Spiedie
The spiedie is a meat sandwich local to Binghamton in the central Southern Tier of New York State, somewhat more broadly known and enjoyed throughout Central New York. A spiedie consists of cubes of chicken, lamb, venison or beef; the meat cubes are marinated overnight or longer grilled on spits over a charcoal pit. The traditional method involves serving freshly prepared cubes of lamb, chicken, or beef on soft Italian bread or a submarine roll drizzled with fresh marinade. Spiedie meat cubes can be eaten straight off the skewer or can be served in salads, stir fries, a number of other dishes; the marinade recipe varies involving olive oil, a variety of Italian spices and fresh mint. Spiedies have been celebrated at the Spiedie Fest and Balloon Rally in Binghamton, New York every August since 1983; the annual event includes a spiedie cook-off in search of the best spiedie recipes. The term "spiedie" is derived from the Italian spiedo meaning spit; the regional dish called spiedini or spidducci in Abruzzo, most resembling spiedie, uses cubes or balls of goat meat, chicken or beef on a skewer.
The original idea for the spiedie was brought by Italian immigrants to upstate New York in the early 1920s. The specific origin of the spiedie is disputed. Traditionally, the early Broome County spiedie was made only from spring lamb, but most commercial restaurants prepare spiedies using chicken or pork; the "chicken category" was added to the Spiedie Fest cook-off in 1987, became the most popular meat choice. Camillo Iacovelli created the spiedie in Endwell, New York, was serving them in 1938 at his Parkview Restaurant on Oak Hill Ave in Endicott, his brother, Agostino "Augie" Iacovelli, popularized spiedies when he introduced them in his Endicott restaurant Augie's in 1939. Iacovelli's marinade, which he called "zuzu" was made from wine vinegar, lemon juice and mint. Italian spices, olive oil and minced onion were added as regional tastes and the choice of meat began to vary. Augie Iacovelli's son Guido continued in the spiedie business into the 1990s, owning as many as 26 restaurants at the peak of his career.
Peter Sharak is alleged to have invented spiedies, began serving them in 1947 at his Sharky's Bar and Grill in Binghamton. Sharkey's promotes itself as the birthplace of the sandwich in television commercials across the greater Binghamton area. In 1975, Rob Salamida became the first person to sell it, he began by cooking spiedies outside a local tavern at 16. After writing letters for over a year, he was allowed to have his own booth at the New York State Fair in Syracuse, New York. For 12 years he built his reputation at the fair. After a tornado nearly struck his stand in 1975, he decided it would be more lucrative and safer to bottle a spiedie marinade. In 1983, a few families got together and held a Spiedie Fest, a tremendous hit. Coupled with a Balloon Rally, it grew to an annual festival attracting more than 100,000 attendees. Arrosticini City chicken Souvlaki Kebab Shish taouk - a similar food popular in Egypt and Turkey List of sandwiches Atlas of Popular Culture in the Northeastern United States: The Spiedie
Appalachia
Appalachia is a cultural region in the Eastern United States that stretches from the Southern Tier of New York to northern Alabama and Georgia. While the Appalachian Mountains stretch from Belle Isle in Canada to Cheaha Mountain in Alabama, the cultural region of Appalachia refers only to the central and southern portions of the range, from the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia, southwesterly to the Great Smoky Mountains; as of the 2010 United States Census, the region was home to 25 million people. Since its recognition as a distinctive region in the late 19th century, Appalachia has been a source of enduring myths and distortions regarding the isolation and behavior of its inhabitants. Early 20th century writers engaged in yellow journalism focused on sensationalistic aspects of the region's culture, such as moonshining and clan feuding, portrayed the region's inhabitants as uneducated and prone to impulsive acts of violence. Sociological studies in the 1960s and 1970s helped to dispel these stereotypes.
