United States
The United States of America known as the United States or America, is a country composed of 50 states, a federal district, five major self-governing territories, various possessions. At 3.8 million square miles, the United States is the world's third or fourth largest country by total area and is smaller than the entire continent of Europe's 3.9 million square miles. With a population of over 327 million people, the U. S. is the third most populous country. The capital is Washington, D. C. and the largest city by population is New York City. Forty-eight states and the capital's federal district are contiguous in North America between Canada and Mexico; the State of Alaska is in the northwest corner of North America, bordered by Canada to the east and across the Bering Strait from Russia to the west. The State of Hawaii is an archipelago in the mid-Pacific Ocean; the U. S. territories are scattered about the Pacific Ocean and the Caribbean Sea, stretching across nine official time zones. The diverse geography and wildlife of the United States make it one of the world's 17 megadiverse countries.
Paleo-Indians migrated from Siberia to the North American mainland at least 12,000 years ago. European colonization began in the 16th century; the United States emerged from the thirteen British colonies established along the East Coast. Numerous disputes between Great Britain and the colonies following the French and Indian War led to the American Revolution, which began in 1775, the subsequent Declaration of Independence in 1776; the war ended in 1783 with the United States becoming the first country to gain independence from a European power. The current constitution was adopted in 1788, with the first ten amendments, collectively named the Bill of Rights, being ratified in 1791 to guarantee many fundamental civil liberties; the United States embarked on a vigorous expansion across North America throughout the 19th century, acquiring new territories, displacing Native American tribes, admitting new states until it spanned the continent by 1848. During the second half of the 19th century, the Civil War led to the abolition of slavery.
By the end of the century, the United States had extended into the Pacific Ocean, its economy, driven in large part by the Industrial Revolution, began to soar. The Spanish–American War and World War I confirmed the country's status as a global military power; the United States emerged from World War II as a global superpower, the first country to develop nuclear weapons, the only country to use them in warfare, a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council. Sweeping civil rights legislation, notably the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and the Fair Housing Act of 1968, outlawed discrimination based on race or color. During the Cold War, the United States and the Soviet Union competed in the Space Race, culminating with the 1969 U. S. Moon landing; the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 left the United States as the world's sole superpower. The United States is the world's oldest surviving federation, it is a representative democracy.
The United States is a founding member of the United Nations, World Bank, International Monetary Fund, Organization of American States, other international organizations. The United States is a developed country, with the world's largest economy by nominal GDP and second-largest economy by PPP, accounting for a quarter of global GDP; the U. S. economy is post-industrial, characterized by the dominance of services and knowledge-based activities, although the manufacturing sector remains the second-largest in the world. The United States is the world's largest importer and the second largest exporter of goods, by value. Although its population is only 4.3% of the world total, the U. S. holds 31% of the total wealth in the world, the largest share of global wealth concentrated in a single country. Despite wide income and wealth disparities, the United States continues to rank high in measures of socioeconomic performance, including average wage, human development, per capita GDP, worker productivity.
The United States is the foremost military power in the world, making up a third of global military spending, is a leading political and scientific force internationally. In 1507, the German cartographer Martin Waldseemüller produced a world map on which he named the lands of the Western Hemisphere America in honor of the Italian explorer and cartographer Amerigo Vespucci; the first documentary evidence of the phrase "United States of America" is from a letter dated January 2, 1776, written by Stephen Moylan, Esq. to George Washington's aide-de-camp and Muster-Master General of the Continental Army, Lt. Col. Joseph Reed. Moylan expressed his wish to go "with full and ample powers from the United States of America to Spain" to seek assistance in the revolutionary war effort; the first known publication of the phrase "United States of America" was in an anonymous essay in The Virginia Gazette newspaper in Williamsburg, Virginia, on April 6, 1776. The second draft of the Articles of Confederation, prepared by John Dickinson and completed by June 17, 1776, at the latest, declared "The name of this Confederation shall be the'United States of America'".
