1.
California
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California is the most populous state in the United States and the third most extensive by area. Located on the western coast of the U. S, California is bordered by the other U. S. states of Oregon, Nevada, and Arizona and shares an international border with the Mexican state of Baja California. Los Angeles is Californias most populous city, and the second largest after New York City. The Los Angeles Area and the San Francisco Bay Area are the nations second- and fifth-most populous urban regions, California also has the nations most populous county, Los Angeles County, and its largest county by area, San Bernardino County. The Central Valley, an agricultural area, dominates the states center. What is now California was first settled by various Native American tribes before being explored by a number of European expeditions during the 16th and 17th centuries, the Spanish Empire then claimed it as part of Alta California in their New Spain colony. The area became a part of Mexico in 1821 following its war for independence. The western portion of Alta California then was organized as the State of California, the California Gold Rush starting in 1848 led to dramatic social and demographic changes, with large-scale emigration from the east and abroad with an accompanying economic boom. If it were a country, California would be the 6th largest economy in the world, fifty-eight percent of the states economy is centered on finance, government, real estate services, technology, and professional, scientific and technical business services. Although it accounts for only 1.5 percent of the states economy, the story of Calafia is recorded in a 1510 work The Adventures of Esplandián, written as a sequel to Amadis de Gaula by Spanish adventure writer Garci Rodríguez de Montalvo. The kingdom of Queen Calafia, according to Montalvo, was said to be a land inhabited by griffins and other strange beasts. This conventional wisdom that California was an island, with maps drawn to reflect this belief, shortened forms of the states name include CA, Cal. Calif. and US-CA. Settled by successive waves of arrivals during the last 10,000 years, various estimates of the native population range from 100,000 to 300,000. The Indigenous peoples of California included more than 70 distinct groups of Native Americans, ranging from large, settled populations living on the coast to groups in the interior. California groups also were diverse in their organization with bands, tribes, villages. Trade, intermarriage and military alliances fostered many social and economic relationships among the diverse groups, the first European effort to explore the coast as far north as the Russian River was a Spanish sailing expedition, led by Portuguese captain Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo, in 1542. Some 37 years later English explorer Francis Drake also explored and claimed a portion of the California coast in 1579. Spanish traders made unintended visits with the Manila galleons on their trips from the Philippines beginning in 1565
2.
Punjab Province (British India)
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Punjab, also spelled Panjab, was a province of British India. Most of the Punjab region was annexed by the East India Company in 1849 and it comprised five administrative divisions — Delhi, Jullunder, Lahore, Multan and Rawalpindi — and a number of princely states. The partition of India led to the province being divided into East Punjab and West Punjab, belonging to the newly created Union of India and Dominion of Pakistan respectively. The name of the region is a compound of two Persian words Panj and āb and was introduced to the region by the Turko-Persian conquerors of India, Punjab literally means Five Waters referring to the rivers, Jhelum, Chenab, Ravi, Sutlej, and Beas. All are tributaries of the Indus River, the Chenab being the largest, moreover, the province as constituted under British rule also included a large tract outside these boundaries. Along the northern border, Himalayan ranges divided it from Kashmir, on the west it was separated from the North-West Frontier Province by the Indus, until it reached the border of Dera Ghazi Khan District, which was divided from Baluchistan by the Sulaiman Range. To the south lay Sindh and Rajputana, while on the east the rivers Jumna, following the victory, the East India Company annexed Punjab on 2 April 1849 and it was made part of the British Raj, at that time administered by the EIC. Lord Dalhousie constituted the Board of Administration by inducting into it the most experienced and seasoned British officers, the members include Sir Henry Lawrence, who had previously worked as British Resident at the Lahore Durbar. Henceforth the Punjab would provide Sikh and Punjabi sepoy regiments to the EICs armies in India and these soldiers would later help the British to put down the Indian Rebellion of 1857. Delhi was transferred from the North-Western Provinces to Punjab in 1859, the British colonial government took this action partly to punish the city for the important role that the last Mughal emperor, Bahadur Shah II, and the city as a whole played in the 1857 Rebellion. Sir John Lawrence, then Chief Commissioner, was appointed the first Lieutenant-Governor on 1 January 1859, the territory under the Lieutenant consisted of 29 Districts, grouped under 5 Divisions, and 43 Princely States. Each District was under a Deputy-Commissioner, who reported to the Commissioner of the Division, each District was subdivided into between three and seven tehsils, each under a tahsildar, assisted by a naib tahsildar. In 1866, the Judicial Commissioner was replaced by a Chief Court, the direct administrative functions of the Government were carried out through the Lieutinent-Governor through the Secretariat, comprising a Chief Secretary, a Secretary and two Under-Secretaries. They were usually members of the Indian Civil Service, by the late 19th century, however, the Indian nationalist movement took hold in the province. One of the most significant events associated with the movement was the Jallianwala Bagh massacre in 1919, British colonel Reginald Dyer ordered his troops to fire on a group of some 10,000 unarmed Indians who had convened to protest new anti-subversion regulations. In 1901 the frontier districts beyond the Indus were separated from Punjab and made into a new province, the first Punjab Legislative Council under the 1919 Act was constituted in 1921, comprising 93 members, seventy per cent to be elected and rest to be nominated. Some of the Indian ministers under the scheme were Sir Sheikh Abdul Qadir, Khan Bahadur Chaudhry Sir Shahab-ud-Din. The Government of India Act 1935 introduced provincial autonomy to Punjab replacing the system of dyarchy and it provided for the constitution of Punjab Legislative Assembly of 175 members presided by a Speaker and an executive government responsible to the Assembly
3.
