by gender determined rules of incest, prescriptive marriage rules, parental choice and individual desire.
In some areas of the world, arranged marriage, child marriage and sometimes forced marriage, may be practiced as a cultural tradition. Conversely, such practices may be outlawed and penalized in parts of the world out of concerns of the infringement of women's rights, or the infringement of children's rights, because of international law. Around the world in developed democracies, there has been a general trend towards ensuring equal rights within marriage for women and recognizing the marriages of interfaith and same-sex couples; these trends coincide with the broader human rights movement. Marriage can be recognized by a state, an organization, a religious authority, a tribal group, a local community, or peers, it is viewed as a contract. When a marriage is performed and carried out by a government institution in accordance with the marriage laws of the jurisdiction, without religious content, it is a civil marriage. Civil marriage recognizes and creates the rights and obligations intrinsic to matrimony before the state.
When a marriage is performed with religious content under the auspices of a religious institution it is a religious marriage. Religious marriage recognizes and creates the rights and obligations intrinsic to matrimony before that religion. Religious marriage is known variously as sacramental marriage in Catholicism, nikah in Islam, nissuin in Judaism, various other names in other faith traditions, each with their own constraints as to what constitutes, who can enter into, a valid religious marriage; some countries do not recognize locally performed religious marriage on its own, require a separate civil marriage for official purposes. Conversely, civil marriage does not exist in some countries governed by a religious legal system, such as Saudi Arabia, where marriages contracted abroad might not be recognized if they were contracted contrary to Saudi interpretations of Islamic religious law. In countries governed by a mixed secular-religious legal system, such as in Lebanon and Israel, locally performed civil marriage does not exist within the country, preventing interfaith and various other marriages contradicting religious laws from being entered into in the country, civil marriages performed abroad are recognized by the state if they conflict with religious laws.
The act of marriage creates normative or legal obligations between the individuals involved, any offspring they may produce or adopt. In terms of legal recognition, most sovereign states and other jurisdictions limit marriage to opposite-sex couples and a diminishing number of these permit polygyny, child marriages, forced marriages. In modern times, a growing number of countries developed democracies, have lifted bans on and have established legal recognition for the marriages of interfaith and same-sex couples; some cultures allow the dissolution of marriage through annulment. In some areas, child marriages and polygamy may occur in spite of national laws against the practice. Since the late twentieth century, major social changes in Western countries have led to changes in the demographics of marriage, with the age of first marriage increasing, fewer people marrying, more couples choosing to cohabit rather than marry. For example, the number of marriages in Europe decreased by 30% from 1975 to 2005.
In most cultures, married women had few rights of their own, being considered, along with the family's children, the property of the husband. In Europe, the United States, other places in the developed world, beginning in the late 19th century and lasting through the 21st century, marriage has undergone gradual legal changes, aimed at improving the rights of the wife; these changes included giving wives legal identities of their own, abolishing the right of husbands to physically discipline their wives, giving wives property rights, liberalizing divorce laws, providing wives with reproductive rights of their own, requiring a wife's consent when sexual relations occur. These changes have occurred in Western countries. In the 21st century, there continue to be controversies regarding the legal status of married women, legal acceptance of or leniency towards violence within marriage, traditional marriage customs such as dowry and bride price, for
North Texas
North Texas is a term used by residents of Dallas, Fort Worth, surrounding areas to describe much of the northern portion of the U. S. state of Texas. Residents of the Dallas–Fort Worth Metroplex consider North Texas to include the area south of Oklahoma, east of Abilene, west of Paris, north of Waco. A more precise term for this region would be the northern part of the central portion of Texas, it does not include the Panhandle of Texas, which expands further north than the region described, nor does it include most of the region near the northern border of Texas. Today North Texas is centered upon the Dallas–Fort Worth Metroplex, the largest metropolitan area in Texas. People in the Dallas and Fort Worth areas sometimes use the terms "Metroplex", "DFW", "North Texas" interchangeably. However, North Texas refers to a much larger area that includes many rural counties along the northern border. During the early years of the Civil War, there were many Unionists in the rural counties, as there were few slaveholders.
Many of the largest cities in North Texas outside Dallas and Fort Worth still follow a rural Southern way of life in dialect, mannerisms and cuisine. The North Texas climate is subtropical with hot summers, it is continental, characterized by a wide annual temperature range. Average annual precipitation varies ranging from less than 28 to more than 48 inches. Severe storms are frequent in the spring, as the area lies in the southern section of "tornado alley". South is the prevailing wind direction, southerly winds are high and persist for several days. Strong northerly winds occur during the passage of cold fronts. Dusty conditions are infrequent, occurring with westerly winds. Dust storm frequency and intensity depend on soil conditions in eastern New Mexico, west Texas, the Texas Panhandle. Winters are mild, but northers occur about three times each month, are accompanied by sudden drops in temperature. In Dallas, a record-setting 12.8 inches of snow fell in February 2011. Periods of extreme cold that occur are short-lived, so that in January mild weather occurs frequently.
The highest temperatures of summer are associated with fair skies, westerly winds and low humidities. Characteristically, hot spells in summer are broken into three- to five-day periods by thunderstorm activity. There are only a few nights each summer when the low temperature exceeds 80 °F. Summer daytime temperatures exceed 100 °F. Air conditioners are recommended for maximum comfort indoors and while traveling via automobile. Throughout the year, rainfall occurs more during the night. Periods of rainy weather last for only a day or two, are followed by several days with fair skies. A large part of the annual precipitation results from thunderstorm activity, with occasional heavy rainfall over brief periods of time. Thunderstorms are most frequent in the spring. Hail falls on about two or three days a year, ordinarily with only scattered damage. Windstorms occurring during thunderstorm activity are sometimes destructive. Snowfall is uncommon; the average length of the warm season is about 249 days.
The average last occurrence of 32 °F or below is mid March and the average first occurrence of 32 °F or below is in late November. Although the terms "Northeastern Texas" or "North Texas" are not official state designations, the Texas State Data Center and Office of the State Demographer lists the following counties as belonging to the North Central Texas Council of Governments: The Texas State Demographer lists the following regional county groupings, some or all of which are included in the informal meaning of the terms "North Texas" or "North Central Texas." Additionally, some other Texas counties contiguous with those named above are sometimes included in the general meaning of "North Texas." In the North Texas region there is one combined statistical area, three metropolitan areas, six micropolitan areas. Metropolitan Statistical Areas Dallas–Fort Worth–Arlington Sherman-Denison Micropolitan Statistical Areas Athens Corsicana Durant, OK Gainesville Granbury Mineral Wells Sulphur Springs Metropolitan Statistical Areas Wichita Falls Micropolitan Statistical Areas Vernon Micropolitan Statistical Areas Stephenville Dallas–Fort Worth Metroplex Wichita Falls Metropolitan Area Sherman–Denison Metropolitan Area Dallas Love Field Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport Wichita Falls Municipal Airport Dallas Area Rapid Transit Denton County Transportation Authority Falls Ride Trinity Metro TAPS The North Texas region has teams from the four major professional sports leagues.
Major professional sports first came to the area in 1960, when the Dallas Cowboys began competing in the National Football League and the Dallas Texans began competing in the American Football League.. In 1972, Major League Baseball's Washington Senators moved to Arlington to become the Texas Rangers, named after the statewide law enforcement agency; the National Basketball Association expanded into North Texas in 1980 when the Dallas Mavericks were added to the league. The fourth sport was added in 19