The final version of the Articles sent to the states for ratification in late 1777 contains the sentence "The Stile of this Confederacy shall be'The United States of America'". In June 1776, Thomas Jefferson wrote the phrase "UNITED STATES OF AMERICA" in all capitalized letters in the headline of his "original Rough draught" of the Declaration of Independence; this draft of the document did not surface unti
National Football League
The National Football League is a professional American football league consisting of 32 teams, divided between the National Football Conference and the American Football Conference. The NFL is one of the four major professional sports leagues in North America, the highest professional level of American football in the world; the NFL's 17-week regular season runs from early September to late December, with each team playing 16 games and having one bye week. Following the conclusion of the regular season, six teams from each conference advance to the playoffs, a single-elimination tournament culminating in the Super Bowl, held in the first Sunday in February, is played between the champions of the NFC and AFC; the NFL was formed in 1920 as the American Professional Football Association before renaming itself the National Football League for the 1922 season. The NFL agreed to merge with the American Football League in 1966, the first Super Bowl was held at the end of that season. Today, the NFL has the highest average attendance of any professional sports league in the world and is the most popular sports league in the United States.
The Super Bowl is among the biggest club sporting events in the world and individual Super Bowl games account for many of the most watched television programs in American history, all occupying the Nielsen's Top 5 tally of the all-time most watched U. S. television broadcasts by 2015. The NFL's executive officer is the commissioner; the players in the league belong to the National Football League Players Association. The team with the most NFL championships is the Green Bay Packers with thirteen; the current NFL champions are the New England Patriots, who defeated the Los Angeles Rams in Super Bowl LIII for their sixth Super Bowl championship. On August 20, 1920, a meeting was held by representatives of the Akron Pros, Canton Bulldogs, Cleveland Indians, Dayton Triangles at the Jordan and Hupmobile auto showroom in Canton, Ohio; this meeting resulted in the formation of the American Professional Football Conference, a group who, according to the Canton Evening Repository, intended to "raise the standard of professional football in every way possible, to eliminate bidding for players between rival clubs and to secure cooperation in the formation of schedules".
Another meeting was held on September 17, 1920 with representatives from teams from four states-Akron, Canton and Dayton from Ohio. The league was renamed to the American Professional Football Association; the league elected Jim Thorpe as its first president, consisted of 14 teams. The Massillon Tigers from Massillon, Ohio was at the September 17 meeting, but did not field a team in 1920. Only two of these teams, the Decatur Staleys and the Chicago Cardinals, remain. Although the league did not maintain official standings for its 1920 inaugural season and teams played schedules that included non-league opponents, the APFA awarded the Akron Pros the championship by virtue of their 8–0–3 record; the first event occurred on September 26, 1920 when the Rock Island Independents defeated the non-league St. Paul Ideals 48–0 at Douglas Park. On October 3, 1920, the first full week of league play occurred; the following season resulted in the Chicago Staleys controversially winning the title over the Buffalo All-Americans.
On June 24, 1922, the APFA changed its name to the National Football League. In 1932, the season ended with the Chicago Bears and the Portsmouth Spartans tied for first in the league standings. At the time, teams were ranked on a single table and the team with the highest winning percentage at the end of the season was declared the champion; this method had been used since the league's creation in 1920, but no situation had been encountered where two teams were tied for first. The league determined that a playoff game between Chicago and Portsmouth was needed to decide the league's champion; the teams were scheduled to play the playoff game a regular season game that would count towards the regular season standings, at Wrigley Field in Chicago, but a combination of heavy snow and extreme cold forced the game to be moved indoors to Chicago Stadium, which did not have a regulation-size football field. Playing with altered rules to accommodate the smaller playing field, the Bears won the game 9–0 and thus won the championship.
Fan interest in the de facto championship game led the NFL, beginning in 1933, to split into two divisions with a championship game to be played between the division champions. The 1934 season marked the first of 12 seasons in which African Americans were absent from the league; the de facto ban was rescinded in 1946, following public pressure and coinciding with the removal of a similar ban in Major League Baseball. The NFL was always the foremost pro
Private school
Private schools known to many as independent schools, non-governmental funded, or non-state schools, are not administered by local, state or national governments. Children who attend private schools may be there because they are dissatisfied with public schools in their area, they may be selected for their academic prowess, or prowess in other fields, or sometimes their religious background. Private schools retain the right to select their students and are funded in whole or in part by charging their students for tuition, rather than relying on mandatory taxation through public funding; some private schools are associated with a particular religion, such as Judaism, Roman Catholicism, or Lutheranism. For the past century one in 10 U. S families has chosen to enroll their children in private school. In the United Kingdom and several other Commonwealth countries including Australia and Canada, the use of the term is restricted to primary and secondary educational levels. Private education in North America covers the whole gamut of educational activity, ranging from pre-school to tertiary level institutions.