India
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India, officially the Republic of India, is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area, the second-most populous country, and it is bounded by the Indian Ocean on the south, the Arabian Sea on the southwest, and the Bay of Bengal on the southeast. It shares land borders with Pakistan to the west, China, Nepal, and Bhutan to the northeast, in the Indian Ocean, India is in the vicinity of Sri Lanka and the Maldives. Indias Andaman and Nicobar Islands share a border with Thailand. The Indian subcontinent was home to the urban Indus Valley Civilisation of the 3rd millennium BCE, in the following millennium, the oldest scriptures associated with Hinduism began to be composed. Social stratification, based on caste, emerged in the first millennium BCE, early political consolidations took place under the Maurya and Gupta empires, the later peninsular Middle Kingdoms influenced cultures as far as southeast Asia. In the medieval era, Judaism, Zoroastrianism, Christianity, and Islam arrived, much of the north fell to the Delhi sultanate, the south was united under the Vijayanagara Empire. The economy expanded in the 17th century in the Mughal empire, in the mid-18th century, the subcontinent came under British East India Company rule, and in the mid-19th under British crown rule. A nationalist movement emerged in the late 19th century, which later, under Mahatma Gandhi, was noted for nonviolent resistance, in 2015, the Indian economy was the worlds seventh largest by nominal GDP and third largest by purchasing power parity. Following market-based economic reforms in 1991, India became one of the major economies and is considered a newly industrialised country. However, it continues to face the challenges of poverty, corruption, malnutrition, a nuclear weapons state and regional power, it has the third largest standing army in the world and ranks sixth in military expenditure among nations. India is a constitutional republic governed under a parliamentary system. It is a pluralistic, multilingual and multi-ethnic society and is home to a diversity of wildlife in a variety of protected habitats. The name India is derived from Indus, which originates from the Old Persian word Hindu, the latter term stems from the Sanskrit word Sindhu, which was the historical local appellation for the Indus River. The ancient Greeks referred to the Indians as Indoi, which translates as The people of the Indus, the geographical term Bharat, which is recognised by the Constitution of India as an official name for the country, is used by many Indian languages in its variations. Scholars believe it to be named after the Vedic tribe of Bharatas in the second millennium B. C. E and it is also traditionally associated with the rule of the legendary emperor Bharata. Gaṇarājya is the Sanskrit/Hindi term for republic dating back to the ancient times, hindustan is a Persian name for India dating back to the 3rd century B. C. E. It was introduced into India by the Mughals and widely used since then and its meaning varied, referring to a region that encompassed northern India and Pakistan or India in its entirety
4.
