RMS Lusitania
RMS Lusitania was a British ocean liner and the world's largest passenger ship. The ship was sunk on 7 May 1915 by a German U-boat 11 mi off the southern coast of Ireland; the sinking presaged the United States declaration of war on Germany. Lusitania was a holder of the Blue Riband appellation for the fastest Atlantic crossing, was the world's largest passenger ship until the completion of her sister ship Mauretania, three months later; the Cunard Line launched Lusitania in 1906, at a time of fierce competition for the North Atlantic trade. She sank on her 202nd trans-Atlantic crossing. German shipping lines were aggressive competitors for the custom of transatlantic passengers in the early 20th century. In the face of the competition, Cunard responded by trying to outdo them in speed and luxury. Cunard used assistance from the British Admiralty to build Lusitania, on the understanding that the ship would be available as a light merchant cruiser in time of war. Lusitania had gun mounts for deck cannons, but no guns were installed.
Both Lusitania and Mauretania were fitted with revolutionary new turbine engines that enabled them to maintain a service speed of 25 knots. They were equipped with lifts, wireless telegraph and electric light, provided 50% more passenger space than any other ship; the Royal Navy had blockaded Germany at the start of the First World War. The UK declared the entire North Sea a war zone in the autumn of 1914, mined the approaches; when RMS Lusitania left New York for Britain on 1 May 1915, German submarine warfare was intensifying in the Atlantic. Germany had declared the seas around the United Kingdom a war zone, the German embassy in the United States had placed newspaper advertisements warning people of the dangers of sailing on Lusitania. On the afternoon of 7 May, a German U-boat torpedoed Lusitania 11 mi off the southern coast of Ireland and inside the declared war zone. A second, internal explosion that of munitions she was carrying, sent her to the seabed in 18 minutes, with the deaths of 1,198 passengers and crew.
The Germans justified treating Lusitania as a naval vessel because she was carrying hundreds of tons of war munitions, therefore making her a legitimate military target, argued that British merchant ships had violated the Cruiser Rules from the beginning of the war. The internationally recognized Cruiser Rules were obsolete by 1915 - with the British introduction of Q-ships in 1915 with concealed deck guns, it had become more dangerous for submarines to surface and give warning. RMS Lusitania was transporting war munitions, she operated under the control of the Admiralty, she could be converted into an armed auxiliary cruiser to join the war, her identity had been disguised, she flew no flags, she was a non-neutral vessel in a declared war zone, with orders to evade capture and ram challenging submarines. However the ship was technically unarmed and was carrying thousands of civilian passengers, so the British government accused the Germans of breaching the Cruiser Rules; the sinking caused a storm of protest in the United States because 128 American citizens were among the dead.
The sinking helped shift public opinion in the United States against Germany and was one of the factors in the United States' declaration of war nearly two years later. After the First World War, successive British governments maintained that there were no munitions on board Lusitania, the Germans were not justified in treating the ship as a naval vessel. In 1982, the head of the British Foreign Office's North America department admitted that there is a large amount of ammunition in the wreck, some of, dangerous and poses a safety risk to salvage teams. Lusitania and Mauretania were commissioned by Cunard, responding to increasing competition from rival transatlantic passenger companies the German Norddeutscher Lloyd and Hamburg America Line, they had larger, more modern and more luxurious ships than Cunard, were better placed, starting from German ports, to capture the lucrative trade in emigrants leaving Europe for North America. The NDL liner Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse captured the Blue Riband from Cunard's Campania in 1897, before the prize was taken in 1900 by the HAPAG ship Deutschland.
NDL soon wrested the prize back in 1903 with the new Kaiser Wilhelm Kronprinz Wilhelm. Cunard saw its passenger numbers affected as a result of the so-called "Kaiser-class ocean liners". American millionaire businessman J. P. Morgan had decided to invest in transatlantic shipping by creating a new company, International Mercantile Marine, and, in 1901, purchased the British freight shipper Frederick Leyland & Co. and a controlling interest in the British passenger White Star Line and folded them into IMM. In 1902, IMM, NDL and HAPAG entered into a "Community of Interest" to fix prices and divide among them the transatlantic trade; the partners acquired a 51% stake in the Dutch Holland America Line. IMM made offers to purchase Cunard. Cunard chairman Lord Inverclyde thus approached the British government for assistance. Faced with the impending collapse of the British liner fleet and the consequent loss of national prestige, as well as the reserve of shipping for war purposes which it represented, they agreed to help.
By an agreement signed in June 1903, Cunard was given a loan of £2.6 million to finance two ships, repayable over 20 years at a favourabl
Prima facie
Prima facie is a Latin expression meaning on its first encounter or at first sight. The literal translation would be "at first face" or "at first appearance", from the feminine forms of primus and facies, both in the ablative case. In modern and conversational English, a common translation would be "on the face of it"; the term prima facie is used in modern legal English to signify that upon initial examination, sufficient corroborating evidence appears to exist to support a case. In common law jurisdictions, prima facie denotes evidence that, unless rebutted, would be sufficient to prove a particular proposition or fact; the term is used in academic philosophy. Most legal proceedings, in most jurisdictions, require a prima facie case to exist, following which proceedings may commence to test it, create a ruling. In most legal proceedings, one party has a burden of proof, which requires it to present prima facie evidence for all of the essential facts in its case. If it cannot, its claim may be dismissed without any need for a response by other parties.