Annual tuition fees at K-12 schools range from nothing at so called'tuition-free' schools to more than $45,000 at several New England preparatory schools. The secondary level includes schools offering years 7 through 12 and year 13; this category includes university-preparatory schools or "prep schools", boarding schools and day schools. Tuition at private secondary schools varies from school to school and depends on many factors, including the location of the school, the willingness of parents to pay, peer tuitions and the school's financial endowment. High tuition, schools claim, is used to pay higher salaries for the best teachers and used to provide enriched learning environments, including a low student-to-teacher ratio, small class sizes and services, such as libraries, science laboratories and computers; some private schools are boarding schools and many military academies are owned or operated as well. Religiously affiliated and denominational schools form a subcategory of private schools.
Some such schools teach religious education, together with the usual academic subjects to impress their particular faith's beliefs and traditions in the students who attend. Others use the denomination as more of a general label to describe on what the founders based their belief, while still maintaining a fine distinction between academics and religion, they include parochial schools, a term, used to denote Roman Catholic schools. Other religious groups represented in the K–12 private education sector include Protestants, Jews and the Orthodox Christians. Many educational alternatives, such as independent schools, are privately financed. Private schools avoid some state regulations, although in the name of educational quality, most comply with regulations relating to the educational content of classes. Religious private schools simply add religious instruction to the courses provided by local public schools. Special assistance schools aim to improve the lives of their students by providing services tailored to specific needs of individual students.
Such schools include tutoring schools to assist the learning of handicapped children. Private schools are one of three types of school in Australia, the other two being government schools and religious. Whilst private schools are sometimes considered "public" schools, the term "public school" is synonymous with a government school. Private schools in Australia may be favored for many reasons: prestige and the social status of the "old school tie"; some schools offer the removal of the purported distractions of co-education. Student uniforms for Australian private schools are stricter and more formal than in government schools – for example, a compulsory blazer. Private schools in Australia are always more expensive than their public counterpartsThere are two main categories of private schools in Australia: Catholic schools and Independent schools. Catholic schools form the second largest sector after government schools, with around 21% of secondary enrollments. Most Australian Catholic schools belong to a system, like government schools, are co-educational and attempt to provide Catholic education evenly across the states.
These schools are known as "systemic". Systemic Catholic schools are funded by state and federal government and have low fees. Catholic schools, both systemic and independent have a strong religious focus, most of their staff and students will be Catholic. Independent schools make up the last sector and are the most popular form of schooling for boarding students. Independent schools are non-government institutions that are not part of a system. Although most are non-aligned, some of the best known independent schools belong to the large, long-established religious foundations, such as the Anglican Church, Uniting Church and Pres
Mount Helena City Park
Mount Helena City Park is a 620-acre park in Helena, Montana. The park encompasses Mount Helena which rises 5,468 feet above sea level, overlooking the city of Helena 1,300 feet below; the park includes six trails up and around the mountain, some of which connect to other trails in nearby Helena National Forest. Other trails go to the cave nicknamed "Devil's Kitchen", to the big letter "H" on the side of the mountain overlooking the city, to the summit of the mountain; the park is free of admission and is maintained by the City of Helena and local conservation and recreation groups from the Helena area. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1997. Mount Helena City Park trails and pictures Prickly Pear Land Trust
V-12 Navy College Training Program
The V-12 Navy College Training Program was designed to supplement the force of commissioned officers in the United States Navy during World War II. Between July 1, 1943, June 30, 1946, more than 125,000 participants were enrolled in 131 colleges and universities in the United States. Numerous participants attended classes and lectures at the respective colleges and earned completion degrees for their studies; some returned from their naval obligations to earn a degree from the colleges where they were stationed. The V-12 program's goal was to produce officers, not unlike the Army Specialized Training Program, which sought to turn out more than 200,000 technically trained personnel in such fields as engineering, foreign languages, medicine. Running from 1942 to 1944, the ASTP recruits were expected but not required to become officers at the end of their training; the purpose of the V-12 program was to generate a large number of officers for both the U. S. Navy and Marine Corps to meet the demands of World War II, far beyond that turned out annually by the United States Naval Academy at Annapolis and standing U.
