1.
United States
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Forty-eight of the fifty states and the federal district are contiguous and located 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, the state of Hawaii is an archipelago in the mid-Pacific Ocean. The U. S. territories are scattered about the Pacific Ocean, the geography, climate and wildlife of the country are extremely diverse. At 3.8 million square miles and with over 324 million people, the United States is the worlds third- or fourth-largest country by area, third-largest by land area. It is one of the worlds most ethnically diverse and multicultural nations, paleo-Indians migrated from Asia to the North American mainland at least 15,000 years ago. European colonization began in the 16th century, the United States emerged from 13 British colonies along the East Coast. Numerous disputes between Great Britain and the following the Seven Years War led to the American Revolution. On July 4,1776, during the course of the American Revolutionary War, the war ended in 1783 with recognition of the independence of the United States by Great Britain, representing the first successful war of independence against a European power. The current constitution was adopted in 1788, after the Articles of Confederation, the first ten amendments, collectively named the Bill of Rights, were ratified in 1791 and designed to guarantee many fundamental civil liberties. During the second half of the 19th century, the American Civil War led to the end of slavery in the country. By the end of century, the United States extended into the Pacific Ocean. The Spanish–American War and World War I confirmed the status as a global military power. The end of the Cold War and the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 left the United States as the sole superpower. The U. S. is a member of the United Nations, World Bank, International Monetary Fund, Organization of American States. The United States is a developed country, with the worlds largest economy by nominal GDP. It ranks highly in several measures of performance, including average wage, human development, per capita GDP. While the U. S. economy is considered post-industrial, characterized by the dominance of services and knowledge economy, the United States is a prominent political and cultural force internationally, and a leader in scientific research and technological innovations. In 1507, the German cartographer Martin Waldseemüller produced a map on which he named the lands of the Western Hemisphere America after the Italian explorer and cartographer Amerigo Vespucci
2.
Illinois
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Illinois is a state in the midwestern region of the United States, achieving statehood in 1818. It is the 6th most populous state and 25th largest state in terms of land area, the word Illinois comes from a French rendering of a native Algonquin word. For decades, OHare International Airport has been ranked as one of the worlds busiest airports, Illinois has long had a reputation as a bellwether both in social and cultural terms and politics. With the War of 1812 Illinois growth slowed as both Native Americans and Canadian forces often raided the American Frontier, mineral finds and timber stands also had spurred immigration—by the 1810s, the Eastern U. S. Railroads arose and matured in the 1840s, and soon carried immigrants to new homes in Illinois, as well as being a resource to ship their commodity crops out to markets. Railroads freed most of the land of Illinois and other states from the tyranny of water transport. By 1900, the growth of jobs in the northern cities and coal mining in the central and southern areas attracted a new group of immigrants. Illinois was an important manufacturing center during both world wars, the Great Migration from the South established a large community of African Americans in Chicago, who created the citys famous jazz and blues cultures. Three U. S. presidents have been elected while living in Illinois, Abraham Lincoln, Ulysses S. Grant, additionally, Ronald Reagan, whose political career was based in California, was the only U. S. president born and raised in Illinois. Today, Illinois honors Lincoln with its official slogan, Land of Lincoln. The Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum is located in the capital of Springfield. Illinois is the spelling for the early French Catholic missionaries and explorers name for the Illinois Native Americans. American scholars previously thought the name Illinois meant man or men in the Miami-Illinois language and this etymology is not supported by the Illinois language, as the word for man is ireniwa and plural men is ireniwaki. The name Illiniwek has also said to mean tribe of superior men. The name Illinois derives from the Miami-Illinois verb irenwe·wa he speaks the regular way and this was taken into the Ojibwe language, perhaps in the Ottawa dialect, and modified into ilinwe·. The French borrowed these forms, changing the ending to spell it as -ois. The current spelling form, Illinois, began to appear in the early 1670s, the Illinois name for themselves, as attested in all three of the French missionary-period dictionaries of Illinois, was Inoka, of unknown meaning and unrelated to the other terms. American Indians of successive cultures lived along the waterways of the Illinois area for thousands of years before the arrival of Europeans, the Koster Site has been excavated and demonstrates 7,000 years of continuous habitation
3.