While endowed with abundant natural resources, Appalachia has long struggled and been associated with poverty. In the early 20th century, large-scale logging and coal mining firms brought wage-paying jobs and modern amenities to Appalachia, but by the 1960s the region had failed to capitalize on any long-term benefits from these two industries. Beginning in the 1930s, the federal government sought to alleviate poverty in the Appalachian region with a series of New Deal initiatives, such as the construction of dams to provide cheap electricity and the implementation of better farming practices. On March 9, 1965, the Appalachian Regional Commission was created to further alleviate poverty in the region by diversifying the region's economy and helping to provide better health care and educational opportunities to the region's inhabitants. By 1990, Appalachia had joined the economic mainstream, but still lagged behind the rest of the nation in most economic indicators. Since Appalachia lacks definite physiographical or topographical boundaries, there has been some disagreement over what the region encompasses.
The most used modern definition of Appalachia is the one defined by the Appalachian Regional Commission in 1965 and expanded over subsequent decades. The region defined by the Commission includes 420 counties and eight independent cities in 13 states, including all of West Virginia, 14 counties in New York, 52 in Pennsylvania, 32 in Ohio, 3 in Maryland, 54 in Kentucky, 25 counties and 8 cities in Virginia, 29 in North Carolina, 52 in Tennessee, 6 in South Carolina, 37 in Georgia, 37 in Alabama, 24 in Mississippi; when the Commission was established, counties were added based on economic need, rather than any cultural parameters. The first major attempt to map Appalachia as a distinctive cultural region came in the 1890s with the efforts of Berea College president William Goodell Frost, whose "Appalachian America" included 194 counties in 8 states. In 1921, John C. Campbell published The Southern Highlander and His Homeland in which he modified Frost's map to include 254 counties in 9 states.
A landmark survey of the region in the following decade by the United States Department of Agriculture defined the region as consisting of 206 counties in 6 states. In 1984, Karl Raitz and Richard Ulack expanded the ARC's definition to include 445 counties in 13 states, although they removed all counties in Mississippi and added two in New Jersey. Historian John Alexander Williams, in his 2002 book Appalachia: A History, distinguished between a "core" Appalachian region consisting of 164 counties in West Virginia, Virginia, North Carolina, Georgia, a greater region defined by the ARC. In the Encyclopedia of Appalachia, Appalachian State University historian Howard Dorgan suggested the term "Old Appalachia" for the region's cultural boundaries, noting an academic tendency to ignore the southwestern and northeastern extremes of the ARC's pragmatic definition. While exploring inland along the northern coast of Florida in 1528, the members of the Narváez expedition, including Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca, found a Native American village near present-day Tallahassee, whose name they transcribed as Apalchen or Apalachen.
The name was soon altered by the Spanish to Apalachee and used as a name for the tribe and region spreading well inland to the north. Pánfilo de Narváez's expedition first entered Apalachee territory on June 15, 1528, applied the name. Now spelled "Appalachian", it is the fourth oldest surviving European place-name in the U. S. After the de Soto expedition in 1540, Spanish cartographers began to apply the name of the tribe to the mountains themselves; the first cartographic appearance of Apalchen is on Diego Gutiérrez' map of 1562. Le Moyne was the first European to apply "Apalachen" to a mountain range as opposed to a village, native tribe, or a southeastern region of North America; the name was not used for the whole mountain range until the late 19th century. A competing and more popular name was the "Allegheny Mountains", "Alleghenies", "Alleghania." In the early 19th century, Washington Irving proposed renaming the United States either "Appalachia" or "Alleghania". In northern U. S. dialects, the mountains are pronounced or.
The cultural region of Appalachia is pronounced /æpəˈleɪʃə/ /æpəˈleɪtʃə/, all with a third syllable like "lay". In southern U. S. dialects, the mountains are called the, the cultural region of Appalachia is pronounced /ˈæpəˈlætʃə/, both with a third syllable like the "la" in "latch". This pronunciation is favored in th
Detroit
Detroit is the largest and most populous city in the U. S. state of Michigan, the largest United States city on the United States–Canada border, the seat of Wayne County. The municipality of Detroit had a 2017 estimated population of 673,104, making it the 23rd-most populous city in the United States; the metropolitan area, known as Metro Detroit, is home to 4.3 million people, making it the second-largest in the Midwest after the Chicago metropolitan area. Regarded as a major cultural center, Detroit is known for its contributions to music and as a repository for art and design. Detroit is a major port located on the Detroit River, one of the four major straits that connect the Great Lakes system to the Saint Lawrence Seaway; the Detroit Metropolitan Airport is among the most important hubs in the United States. The City of Detroit anchors the second-largest regional economy in the Midwest, behind Chicago and ahead of Minneapolis–Saint Paul, the 13th-largest in the United States. Detroit and its neighboring Canadian city Windsor are connected through a tunnel and the Ambassador Bridge, the busiest international crossing in North America.