S. Naval Reserve Midshipmen's School to that point. Once enrollees completed their V-12 subsidized Bachelor's degree programs, their next step toward obtaining a commission depended on service branch:Navy Navy officer candidates were required to complete the V-7 United States Naval Reserve Midshipmen's School program, it was a short course of eight months. The first month was spent at Indoctrination School, a "Boot Camp" for Officer Candidates that had Marine Corps drill instructors. Pre-Midshipmen's School was a preparatory four-month course teaching military skills like seamanship, navigation and how to behave like an officer. Midshipmen's School itself was three months long. Graduates were commissioned as ensigns in the U. S. Naval Reserve and the majority entered into active duty with the U. S. fleet. Marines Marine Corps candidates reported directly to boot camp and were enrolled in a three-month Officer Candidate Course. Once complete, participants were commissioned as second lieutenants in the Corps.
When the United States entered the Second World War on December 8, 1941, American colleges and universities suffered huge enrollment declines because men who would have gone into college were either drafted, volunteered their enlistment into service, or were preemptively diverted from their university studies into military enlistment/officer commissioning exempt technical civilian jobs in war-related industries. As a result, some colleges worried they would have to close their doors for the duration of the conflict. Helping offset this, the federal government backed U. S. Navy run V-12 Program paid tuition to participating colleges and universities for college courses that were taught to qualified candidates; those eligible included naval enlisted personnel who were recommended by their commanding officers and Marine Corps ROTC members, high school seniors who passed a qualifying exam. After the V-12 Program was established on July 1, 1943, public and private college enrollment increased by 100,000 participants, helping reverse the sharp wartime downward trend.
Depending on the V-12 enrollees' past college curriculum, they were enrolled in three school terms, or semesters, which lasted four months each. Students were paid $50 per month, required to wear service uniforms, engaged in rigorous physical training. Captain Arthur S. Adams, from the Training Division of the Bureau of Naval Personnel, was the officer-in-charge of the V-12 program. Richard Barrett Lowe, future Governor of Guam and American Samoa, was one of its early commanding officers; the primary purpose of the program was to "give prospective Naval officers the benefits of a college education in those areas most needed by the Navy." The Navy did not want to interrupt the "normal pattern of college life," but instead, the goal was for the participants to complete a degree in their field of study. The Navy's plan was to contract not only classroom, mess hall, dormitory space for a "stipulated amount of instruction," but plans were made to make use of each campus' instructors and administration.
The students were expected to "have the benefits of faculty counseling, of extracurricular activities -- in short, the best undergraduate education the colleges can offer."Vice Admiral Randall Jacobs, USN, the Chief of Naval Personnel, announced plans for the joint venture between the Navy and the colleges and universities during a national conference, held at Columbia University on May 14 and 15, 1943. Administrators from 131 colleges and universities under contract with the Navy attended the conference along with Naval officers from the Bureau, who were designated as the administrators of the V-12 Program; the colleges and universities were "expected to keep academic standards high" and were placed in charge of the implementation, accomplished in six months. Captain Adams stated that the Navy had no intent of "taking over the colleges," but instead, the Navy wanted to take "full advantage" of each institution's academic resources and to make use of the experience and knowledge of the college administrators.