Hollywood
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Hollywood is an ethnically diverse, densely populated neighborhood in the central region of Los Angeles, California. It is notable as the home of the U. S. film industry, including several of its studios, and its name has come to be a shorthand reference for the industry. Hollywood was a community in 1870 and was incorporated as a municipality in 1903. It was consolidated with the city of Los Angeles in 1910, in 1853, one adobe hut stood in Nopalera, named for the Mexican Nopal cactus indigenous to the area. By 1870, an agricultural community flourished, the area was known as the Cahuenga Valley, after the pass in the Santa Monica Mountains immediately to the north. According to the diary of H. J. Whitley, known as the Father of Hollywood, along came a Chinese man in a wagon carrying wood. The man got out of the wagon and bowed, the Chinese man was asked what he was doing and replied, I holly-wood, meaning hauling wood. H. J. Whitley had an epiphany and decided to name his new town Hollywood, Holly would represent England and wood would represent his Scottish heritage. Whitley had already started over 100 towns across the western United States, Whitley arranged to buy the 500-acre E. C. Hurd ranch and disclosed to him his plans for the land. They agreed on a price and Hurd agreed to sell at a later date, before Whitley got off the ground with Hollywood, plans for the new town had spread to General Harrison Gray Otis, Hurds wife, eastern adjacent ranch co-owner Daeida Wilcox, and others. Daeida Wilcox may have learned of the name Hollywood from Ivar Weid, her neighbor in Holly Canyon and she recommended the same name to her husband, Harvey. In August 1887, Wilcox filed with the Los Angeles County Recorders office a deed and parcel map of property he had sold named Hollywood, Wilcox wanted to be the first to record it on a deed. The early real-estate boom busted that year, yet Hollywood began its slow growth. By 1900, the region had a post office, newspaper, hotel, Los Angeles, with a population of 102,479 lay 10 miles east through the vineyards, barley fields, and citrus groves. A single-track streetcar line ran down the middle of Prospect Avenue from it, but service was infrequent, the old citrus fruit-packing house was converted into a livery stable, improving transportation for the inhabitants of Hollywood. The Hollywood Hotel was opened in 1902 by H. J. Whitley who was a president of the Los Pacific Boulevard, having finally acquired the Hurd ranch and subdivided it, Whitley built the hotel to attract land buyers. Flanking the west side of Highland Avenue, the structure fronted on Prospect Avenue, the hotel was to become internationally known and was the center of the civic and social life and home of the stars for many years. Whitleys company developed and sold one of the residential areas
5.
Democratic Party (United States)
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The Democratic Party is one of the two major contemporary political parties in the United States, along with the Republican Party. The Democrats dominant worldview was once socially conservative and fiscally classical liberalism, while, especially in the rural South, since Franklin D. Roosevelt and his New Deal coalition in the 1930s, the Democratic Party has also promoted a social-liberal platform, supporting social justice. Today, the House Democratic caucus is composed mostly of progressives and centrists, the partys philosophy of modern liberalism advocates social and economic equality, along with the welfare state. It seeks to provide government intervention and regulation in the economy, the party has united with smaller left-wing regional parties throughout the country, such as the Farmer–Labor Party in Minnesota and the Nonpartisan League in North Dakota. Well into the 20th century, the party had conservative pro-business, the New Deal Coalition of 1932–1964 attracted strong support from voters of recent European extraction—many of whom were Catholics based in the cities. After Franklin D. Roosevelts New Deal of the 1930s, the pro-business wing withered outside the South, after the racial turmoil of the 1960s, most southern whites and many northern Catholics moved into the Republican Party at the presidential level. The once-powerful labor union element became smaller and less supportive after the 1970s, white Evangelicals and Southerners became heavily Republican at the state and local level in the 1990s. However, African Americans became a major Democratic element after 1964, after 2000, Hispanic and Latino Americans, Asian Americans, the LGBT community, single women and professional women moved towards the party as well. The Northeast and the West Coast became Democratic strongholds by 1990 after the Republicans stopped appealing to socially liberal voters there, overall, the Democratic Party has retained a membership lead over its major rival the Republican Party. The most recent was the 44th president Barack Obama, who held the office from 2009 to 2017, in the 115th Congress, following the 2016 elections, Democrats are the opposition party, holding a minority of seats in both the House of Representatives and the Senate. The party also holds a minority of governorships, and state legislatures, though they do control the mayoralty of cities such as New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, Houston, and Washington, D. C. The Democratic Party traces its origins to the inspiration of the Democratic-Republican Party, founded by Thomas Jefferson, James Madison and that party also inspired the Whigs and modern Republicans. Organizationally, the modern Democratic Party truly arose in the 1830s, since the nomination of William Jennings Bryan in 1896, the party has generally positioned itself to the left of the Republican Party on economic issues. They have been liberal on civil rights issues since 1948. On foreign policy both parties changed position several times and that party, the Democratic-Republican Party, came to power in the election of 1800. After the War of 1812 the Federalists virtually disappeared and the national political party left was the Democratic-Republicans. The Democratic-Republican party still had its own factions, however. As Norton explains the transformation in 1828, Jacksonians believed the peoples will had finally prevailed, through a lavishly financed coalition of state parties, political leaders, and newspaper editors, a popular movement had elected the president
6.