Detroit is best known as the center of the U. S. automobile industry, the "Big Three" auto manufacturers General Motors and Chrysler are all headquartered in Metro Detroit. In 1701, Antoine de la Mothe Cadillac founded Fort Pontchartrain du Détroit, the future city of Detroit. During the 19th century, it became an important industrial hub at the center of the Great Lakes region. With expansion of the auto industry in the early 20th century, the city and its suburbs experienced rapid growth, by the 1940s, the city had become the fourth-largest in the country. However, due to industrial restructuring, the loss of jobs in the auto industry, rapid suburbanization, Detroit lost considerable population from the late 20th century to the present. Since reaching a peak of 1.85 million at the 1950 census, Detroit's population has declined by more than 60 percent. In 2013, Detroit became the largest U. S. city to file for bankruptcy, which it exited in December 2014, when the city government regained control of Detroit's finances.
Detroit's diverse culture has had both local and international influence in music, with the city giving rise to the genres of Motown and techno, playing an important role in the development of jazz, hip-hop and punk music. The erstwhile rapid growth of Detroit left a globally unique stock of architectural monuments and historic places, since the 2000s conservation efforts managed to save many architectural pieces and allowed several large-scale revitalizations, including the restoration of several historic theatres and entertainment venues, high-rise renovations, new sports stadiums, a riverfront revitalization project. More the population of Downtown Detroit, Midtown Detroit, various other neighborhoods has increased. An popular tourist destination, Detroit receives 19 million visitors per year. In 2015, Detroit was named a "City of Design" by UNESCO, the first U. S. city to receive that designation. Paleo-Indian people inhabited areas near Detroit as early as 11,000 years ago including the culture referred to as the Mound-builders.
In the 17th century, the region was inhabited by Huron, Odawa and Iroquois peoples. The first Europeans did not penetrate into the region and reach the straits of Detroit until French missionaries and traders worked their way around the League of the Iroquois, with whom they were at war, other Iroquoian tribes in the 1630s; the north side of Lake Erie was held by the Huron and Neutral peoples until the 1650s, when the Iroquois pushed both and the Erie people away from the lake and its beaver-rich feeder streams in the Beaver Wars of 1649–1655. By the 1670s, the war-weakened Iroquois laid claim to as far south as the Ohio River valley in northern Kentucky as hunting grounds, had absorbed many other Iroquoian peoples after defeating them in war. For the next hundred years no British, colonist, or French action was contemplated without consultation with, or consideration of the Iroquois' response; when the French and Indian War evicted the Kingdom of France from Canada, it removed one barrier to British colonists migrating west.
British negotiations with the Iroquois would both prove critical and lead to a Crown policy limiting the west of the Alleghenies settlements below the Great Lakes, which gave many American would-be migrants a casus belli for supporting the American Revolution. The 1778 raids and resultant 1779 decisive Sullivan Expedition reopened the Ohio Country to westward emigration, which began immediately, by 1800 white settlers were pouring westwards; the city was named by French colonists, referring to the Detroit River, linking Lake Huron and Lake Erie. On July 24, 1701, the French explorer Antoine de la Mothe Cadillac, along with more than a hundred other settlers began constructing a small fort on the north bank of the Detroit River. Cadillac would name the settlement Fort Pontchartrain du Détroit, after Louis Phélypeaux, comte de Pontchartrain, Minister of Marine under Louis XIV. France offered free land to colonists to attract families to Detroit. By 1773, the population of Detroit was 1,400. By 1778, its population was up to 2,144 and it was the third-largest city in the Province of Quebec.