ZIP Code
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ZIP Codes are a system of postal codes used by the United States Postal Service since 1963. The term ZIP, an acronym for Zone Improvement Plan, was chosen to suggest that the travels more efficiently, and therefore more quickly. The basic format consists of five numerical digits, an extended ZIP+4 code, introduced in 1983, includes the five digits of the ZIP Code, a hyphen, and four additional digits that determine a more specific location within a given ZIP Code. The term ZIP Code was originally registered as a servicemark by the U. S. Postal Service, USPS style for ZIP is all caps and the c in code is also capitalized, although style sheets for some publications use sentence case or lowercase. The early history and context of postal codes began with postal district/zone numbers, the United States Post Office Department implemented postal zones for numerous large cities in 1943. For example, Mr. John Smith 3256 Epiphenomenal Avenue Minneapolis 16, by the early 1960s a more organized system was needed, and on July 1,1963, non-mandatory five-digit ZIP Codes were introduced nationwide. Three months later, on October 1,1963, the U. S, an earlier list in June had proposed capitalized abbreviations ranging from two to five letters. The abbreviations have remained unchanged, with one exception, according to the historian of the U. S. Robert Moon, an employee of the post office, is considered the father of the ZIP Code, he submitted his proposal in 1944 while working as a postal inspector. The post office gives credit to Moon only for the first three digits of the ZIP Code, which describe the sectional center facility or sec center, an SCF is a central mail processing facility with those three digits. The SCF sorts mail to all post offices with those first three digits in their ZIP Codes, the mail is sorted according to the final two digits of the ZIP Code and sent to the corresponding post offices in the early morning. Sectional centers do not deliver mail and are not open to the public, Mail picked up at post offices is sent to their own SCF in the afternoon, where the mail is sorted overnight. The United States Post Office used a character, which it called Mr. ZIP. He was often depicted with a such as USE ZIP CODE in the selvage of panes of stamps or on labels contained in, or the covers of. In 1983, the U. S. Postal Service introduced an expanded ZIP Code system that it called ZIP+4, often called plus-four codes, add-on codes, or add ons. But initial attempts to promote use of the new format met with public resistance. For Post Office Boxes, the rule is that each box has its own ZIP+4 code. However, there is no rule, so the ZIP+4 Code must be looked up individually for each box. It is common to use add-on code 9998 for mail addressed to the postmaster,9999 for general delivery, for a unique ZIP Code, the add-on code is typically 0001
4.
Mattoon, Illinois
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Mattoon is a city in Coles County, Illinois, United States. The population was 18,555 as of the 2010 census, one of the main factors determining the settlement of Mattoon and Coles County in general was the topography. Coles County straddled a timberline in the half and prairie in the north. The forested areas were primarily fed by two rivers, the Embarras River in the east and the Kaskaskia in the west. The prairie, known as the Grand Prairie, was generally wet, an early historian described the geography, Away from the timber to the north, the face of the country is generally quite level, broken only by long undulations. It is almost entirely prairie land in part, and was allowed to remain uncultivated until after the opening of the railroads. Groves could be scattered throughout the area. Early settlers to the area started homesteads in the timberline, which provided building materials, since the vast majority of early settlers came from wooded areas of Indiana, Kentucky, and Tennessee, the forests also provided a sense of familiarity. In 1826, Kentucky émigré Charles Sawyer became the first white man known to settle in the Mattoon area, levi Doty build Sawyers cabin while the latter returned to Kentucky to retrieve the rest of his family. Within a year, a few families very quickly settled around Sawyer in the area of Paradise Township, including Dr. John Epperson, settlers built log cabins using pegs. The luxuries of life were not seen the first years of the settlement. Corn was planted and remained a staple crop, gardens of potatoes and other vegetables were maintained. Hogs, which ran wild in the woods, provided pork, while deer, bears, wild turkeys, wolves proved troublesome to domesticated animals. The first school was established in 1827-28 in the Paradise Township, taking place in a makeshift cabin, the costs were $2. 50-3.00 per student. School was maintained in this location until 1844-45, when the first real schoolhouse was built in what would become Mattoon and that year, the Illinois State Legislature passed its first school laws, making Mattoon a forerunner for early education in the state. As the population grew, demand for a local government increased, on Christmas Day,1830, Coles County was established. The county was named after Edward Coles, the governor in Illinois who served in 1822. Settlers in the Mattoon area remained poor and humble, but their community remained close knit, in 1836, Old State Road, which runs along the southern end of town, became one of the first trails to be established in the Mattoon area
5.