University of California, Berkeley
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The University of California, Berkeley, is a public research university located in Berkeley, California. In 1960s, UC Berkeley was particularly noted for the Free Speech Movement as well as the Anti-Vietnam War Movement led by its students. S, Department of Energy, and is home to many world-renowned research institutes and organizations including Mathematical Sciences Research Institute and Space Sciences Laboratory. Faculty member J. R. Oppenheimer, the father of the atomic bomb, Lawrence Livermore Lab also discovered or co-discovered six chemical elements. The Academic Ranking of World Universities also ranks the University of California, Berkeley, third in the world overall, in 1866, the private College of California purchased the land comprising the current Berkeley campus. Ten faculty members and almost 40 students made up the new University of California when it opened in Oakland in 1869, billings was a trustee of the College of California and suggested that the college be named in honor of the Anglo-Irish philosopher George Berkeley. In 1870, Henry Durant, the founder of the College of California, with the completion of North and South Halls in 1873, the university relocated to its Berkeley location with 167 male and 22 female students and held its first classes. In 1905, the University Farm was established near Sacramento, ultimately becoming the University of California, by the 1920s, the number of campus buildings had grown substantially, and included twenty structures designed by architect John Galen Howard. Robert Gordon Sproul served as president from 1930 to 1958, by 1942, the American Council on Education ranked UC Berkeley second only to Harvard University in the number of distinguished departments. During World War II, following Glenn Seaborgs then-secret discovery of plutonium, UC Berkeley physics professor J. Robert Oppenheimer was named scientific head of the Manhattan Project in 1942. Along with the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley is now a partner in managing two other labs, Los Alamos National Laboratory and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, originally, military training was compulsory for male undergraduates, and Berkeley housed an armory for that purpose. In 1917, Berkeleys ROTC program was established, and its School of Military Aeronautics trained future pilots, including Jimmy Doolittle, both Robert McNamara and Frederick C. Weyand graduated from UC Berkeleys ROTC program, earning B. A. degrees in 1937 and 1938, in 1926, future fleet admiral Chester W. Nimitz established the first Naval Reserve Officers Training Corps unit at Berkeley. The Board of Regents ended compulsory military training at Berkeley in 1962, during the McCarthy era in 1949, the Board of Regents adopted an anti-communist loyalty oath. A number of faculty members objected and were dismissed, ten years passed before they were reinstated with back pay, in 1952, the University of California became an entity separate from the Berkeley campus. Each campus was given autonomy and its own Chancellor. Then-president Sproul assumed presidency of the entire University of California system, Berkeley gained a reputation for student activism in the 1960s with the Free Speech Movement of 1964 and opposition to the Vietnam War. In the highly publicized Peoples Park protest in 1969, students and the school conflicted over use of a plot of land, then governor of California Ronald Reagan called the Berkeley campus a haven for communist sympathizers, protesters, and sex deviants. Modern students at Berkeley are less active, with a greater percentage of moderates and conservatives
7.
Sikhism in the United States
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Sikhism is a religion originating from South Asia which was introduced into the United States during the 19th century. The United States also has a number of converts to Sikhism. Sikh men are typically identifiable by their beards and Turbans. Sikh temples have also damaged due to being mistaken for mosques. Thind requested citizenship at the end of the war, being granted and revoked twice, far larger numbers of Sikhs served in World War II, and all American wars following. Currently, a Sikh doctor, Kamaljeet S. Kalsi, and dentist, Tejdeep Singh Rattan, are the only Sikh officers to be permitted to serve in uniform with beard and turban. In addition, Simranpreet Lamba was permitted to enlist, with exemption to wear his turban and beard, in 2010 due to his knowledge of Punjabi, in 2016, the New York City Police Department began to allow turbans, subject to standards compatible with unimpeded performance of duty. Many Sikhs started life in America working in mills, mines. Many early Sikh immigrants were restaurant owners, in 1956, Dalip Singh Saund became the first Asian Indian-born person to be elected to the United States House of Representatives. City planner Satyendra Huja was elected mayor of Charlottesville, Virginia in January 2012, amarjit Singh Buttar was elected in December 2001 to the Vernon, Connecticut Board of Education and won re-election in 2011. United States Ambassador to the United Nations and former Governor of South Carolina Nikki Haley was born a Sikh and later converted to Christianity. The largest and most rapidly growing Sikh community in New York City is based in the Richmond Hill area of the borough of Queens, conversely, in the Sikh Foundation of Virginia, most members comprise both recent and more established Jatt Sikhs, Ramgarhia Sikhs, and Sikh Rajputs. Most Sikhs of Española, New Mexico are non-Punjabi converts to Sikhism and these attacks were committed because many Americans incorrectly think Sikhs are Muslim Terrorists, with the appearance of terrorists such as Osama Bin Laden being the reason for that assumption. Sikhs have been a part of the American populace for more than 130 years, near the end of the 19th century, the state of Punjab of British India was hit hard by British practices of mercantilism. Many Sikhs emigrated to the United States and began arriving to work on farms in California and they traveled via Hong Kong to Angel Island, California, the western counterpart to Ellis Island in New York Harbor. A big effect on Sikh migration to the western states occurred during World War I and World War II, Sikhs fought bravely during these wars and began to live in England after their serving period. Among the Sikhs who already lived in America prior to the wars, many Sikhs joined them, mainly during World Wars I, among those who served in the US military include Bhagat Singh Thind in World War I. As a result of the September 11 attacks, some Sikh Americans have become subject to discrimination, balbir Singh Sodhi, a gas station owner, was killed on September 15,2001 due to being mistaken for a Muslim
8.