The region's economy was based on the lucrative fur trade, in which nume
Cincinnati
Cincinnati is a major city in the U. S. state of Ohio, is the government seat of Hamilton County. Settled in 1788, the city is located at the northern side of the confluence of the Licking and Ohio rivers, the latter of which marks the state line with Kentucky; the city drives the Cincinnati–Middletown–Wilmington combined statistical area, which had a population of 2,172,191 in the 2010 census making it Ohio's largest metropolitan area. With a population of 296,943, Cincinnati is the third-largest city in Ohio and 65th in the United States, its metropolitan area is the fastest growing economic power in the Midwestern United States based on increase of economic output and it is the 28th-largest metropolitan statistical area in the U. S. Cincinnati is within a day's drive of 49.70% of the United States populace. In the nineteenth century, Cincinnati was an American boomtown in the middle of the country. Throughout much of the 19th century, it was listed among the top 10 U. S. cities by population, surpassed only by New Orleans and the older, established settlements of the United States eastern seaboard, as well as being the sixth-biggest city for a period spanning 1840 until 1860.
As Cincinnati was the first city founded after the American Revolution, as well as the first major inland city in the country, it is regarded as the first purely "American" city. Cincinnati developed with fewer immigrants and less influence from Europe than East Coast cities in the same period. However, it received a significant number of German immigrants, who founded many of the city's cultural institutions. By the end of the 19th century, with the shift from steamboats to railroads drawing off freight shipping, trade patterns had altered and Cincinnati's growth slowed considerably; the city was surpassed in population by other inland cities Chicago, which developed based on strong commodity exploitation and the railroads, St. Louis, which for decades after the Civil War served as the gateway to westward migration. Cincinnati is home to three major sports teams: the Cincinnati Reds of Major League Baseball; the city's largest institution of higher education, the University of Cincinnati, was founded in 1819 as a municipal college and is now ranked as one of the 50 largest in the United States.
Cincinnati is home to historic architecture with many structures in the urban core having remained intact for 200 years. In the late 1800s, Cincinnati was referred to as the "Paris of America", due to such ambitious architectural projects as the Music Hall, Cincinnatian Hotel, Shillito Department Store. Cincinnati is the birthplace of the 27th President of the United States. Cincinnati began in 1788 when Mathias Denman, Colonel Robert Patterson, Israel Ludlow landed at a spot at the northern bank of the Ohio opposite the mouth of the Licking and decided to settle there; the original surveyor, John Filson, named it "Losantiville". In 1790, Arthur St. Clair, the governor of the Northwest Territory, changed the name of the settlement to "Cincinnati" in honor of the Society of the Cincinnati, made up of Revolutionary War veterans, of which he was a member; the introduction of steamboats on the Ohio River in 1811 opened up the city's trade to more rapid shipping, the city established commercial ties with St. Louis and New Orleans downriver.
Cincinnati was incorporated as a city on March 1, 1819. Exporting pork products and hay, it became a center of pork processing in the region. From 1810 to 1830 its population nearly tripled, from 9,642 to 24,831. Completion of the Miami and Erie Canal in 1827 to Middletown, Ohio further stimulated businesses, employers struggled to hire enough people to fill positions; the city had a labor shortage until large waves of immigration by Irish and Germans in the late 1840s. The city grew over the next two decades, reaching 115,000 people by the year 1850. Construction on the Miami and Erie Canal began on July 21, 1825, when it was called the Miami Canal, related to its origin at the Great Miami River; the first section of the canal was opened for business in 1827. In 1827, the canal connected Cincinnati to nearby Middletown. During this period of rapid expansion and prominence, residents of Cincinnati began referring to the city as the Queen City. After the steamboats, railroads were the next major form of commercial transportation to come to Cincinnati.