Prairie
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Temperate grassland regions include the Pampas of Argentina, southern Brazil and Uruguay as well as the steppes of Eurasia. Lands typically referred to as prairie tend to be in North America, the Central Valley of California is also a prairie. The Canadian Prairies occupy vast areas of Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Prairie is the French word for meadow, but the ultimate root is the Latin pratum. The formation of the North American Prairies started with the upwelling of the Rocky Mountains near Alberta, the mountains created a rain shadow that resulted in lower precipitation rates downwind, creating an environment in which most tree species will not tolerate. The parent material of most prairie soil was distributed during the last glacial advance that began about 110,000 years ago, the glaciers expanding southward scraped the landscape, picking up geologic material and leveling the terrain. As the glaciers retreated about 10,000 years ago, it deposited this material in the form of till, wind based loess deposits also form an important parent material for prairie soils. Tallgrass Prairie evolved over tens of thousands of years with the disturbances of grazing, native ungulates such as bison, elk, and white-tailed deer, roamed the expansive, diverse, plentiful grassland before European colonization of the Americas. For 10, 000-20,000 years native people used fire annually as a tool to assist in hunting, transportation, evidence of ignition sources of fire in the tallgrass prairie are overwhelmingly human as opposed to lightning. Humans, and grazing animals, were participants in the process of prairie formation. Fire has the effect on prairies of removing trees, clearing dead plant matter, fire kills the vascular tissue of trees, but not prairie, as up to 75% of the total plant biomass is below the soil surface and will re-grow from its deep roots. Without disturbance, trees will encroach on a grassland, cast shade, Prairie and widely spaced oak trees evolved to coexist in the oak savanna ecosystem. In spite of long recurrent droughts and occasional torrential rains, the grasslands of the Great Plains were not subject to soil erosion. The root systems of native prairie grasses firmly held the soil in place to prevent run-off of soil, when the plant died, the fungi, bacteria returned its nutrients to the soil. These deep roots also helped native prairie plants reach water in even the driest conditions, the native grasses suffered much less damage from dry conditions than the farm crops currently grown. Prairie in North America is usually split into three groups, wet, mesic, and dry and they are generally characterized by tallgrass prairie, mixed, or shortgrass prairie, depending on the quality of soil and rainfall. In wet prairies the soil is very moist, including during most of the growing season. The resulting stagnant water is conducive to the formation of bogs, wet prairies have excellent farming soil. The average precipitation amount is 10-30 inches a year, mesic prairie /ˈmiːzɪk/ has good drainage, but good soil during the growing season
6.
Beech-maple forest
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A beech-maple forest or a maple beech forest is a climax mesic closed canopy hardwood forest. It is primarily composed of American beech and sugar maple trees which co-dominate the forest, a form of this forest was the most common forest type in the Northeastern United States when it was settled by Europeans and remains widespread but scattered today. The canopy is dominated by American beech and sugar maple trees, the reduced light provides poor conditions for shrubs, with the exceptions of American witch-hazel and alderleaf viburnum shrubs. The ground cover includes herbs and spring ephemerals, flowers which are able to bloom before the canopy fills in, seedlings of beech and maple trees are shade-tolerant, allowing them to grow in low light conditions for several years. These seedling are waiting for an opening in the canopy, beech-maple forests are often found on flat or rolling terrain, in a variety of moist to well-drained soils with high levels of organic matter. They thrive in glacial till from the Wisconsin glaciation, typically, in sandy soils, the maple is more common while in soils that have more clay in them, the beech is more dominant. There must be a high level of precipitation. These forests are the result of succession, a long progression of different plant species over centuries. One possible sere is from ground, it would start with weeds, then shrubs, weedy trees, then coniferous trees. If the conditions allow, the climax community for several different series is the beech-maple community. Even in a community dominated by two types of trees, there can be many different species of trees on the edges of the forest. The range of the beech-maple forest type extends from the Atlantic coast west to Minnesota, Michigan and from southern Canada south to Virginia and it is widespread in New York and was an important component of the original vegetation of northeastern Ohio. Instances of a beech-maple forest can be found at altitudes of 320 feet to 3,900 feet, ecological succession Old-growth forest Beech Maple Forest
7.