Asian Americans
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Asian Americans are Americans of Asian descent. The term refers to a group that includes diverse populations who have ancestral origins in East Asia, Southeast Asia, or South Asia. This includes people who indicate their race on the census as Asian or reported entries such as Asian Indian, Chinese, Filipino, Korean, Japanese, Vietnamese, and Other Asian. Asian Americans with no other ancestry comprise 4. 8% of the U. S. population, although migrants from Asia have been in parts of the contemporary United States since the 17th century, large-scale immigration did not begin until the mid-18th century. Nativist immigration laws during the 1880s-1920s excluded various Asian groups, eventually prohibiting almost all Asian immigration to the continental United States, after immigration laws were reformed during the 1940s-60s, abolishing national origins quotas, Asian immigration increased rapidly. Analyses of the 2010 census have shown that Asian Americans are the fastest growing racial or ethnic minority in the United States, starting in the first few years of the 2000 decade, Asian American earnings began exceeding all other racial groups for both men and women. For example, in 2008 Asian Americans had the highest median household income overall of any racial demographic, in 2012, Asian Americans had the highest educational attainment level and median household income of any racial demographic in the country. In 2015, Asian American men were the highest earning racial group as they earned 117% as much as white American men, once country of birth and other demographic factors are taken into account, Asian Americans are no more likely than non-Hispanic whites to live in poverty. As with other racial and ethnicity based terms, formal and common usage have changed markedly through the history of this term. Prior to the late 1960s, people of Asian ancestry were referred to as Oriental, Asiatic. Today, Asian American is the term for most formal purposes, such as government and academic research. The most commonly used definition of Asian American is the US Census Bureau definition, which all people with origins in the Far East, Southeast Asia. This is chiefly because the census definitions determine many government classifications, notably for equal opportunity programs, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, Asian person in the United States is sometimes thought of as a person of East Asian descent. In vernacular usage, Asian is often used to refer to those of East Asian descent or anyone else of Asian descent with epicanthic eyefolds. This differs from the U. S. Census definition and the Asian American Studies departments in many universities consider all those of East, before 1980, Census forms listed particular Asian ancestries as separate groups, along with white and black or negro. Asian Americans had also been classified as other, in 1977, the federal Office of Management and Budget issued a directive requiring government agencies to maintain statistics on racial groups, including on Asian or Pacific Islander. The 1980 census marked the first classification of Asians as a large group, by the 1990 census, Asian or Pacific Islander was included as an explicit category, although respondents had to select one particular ancestry as a subcategory. The 2000 census onwards separated the category into two separate ones, Asian American and Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander, the definition of Asian American has variations that derive from the use of the word American in different contexts
9.