In 1836, the Little Miami Railroad was chartered. Construction began soon after, to connect Cincinnati with the Mad River and Lake Erie Railroad, provide access to the ports of the Sandusky Bay on Lake Erie. Cincinnati acted as a "border town" during the slave-owning period between 1810 and 1863, its location, on the border between the free state of Ohio and the slave state of Kentucky, made it a prominent location for slaves to escape the slave-owning south. Many prominent abolitionists called Cincinnati their home during this period, made it a popular stop on the Underground Railroad. In 2004, the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center was completed along Freedom Way in Downtown, honoring the city's past involvement in the Underground Railroad. In 1859, Cincinnati laid out six streetcar lines. By 1872, Cincinnatians could travel on the streetcars within the city and transfer to rail cars for travel to the hill communities; the Cincinnati Inclined Plane Company began transporting people t
Ottawa Citizen
The Ottawa Citizen is an English-language daily newspaper owned by Postmedia Network in Ottawa, Canada. Like most Canadian daily newspapers, the Ottawa Citizen has seen a decline in circulation, its total circulation dropped by 26 percent to 91,796 copies daily from 2009 to 2015. Daily average Established as The Bytown Packet in 1845 by William Harris, it was renamed the Citizen in 1851; the newspaper's original motto, returned to the editorial page, was Fair play and Day-Light. The paper has been through a number of owners. In 1846, Harris sold the paper to Henry J. Friel. Robert Bell bought the paper in 1849. In 1877, Charles Herbert Mackintosh, the editor under Robert Bell, became publisher. In 1879, it became one of several papers owned by the Southam family, it remained under Southam until the chain was purchased by Conrad Black's Hollinger Inc.. In 2000, Black sold most of his Canadian holdings, including the flagship National Post to CanWest Global; the editorial view of the Citizen has varied with its ownership, taking a reform, anti-Tory position under Harris and a conservative position under Bell.
As part of Southam, it moved to the left, supporting the Liberals in opposition to the Progressive Conservative Party's support of free trade in the late 1980s. Under Black, it became a supporter of the Reform Party, it endorsed the Conservative Party of Canada in the 2006 federal election. In 2002, its publisher Russell Mills was dismissed following the publication of a story critical of Prime Minister Jean Chrétien and an editorial calling for Chrétien's resignation, it published its last Sunday edition on July 15, 2012. The move cut 20 newsroom jobs, was part of a series of changes made by PostMedia; the logo used to depict the top of the Peace Tower of the Parliament Buildings in Ottawa. In 2014 it was rebranded, with a new logo showing the paper's name over an outline of the Peace Tower on a green background. News World City Sports Arts Business Food Driving Technology Homes & Condos List of newspapers in Canada Adam, Mohammed.. "When we began 1845: For 160 years, the Citizen has been the'heartbeat of the community".
Ottawa Citizen. Bruce, Charles. News and the Southams. Toronto: Macmillan of Canada, 1968. Kesterton, W. H. A History of Journalism in Canada. Ottawa, Canada: Carleton University Press, 1984. ISBN 978-0-88629-022-1. Rutherford, Paul. A Victorian authority: the daily press in late nineteenth-century Canada. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1982. ISBN 978-0-8020-5588-0. DDC 71.1. LCC PN4907. Official website Official mobile version Canadian Newspaper Association The Ottawa Citizen Birth Marriage, Anniversary and Memoriam Notices 1879-1885 Google News Archive microfilm archive 1853–1987
Kebab
Kebabs are various cooked meat dishes, with their origins in Middle Eastern cuisine. Many variants are popular throughout Asia, around the world. In most English-speaking countries, a kebab is the internationally-known shish kebab or shashlik, though outside of North America a kebab may be the ubiquitous fast-food doner kebab or its variants. In contrast, in Indian English and in the languages of the Middle East, other parts of Asia, the Muslim world, a kebab is any of a wide variety of grilled meat dishes; some dishes derived from Middle Eastern kebab may have different names in their local languages, such as the Chinese chuanr. Although kebabs are cooked on a skewer, many types of kebab are not. Kebab dishes can consist of ground meat or seafood, sometimes with fruits and vegetables; the traditional meat for kebabs is most mutton or lamb, but regional recipes may include beef, chicken, fish, or more due to religious prohibitions, pork. Evidence of hominin use of fire and cooking in the Middle East dates back as far as 790,000 years, prehistoric hearths, earth ovens, burnt animal bones were spread across Europe and the Middle East by at least 250,000 years ago.