Wildfire
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A wildfire or wildland fire is a fire in an area of combustible vegetation that occurs in the countryside or rural area. Fossil charcoal indicates that wildfires began soon after the appearance of terrestrial plants 420 million years ago, wildfire’s occurrence throughout the history of terrestrial life invites conjecture that fire must have had pronounced evolutionary effects on most ecosystems flora and fauna. Earth is an intrinsically flammable planet owing to its cover of vegetation, seasonally dry climates, atmospheric oxygen, widespread lightning. Wildfires can be characterised in terms of the cause of ignition, their properties, the combustible material present. Wildfires can cause damage to property and human life, but they have beneficial effects on native vegetation, animals. Many plant species depend on the effects of fire for growth, however, wildfire in ecosystems where wildfire is uncommon or where non-native vegetation has encroached may have negative ecological effects. Wildfire behaviour and severity result from the combination of such as available fuels, physical setting. Strategies of wildfire prevention, detection and suppression have varied over the years, one common and inexpensive technique is controlled burning, permitting or even igniting smaller fires to minimise the amount of flammable material available for a potential wildfire. Vegetation may be burned periodically to maintain species diversity and frequent burning of surface fuels limits fuel accumulation. Wildland fire use is the cheapest and most ecologically appropriate policy for many forests, fuels may also be removed by logging, but fuels treatments and thinning have no effect on severe fire behaviour. Wildfires can also be started in communities experiencing shifting cultivation, where land is cleared quickly and farmed until the soil loses fertility, forested areas cleared by logging encourage the dominance of flammable grasses, and abandoned logging roads overgrown by vegetation may act as fire corridors. The most common cause of wildfires throughout the world. In Canada and northwest China, for example, lightning operates as the source of ignition. In other parts of the world, human involvement is a major contributor, in China and in the Mediterranean Basin, human carelessness is a major cause of wildfires. In the United States and Australia, the source of wildfires can be traced both to lightning strikes and to human activities. Coal seam fires burn in the thousands around the world, such as those in Burning Mountain, New South Wales, Centralia, Pennsylvania and they can also flare up unexpectedly and ignite nearby flammable material. The spread of wildfires based on the flammable material present, its vertical arrangement and moisture content. Fuel arrangement and density is governed in part by topography, as land shape determines factors such as available sunlight, overall, fire types can be generally characterized by their fuels as follows, Ground fires are fed by subterranean roots, duff and other buried organic matter
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Forest
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A forest is a large area dominated by trees. Hundreds of more precise definitions of forest are used throughout the world, incorporating factors such as density, tree height, land use, legal standing. According to the widely used Food and Agriculture Organization definition, forests covered four billion hectares or approximately 30 percent of the land area in 2006. Forests are the dominant terrestrial ecosystem of Earth, and are distributed across the globe, Forests account for 75% of the gross primary productivity of the Earths biosphere, and contain 80% of the Earths plant biomass. Forests at different latitudes and elevations form distinctly different ecozones, boreal forests near the poles, tropical forests near the equator, higher elevation areas tend to support forests similar to those at higher latitudes, and amount of precipitation also affects forest composition. Human society and forests influence each other in both positive and negative ways, Forests provide ecosystem services to humans and serve as tourist attractions. Forests can also affect peoples health, human activities, including harvesting forest resources, can negatively affect forest ecosystems. Although forest is a term of common parlance, there is no universally recognised precise definition, there are three broad categories of forest definitions in use, administrative, land use, and land cover. Land use definitions are based upon the purpose that the land serves. For example, a forest may be defined as any land that is used primarily for production of timber, land cover definitions define forests based upon the type and density of vegetation growing on the land. Such definitions typically define a forest as an area growing trees above some threshold and these thresholds are typically the number of trees per area, the area of ground under the tree canopy or the section of land that is occupied by the cross-section of tree trunks. Under such land cover definitions, and area of land only be defined as forest if it is growing trees, areas that fail to meet the land cover definition may be still included under while immature trees are establishing if they are expected to meet the definition at maturity. Under land use definitions, there is variation on where the cutoff points are between a forest, woodland, and savanna. Under some definitions, forests require high levels of tree canopy cover, from 60% to 100%, excluding savannas. Other definitions consider savannas to be a type of forest, the term was not endemic to Romance languages, and cognates in Romance languages, such as Italian foresta, Spanish and Portuguese floresta, etc. are all ultimately borrowings of the French word. The exact origin of Medieval Latin foresta is obscure, uses of the word forest in English to denote any uninhabited area of non-enclosure are now considered archaic. The word was introduced by the Norman rulers of England as a term denoting an uncultivated area legally set aside for hunting by feudal nobility. These hunting forests were not necessarily wooded much, if at all, however, as hunting forests did often include considerable areas of woodland, the word forest eventually came to mean wooded land more generally