This included all details of the program such as the length of the college day, scheduling of exercises, recreation and class time. The V-12 program while economically and functionally benefic
Tight end
The tight end is a position in American football, arena football, Canadian football, on the offense. The tight end is seen as a hybrid position with the characteristics and roles of both an offensive lineman and a wide receiver. Like offensive linemen, they are lined up on the offensive line and are large enough to be effective blockers. On the other hand, unlike offensive linemen, they are eligible receivers adept enough to warrant a defense's attention when running pass patterns; because of the hybrid nature of the position, the tight end's role in any given offense depends on the tactical preferences and philosophy of the head coach. In some systems, the tight end will act as a sixth offensive lineman going out for passes. Other systems use the tight end as a receiver taking advantage of the tight end's size to create mismatches in the defensive secondary. Many coaches will have one tight end who specializes in blocking in running situations while using a tight end with better pass-catching skills in obvious passing situations.
Offensive formations may have as many as three tight ends at one time. The advent of the tight end position is tied to the decline of the one-platoon system during the 1940s and'50s. A rule limited substitutions. Players had to be adept at playing on both sides of the ball, with most offensive linemen doubling as defensive linemen or linebackers, receivers doubling as defensive backs. At that time, the receivers were known as either ends or flankers, with the end lining up wide at the line of scrimmage and the flanker positioned behind the line on the opposite side of the field; as the transition from starters going "both ways" to dedicated offensive and defensive squads took place, players who did not fit the mold of the traditional positions began to fill niches. Those who were good pass catchers and blockers but mediocre on defense were no longer liabilities. Many were too big to be receivers yet too small for offensive linemen. Innovative coaches such as Paul Brown of the Cleveland Browns saw the potential of having a larger receiver lined up inside, developing blocking techniques and passing schemes that used the unique attributes of the tight end position.
Greater use of the tight end as a receiver started in the 1960s with the emergence of stars Mike Ditka and John Mackey. Until most teams relied on the tight end's blocking as a sixth offensive lineman using them as receivers. In addition to superb blocking, Ditka offered great hands receiving and rugged running after a completion. Over a 12-year career, he caught 427 passes for over 43 touchdowns. Mackey brought speed, with six of his nine touchdown catches in one season being breakaways over 50 yards. Starting in 1980 the Air Coryell offense debuted tight end Kellen Winslow running wide receiver-type routes. Tight ends prior to Winslow were blockers lined up next to an offensive lineman and given short to medium drag routes. Winslow was put in motion to avoid being jammed at the line, lined up wide, or in the slot against a smaller cornerback. Former Chargers assistant coach Al Saunders said Winslow was "a wide receiver in an offensive lineman's body." Back defenses would cover Winslow with a strong safety or a linebacker, as zone defenses were not as popular.
Strong safeties in those times favored run defense over coverage speed. Providing another defender to help the strong safety opened up other holes. Winslow would line up unpredictably in any formation from a three point blocking stance to a two point receiver's stance, to being in motion like a flanker or offensive back. Head coach Jon Gruden referred to such multi-dimensional tight ends as "jokers", calling Winslow the first in the NFL. Head coach Bill Belichick notes that the pass-catching tight ends that get paid the most are "all direct descendants of Kellen Winslow", there are fewer tight ends now that can block on the line. In the 1990s, athletic Shannon Sharpe's prowess as a route-runner helped change the way tight ends were used by teams. Double-covered as a receiver, he became the first tight end in NFL history with over 10,000 career receiving yards. Tony Gonzalez and Antonio Gates pushed the position toward near wide receiver speed and power forward basketball skills. At 6' 6" Rob Gronkowski brought height, setting single-season tight end records in 2011 with 17 touchdowns—breaking Gates' and Vernon Davis' record of 13—and 1,327 receiving yards, surpassing Winslow's record of 1,290.