Excavations of the Minoan settlement of Akrotiri unearthed stone supports for skewers used before the 17th century BC. In ancient times, Homer in the Iliad mentions pieces of meat roasted on spits, the Mahabharata, an ancient Indian text mentions large pieces of meat roasted on spits. In Ibn Sayyar al-Warraq's 10th-century Baghdadi cookbook Kitab al-Tabikh, a compendium of much of the legacy of Mesopotamian and Arab cuisine, there are descriptions of kabāb as cut-up meat, either fried in a pan or grilled over a fire; the method of cooking smaller chunks or slices of meat on skewers has a long history in the region, where it would be practical in cities where small cuts of meat were available in butchers' shops, where fuel for cooking was scarce, compared to Europe, where extensive forests enabled farmers to roast large cuts of meat whole. Indeed, many cultures have dishes consisting of chunks of meat cooked over a fire on skewers, such as the anticucho, prepared in South America since long before contact with Europe and Asia.
However, while the word kebab or shish kebab may sometimes be used in English as a culinary term that refers to any type of small chunks of meat cooked on a skewer, kebab is associated with a diversity of meat dishes that originated in the medieval kitchens of Persia and Turkey. Though the word has ancient origins, it was popularized by Turks to refer to this range of grilled and broiled meat, which may be cooked on skewers, but as stews and other forms; this cuisine has spread in parallel with Muslim influence. According to Ibn Battuta, a Moroccan traveller, kebab was served in the royal houses during the Delhi Sultanate, commoners would enjoy it for breakfast with naan. Kebab dishes have been adopted and integrated with local cooking styles and innovations, from the now-ubiquitous doner kebab fast food, to the many variations of shish kebab, such as the satays of Southeast Asia; the word kebab came to English in the late 17th century from the Arabic kabāb through Urdu and Turkish. According to linguist Sevan Nişanyan, the Turkish word kebap is derived from the Arabic word kabāb, meaning roasted meat.
It appears in Turkish texts as early as the 14th century, in Kyssa-i Yusuf, though still in the Arabic form. Nişanyan states that the word has the equivalent meaning of "frying/burning" with "kabābu" in the old Akkadian language, "kbabā/כבבא" in Aramaic. In contrast, food historian Gil Marks says that the medieval Arabic and Turkish terms were adopted from the Persian kabab, which derived from the Aramaic; the American Heritage Dictionary gives a probable East Semitic root origin with the meaning of "burn", "char", or "roast", from the Aramaic and Akkadian. The Babylonian Talmud instructs; these words point to an origin in the prehistoric Proto-Afroasiatic language: *kab-, to burn or roast. Suya is a spicy kebab, a popular food item in West Africa, it is traditionally prepared by the Hausa people of northern Nigeria, Niger and some parts of Sudan. Kyinkyinga is popular in West Africa, it is a Ghanian dish similar to or synonymous with the Hausa suya kebab known as sooya, chichinga, tsire agashi, chachanga or tankora.
Sosatie is a traditional South African dish of meat cooked on skewers. The term derives from sate and saus, it is of Cape Malay origin. Sosatie recipes vary, but the ingredients can include cubes of lamb, chicken, dried apricots, red onions and mixed peppers. Afghan kebab is most found in restaurants and outdoor vendor stalls; the most used meat is lamb. Recipes differ with every restaurant. Afghan kebab is served with naan rice, customers have the option to sprinkle sumac or ghora, dried ground sour grapes, on their kebab; the quality of kebab is dependent on the quality of the meat. Pieces of fat from the sheep's tail are added with the lamb skewers to add extra flavor. Other popular kebabs include the lamb chop, beef and chicken, all of which are found in better restaurants. Chapli kebab, a specialty of Eastern Afghanistan, is a patty made from beef mince, it is a popula
Pittsburgh
Pittsburgh is a city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania in the United States, is the county seat of Allegheny County. As of 2018, a population of 308,144 lives within the city limits, making it the 63rd-largest city in the U. S; the metropolitan population of 2,362,453, is the largest in both the Ohio Valley and Appalachia, the second-largest in Pennsylvania, the 26th-largest in the U. S. Pittsburgh is located in the south west of the state, at the confluence of the Allegheny and Ohio rivers. Pittsburgh is known both as "the Steel City" for its more than 300 steel-related businesses and as the "City of Bridges" for its 446 bridges; the city features 30 skyscrapers, two inclined railways, a pre-revolutionary fortification and the Point State Park at the confluence of the rivers. The city developed as a vital link of the Atlantic coast and Midwest, as the mineral-rich Allegheny Mountains made the area coveted by the French and British empires, Whiskey Rebels, Civil War raiders. Aside from steel, Pittsburgh has led in manufacturing of aluminum, shipbuilding, foods, transportation, computing and electronics.