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Flint
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Flint is a hard, sedimentary cryptocrystalline form of the mineral quartz, categorized as a variety of chert. It occurs chiefly as nodules and masses in sedimentary rocks, such as chalks, inside the nodule, flint is usually dark grey, black, green, white or brown in colour, and often has a glassy or waxy appearance. A thin layer on the outside of the nodules is usually different in colour, typically white, from a petrological point of view, flint refers specifically to the form of chert which occurs in chalk or marly limestone. Similarly, common chert occurs in limestone, the exact mode of formation of flint is not yet clear but it is thought that it occurs as a result of chemical changes in compressed sedimentary rock formations, during the process of diagenesis. One hypothesis is that a gelatinous material fills cavities in the sediment, such as bored by crustaceans or molluscs. This hypothesis certainly explains the shapes of flint nodules that are found. The source of dissolved silica in the media could be the spicules of silicious sponges. Certain types of flint, such as that from the south coast of England, pieces of coral and vegetation have been found preserved like amber inside the flint. Thin slices of the stone often reveal this effect, puzzling giant flint formations known as paramoudra and flint circles are found around Europe but especially in Norfolk, England on the beaches at Beeston Bump and West Runton. Flint sometimes occurs in large flint fields in Jurassic or Cretaceous beds, flint was used in the manufacture of tools during the Stone Age as it splits into thin, sharp splinters called flakes or blades when struck by another hard object. This process is referred to as knapping, flint mining is attested since the Palaeolithic, but became more common since the Neolithic. When struck against steel, a flint edge will produce sparks, the hard flint edge shaves off a particle of the steel that exposes iron which reacts with oxygen from the atmosphere and can ignite the proper tinder. Prior to the availability of steel, rocks of pyrite would be used along with the flint. These methods are popular in woodcraft, bushcraft, and among those who wish to use traditional skills, a later, major use of flint and steel was in the flintlock mechanism, used primarily in flintlock firearms, but also used on dedicated fire-starting tools. The sparks ignite the powder and that flame, in turn, ignites the main charge, propelling the ball, bullet. While the military use of the flintlock declined after the adoption of the cap from the 1840s onward, flintlock rifles. Flint and steel used to strike sparks were superseded by ferrocerium and this man-made material, when scraped with any hard, sharp edge, produces sparks that are much hotter than obtained with natural flint and steel, allowing use of a wider range of tinders. Because it can produce sparks when wet and can start fires when used correctly, ferrocerium is used in many cigarette lighters, where it is referred to as flint
10.
Cannon
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A cannon is any piece of artillery that uses gunpowder or other usually explosive-based propellants to launch a projectile, which may or may not be explosive. The word cannon is derived from languages, in which the original definition can usually be translated as tube, cane. The Greeks invented the first type—a steam cannon—designed by Archimedes during the Siege of Syracuse, ctesibius built a steam cannon in Alexandria and in the fifteenth century Leonardo da Vinci designed another, the Architonnerre, based on Archimedes work. The earliest form of artillery was developed in Song China, over time replacing siege engines. In the Middle East, the first use of the cannon is argued to be during the 1260 Battle of Ain Jalut between the Mamluk Sultanate and Mongol Empire. The first cannon in Europe were in use in the Iberian Peninsula by the mid-13th century and it was during this period, the Middle Ages, that cannon became standardised, and more effective in both the anti-infantry and siege roles. After the Middle Ages most large cannon were abandoned in favour of greater numbers of lighter, Cannon also transformed naval warfare in the early modern period, as European navies took advantage of their firepower. In World War I, the majority of fatalities were caused by artillery. Most modern cannon are similar to those used in the Second World War, Cannon was widely known as the earliest form of a gun and artillery, before early firearms were invented. The word has been used to refer to a gun since 1326 in Italy, both Cannons and Cannon are correct and in common usage, with one or the other having preference in different parts of the English-speaking world. Cannons is more common in North America and Australia, while cannon as plural is more common in the United Kingdom, Cannon in general have the form of a truncated cone with an internal cylindrical bore for holding an explosive charge and a projectile. The thickest, strongest, and closed part of the cone is located near the explosive charge, as any explosive charge will dissipate in all directions equally, the thickest portion of the cannon is useful for containing and directing this force. Field artillery cannon in Europe and the Americas were initially made most often of bronze, though later forms were constructed of cast iron and eventually steel. However, cast iron cannon have a tendency to burst without having any previous weakness or wear. The following terms refer to the components or aspects of a classical western cannon as illustrated here. In what follows, the words near, close, and behind will refer to those parts towards the thick, closed end of the piece, and far, front, in front of, and before to the thinner, open end. Bore, The hollow cylinder bored down the centre of the cannon, including the base of the bore or bottom of the bore, the diameter of the bore represents the cannons calibre. Chamber, The cylindrical, conical, or spherical recess at the nearest end of the bottom of the bore into which the gunpowder is packed
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United States
Illinois
"Charleston, a city of Illinois". Collier's New Encyclopedia. 1921.