Indian Americans
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Indian Americans or Indo-Americans are Americans whose ancestry belongs to any of the many ethnic groups of the Republic of India. As the most socio-economically successful minority group in the U. S. Indian Americans comprise 4 million people. Indian Americans are the countrys third-largest Asian group alone or in combination with other races after Chinese Americans and Filipino Americans, the U. S. Census Bureau uses the term Asian Indian to avoid confusion with the indigenous peoples of the Americas commonly referred to as American Indians. In the Americas, historically, the term Indian has been most commonly used to refer to the people of the continents after European colonization in the 15th century. Qualifying terms such as American Indian and East Indian were and are used to avoid ambiguity. Since the 1980, Indian Americans have been categorized as Asian Indian by the United States Census Bureau, while East Indian remains in use, the term South Asian is often chosen instead for academic and governmental purposes. Indian Americans are a subgroup of South Asian Americans, a group also includes Bangladeshi Americans, Bhutanese Americans, Nepalese Americans, Pakistani Americans, Sri Lankan Americans. The Naturalization Act of 1790 made Asians ineligible for citizenship, with limited to whites only. Indian immigration began in the century, with more than two thousand Indians living in the United States, primarily on the West Coast, by the end of the century. The presence of Indian-Americans also helped develop interest in Eastern religions in the US, Swami Vivekananda arriving in Chicago at the Worlds Fair led to the establishment of the Vedanta Society. Many Punjabis migrated to the western US in the 19th and early 20th century followed by many other, prior to 1965, Indian immigration to the U. S. was small and isolated, with fewer than fifty thousand Indian immigrants in the country. The Bellingham riots in Bellingham, Washington on September 5,1907 epitomized the low tolerance in the U. S. for Indians, although labeled Hindu, the majority of Indians were Sikh. In the 1923 case, United States v. Bhagat Singh Thind, the Court also argued that the racial difference between Indians and whites was so great that the great body of our people would reject assimilation with Indians. It was after the Luce–Celler Act of 1946 that a quota of 100 Indians per year could immigrate to the U. S. at least twenty Indian American enclaves characterized as a Little India have emerged in the New York City Metropolitan Area. Other metropolitan areas with large Indian American populations include Atlanta, Baltimore–Washington, Boston, Chicago, worth, Detroit, Houston, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, and San Francisco–San Jose–Oakland. Please note that data for multi-racial Asian Americans has not yet released by the US Census Bureau. In 2006, of the 1,266,264 legal immigrants to the United States,58,072 were from India, between 2000 and 2006,421,006 Indian immigrants were admitted to the U. S. up from 352,278 during the 1990–1999 period. According to the 2000 U. S. census, the growth rate for Indians from 1990 to 2000 was 105.87 percent
10.
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
11.
Ellis Island
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Ellis Island, in Upper New York Bay, was the gateway for over 12 million immigrants to the United States as the nations busiest immigrant inspection station for over sixty years from 1892 until 1954. The island was expanded with land reclamation between 1892 and 1934. Before that, the smaller original island was the site of Fort Gibson. The island was part of the Statue of Liberty National Monument in 1965. Long considered part of New York state, a 1998 United States Supreme Court decision found that most of the island is in New Jersey. The south side of the island, home to the Ellis Island Immigrant Hospital, is closed to the general public and the object of restoration efforts spearheaded by Save Ellis Island. Ellis Island is located in Upper New York Bay, east of Liberty State Park and north of Liberty Island, in Jersey City, New Jersey, with a small section that is part of New York City. Largely created through land reclamation, the island has an area of 27.5 acres. The 2. 74-acre natural island and contiguous areas comprise the 3.3 acres that are part of New York, the entire island has been owned and administered by the U. S. federal government since 1808 and has been operated by the National Park Service since 1965. Since September 11,2001, the island is guarded by patrols of the United States Park Police Marine Patrol Unit, public access is by ferry from either Communipaw Terminal in Liberty State Park or from Battery Park at the southern tip of Manhattan. The ferry operator, Hornblower Cruises and Events, also service to the nearby Statue of Liberty. A bridge built for transporting materials and personnel during restoration projects connects Ellis Island with Liberty State Park, proposals made in 1995 to use it or replace it with a new bridge for pedestrians were opposed by the city of New York and the private ferry operator at that time. Much of the island, including the south side, has been closed to the general public since 1954. The renovated area on the side was again closed to the public after Hurricane Sandy in October 2012. The island was re-opened to the public and the museum partially re-opened on October 28,2013, there were several islands which were not completely submerged at high tide. Three of them were given the name Oyster Islands by the settlers of New Netherland, the oyster beds would remain a major source of food for nearly three centuries. During the colonial period Little Oyster Island was known as Dyres, in the 1760s, after some pirates were hanged from one of the islands scrubby trees, it became known as Gibbet Island. It was acquired by Samuel Ellis, a colonial New Yorker and merchant possibly from Wales, in 1785 he unsuccessfully attempted to sell the island, TO BE SOLD By Samuel Ellis, no
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