For part of the 20th century, Pittsburgh was behind only New York and Chicago in corporate headquarters employment. S. stockholders per capita. America's 1980s deindustrialization laid off area blue-collar workers and thousands of downtown white-collar workers when the longtime Pittsburgh-based world headquarters moved out; this heritage left the area with renowned museums, medical centers, research centers, a diverse cultural district. Today, Apple Inc. Bosch, Uber, Autodesk, Microsoft and IBM are among 1,600 technology firms generating $20.7 billion in annual Pittsburgh payrolls. The area has served as the long-time federal agency headquarters for cyber defense, software engineering, energy research and the nuclear navy; the area is home to 68 colleges and universities, including research and development leaders Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Pittsburgh. The nation's eighth-largest bank, eight Fortune 500 companies, six of the top 300 U. S. law firms make their global headquarters in the area, while RAND, BNY Mellon, FedEx, Bayer and NIOSH have regional bases that helped Pittsburgh become the sixth-best area for U.
S. job growth. In 2015, Pittsburgh was listed among the "eleven most livable cities in the world"; the region is a hub for Environmental Design and energy extraction. In 2019, Pittsburgh was deemed “Food City of the Year” by the San Francisco-based restaurant and hospitality consulting firm af&co. Many restaurants were mentioned favorable, among them were Superior Motors in Braddock, Driftwood Oven in Lawrenceville, Spork in Bloomfield, Fish nor Fowl in Garfield and Bitter Ends Garden & Luncheonette in Bloomfield. Pittsburgh was named in 1758 by General John Forbes, in honor of British statesman William Pitt, 1st Earl of Chatham; as Forbes was a Scot, he pronounced the name PITS-bər-ə. Pittsburgh was incorporated as a borough on April 22, 1794, with the following Act: "Be it enacted by the Pennsylvania State Senate and Pennsylvania House of Representatives of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania... by the authority of the same, that the said town of Pittsburgh shall be... erected into a borough, which shall be called the borough of Pittsburgh for ever."
From 1891 to 1911, the city's name was federally recognized as "Pittsburg", though use of the final h was retained during this period by the city government and other local organizations. After a public campaign, the federal decision to drop the h was reversed; the area of the Ohio headwaters was long inhabited by the Shawnee and several other settled groups of Native Americans. The first known European to enter the region was the French explorer/trader Robert de La Salle from Quebec during his 1669 expedition down the Ohio River. European pioneers Dutch, followed in the early 18th century. Michael Bezallion was the first to describe the forks of the Ohio in a 1717 manuscript, that year European fur traders established area posts and settlements. In 1749, French soldiers from Quebec launched an expedition to the forks to unite Canada with French Louisiana via the rivers. During 1753–54, the British hastily built Fort Prince George before a larger French force drove them off; the French built Fort Duquesne based on LaSalle's 1669 claims.
The French and Indian War, the North American front of the Seven Years' War, began with the future Pittsburgh as its center. British General Edward Braddock was dispatched with Major George Washington as his aide to take Fort Duquesne; the British and colonial force were defeated at Braddock's Field. General John Forbes took the forks in 1758. Forbes began construction on Fort Pitt, named after William Pitt the Elder while the settlement was named "Pittsborough". During Pontiac's Rebellion, native tribes conducted a siege of Fort Pitt for two months until Colonel Henry Bouquet relieved it after the Battle of Bushy Run. Fort Pitt is notable as the site of an early use of smallpox for biological warfare. Lord Jeffery Amherst ordered blankets contaminated from smallpox victims to be distributed in 1763 to the tribes surrounding the fort; the disease spread into other areas, infected other tribes, killed hundreds of thousands. During this period, the powerful nations of the Iroquois Confederacy, based in New York, had maintained control of much of the Ohio Valley as hunting grounds by right of conquest after defeating other tribes.
By the terms of the 1768 Treaty of