Jimmy Graham that season passed Winslow with 1,310 yards. Six of the NFL's 15 players with the most receptions that year were tight ends, the most in NFL history. Previous seasons had at most one or two ranked in the top. In the Arena Football League the tight end serves as the 3rd offensive lineman. Although they are eligible receivers they go out for passes and are only used for screen passes when they do. However, in Canadian football, tight ends are, in general, no longer used professionally in the CFL, but is still used at the college level in U Sports. Tony Gabriel is a former great tight end in Canadian football. There remain some tight ends in use at university level football, he was drafted by the CFL's Saskatchewan Roughriders in 2017, but instead signed with the NFL's Tampa Bay Buccaneers as an undrafted free agent that same year. Some plays are planned to take advantage of a tight end's
Purple
Purple is a color intermediate between blue and red. It is similar to violet, but unlike violet, a spectral color with its own wavelength on the visible spectrum of light, purple is a secondary color made by combining red and blue; the complementary color of purple is yellow. According to surveys in Europe and North America, purple is the color most associated with rarity, magic and piety; when combined with pink, it is associated with eroticism and seduction. Purple was the color worn by Roman magistrates. In Japan, the color is traditionally associated with the Emperor and aristocracy. Purple is most favorited color preferences amongst women and girls, is symbolic of the feminist movement and women's empowerment; the word'purple' comes from the Old English word purpul which derives from Latin purpura, in turn from the Greek πορφύρα, name of the Tyrian purple dye manufactured in classical antiquity from a mucus secreted by the spiny dye-murex snail. The first recorded use of the word'purple' in the English language was in the year 975 AD.
In heraldry, the word purpure is used for purple. In the traditional color wheel used by painters and purple are both placed between red and blue. Purple occupies between crimson and violet. Violet is closer to blue, is less saturated than purple. While the two colors look similar, from the point of view of optics there are important differences. Violet is a spectral color – it occupies its own place at the end of the spectrum of light first identified by Isaac Newton in 1672, it has its own wavelength – whereas purple is a combination of two spectral colors and blue. There is no such thing as the "wavelength of purple light". See Line of purples. Monochromatic violet light cannot be produced by the red-green-blue color system, the method used to create colors on a television screen or computer display. However, the system is capable of approximating it due to the fact that the L-cone in the eye is uniquely sensitive to two different discontinuous regions in the visible spectrum – its primary region being the long wavelength light of the yellow-red region of the spectrum, a secondary smaller region overlapping with the S-cone in the shortest wavelength, violet part.
This means that when violet light strikes the eye, the S-cone should be stimulated and the L-cone stimulated weakly along with it. By lighting the red primary of the display weakly along with the blue primary, a similar pattern of sensitization can be achieved, creating an illusion, the sensation of short wavelength light using what is in fact mixed light of two longer wavelengths; the resulting color has the same hue as pure violet. One psychophysical difference between purple and violet is their appearance with an increase in luminance. Violet, as it brightens, looks more blue; the same effect does not happen with purple. This is the result of -- Brücke shift. While the scientific definitions of violet and purple are clear, the cultural definitions are more varied; the color known in antiquity as Tyrian purple ranged from crimson to a deep bluish-purple, depending upon how it was made. In France, purple is defined as "a dark red, inclined toward violet"; the color called purple by the French, contains more red and half the amount of blue of the color called purple in the United States and the U.
K. In German, this color is sometimes called Purpurrot to avoid confusion. Purple first appeared in prehistoric art during the Neolithic era; the artists of Pech Merle cave and other Neolithic sites in France used sticks of manganese and hematite powder to draw and paint animals and the outlines of their own hands on the walls of their caves. These works have been dated to between 16,000 and 25,000 BC; as early as the 15th century BC the citizens of Sidon and Tyre, two cities on the coast of Ancient Phoenicia, were producing purple dye from a sea snail called the spiny dye-murex. Clothing colored with the Tyrian dye was mentioned in both the Iliad of Homer and the Aeneid of Virgil; the deep, rich purple dye made from this snail became known as Tyrian purple. The process of making the dye was long and expensive. Thousands of the tiny snails had to be found, their shells cracked. Mountains of empty shells have been found at the ancient sites of Tyre; the snails were left to soak a tiny gland was removed and the juice extracted and put in a basin, placed in the sunlight.
There a remarkable transformation took place. In the sunlight the juice turned white yellow-green green violet a red which turned darker and darker; the process had to be stopped at the right time to obtain the desired color, which could range from a bright crimson to a dark purple, the color of dried blood. Either wool, linen or silk would be dyed; the exact hue varied between crimson and violet, but it was always rich and lasting. Tyrian purple became the color of kings, nobles and magistrates all around the Mediterranean, it was mentioned in the Old Testament. Th