A prima facie case might not fall on its own. Sometimes the introduction of prima facie evidence is informally called making a case or building a case. For example, in a trial under criminal law the prosecution has the burden of presenting prima facie evidence of each element of the crime charged against the defendant. In a murder case, this would include evidence that the victim was in fact dead, that the defendant's act caused the death, evidence that the defendant acted with malice aforethought. If no party introduces new evidence, the case stands or falls just by the prima facie evidence or lack thereof. Prima facie evidence does not need to be conclusive or irrefutable: at this stage, evidence rebutting the case is not considered, only whether any party's case has enough merit to take it to a full trial. In common law jurisdictions such as the United Kingdom and the United States, the prosecution in a criminal trial must disclose all evidence to the defense; this includes the prima facie evidence.
An aim of the doctrine of prima facie is to prevent litigants from bringing spurious charges which waste all other parties' time. Prima facie is confused with res ipsa loquitur, the common law doctrine that when the facts make it self-evident that negligence or other responsibility lies with a party, it is not necessary to provide extraneous details, since any reasonable person would find the facts of the case; the difference between the two is that prima facie is a term meaning there is enough evidence for there to be a case to answer, while Res ipsa loquitur means that the facts are so obvious a party does not need to explain any more. For example: "There is a prima facie case that the defendant is liable, they controlled the pump. The pump was flooded the plaintiff's house; the plaintiff had left the house in the control of the defendant. Res ipsa loquitur." This doctrine has been subsumed by general negligence law in Canadian tort law. The phrase is used in academic philosophy. Among its most notable uses is in the theory of ethics first proposed by W. D. Ross called the Ethic of Prima Facie Duties, as well as in epistemology, as used, for example, by Robert Audi.
It is used in reference to an obligation. "I have a prima facie obligation to keep my promise and meet my friend" means that I am under an obligation, but this may yield to a more pressing duty. A more modern usage prefers the title pro tanto obligation: an obligation that may be overruled by another more pressing one; the phrase prima facie is sometimes misspelled prima facia in the mistaken belief that facia is the actual Latin word. In policy debate theory, prima facie is used to describe the mandates or planks of an affirmative case, or, in some rare cases, a negative counterplan; when the negative team appeals to prima facie, it appeals to the fact that the affirmative team cannot add or amend anything in its plan after being stated in the first affirmative constructive. A common usage of the phrase is the concept of a "prima facie speed limit", used in Australia and the United States. A prima facie speed limit is a default speed limit that applies when no other specific speed limit is posted, may be exceeded by a driver.
However, if the driver is detected, cited by police for exceeding the limit, the onus of proof is on the driver, to show that the speed at which the driver was travelling was safe under the circumstances. In most jurisdictions, this type of speed limit has been replaced by absolute speed limits. Defeasible reasoning List of Latin phrases Probable cause Proximate cause Pseudologia fantastica Herlitz, Georg Nils. "The meaning of the term prima facie". Louisiana Law Review. 55: 391. Audi, Robert. Epistemology: A Contemporary Introduction. Routledge. P. 27
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints informally known as the LDS Church or Mormon Church, is a nontrinitarian, Christian restorationist church, considered by its members to be the restoration of the original church founded by Jesus Christ. The church is headquartered in Salt Lake City, Utah in the United States, has established congregations and built temples worldwide. According to the church, it has 67,000 full-time volunteer missionaries. In 2012, the National Council of Churches ranked the church as the fourth-largest Christian denomination in the United States, with over 6.5 million members reported by the church, as of January 2018. It is the largest denomination in the Latter Day Saint movement founded by Joseph Smith during the period of religious revival known as the Second Great Awakening. Adherents referred to as "Latter-day Saints" or, less formally, "Mormons", view faith in Jesus Christ and his atonement as fundamental principles of their religion. LDS theology includes the Christian doctrine of salvation only through Jesus Christ, though LDS doctrines regarding the nature of God and the potential of mankind differ from mainstream Christianity.
The church has an open canon which includes four scriptural texts: the Bible, the Book of Mormon, the Doctrine and Covenants, the Pearl of Great Price. Other than the Bible, the majority of the LDS canon constitutes revelation received by Joseph Smith and recorded by his scribes which includes commentary and exegesis about the Bible, texts described as lost parts of the Bible, other works believed to be written by ancient prophets; because of some of the doctrinal differences, Catholic and several Protestant churches consider the Church to be distinct and separate from mainstream Christianity. Under the doctrine of continuing revelation, Latter-day Saints believe that the church president is a modern-day "prophet and revelator" and that Jesus Christ, under the direction of God the Father, leads the church by revealing his will to its president. Individual members of the church believe that they can receive personal revelation from God in conducting their lives; the president heads a hierarchical structure with various levels reaching down to local congregations.
Bishops, drawn from the laity, lead local congregations. Male members, beginning in January of the year they reach age 12, may be ordained to the priesthood, provided they are living the standards of the church. Women are not ordained to the priesthood but do occupy leadership roles in some church auxiliary organizations. Both men and women may serve as missionaries and the church maintains a large missionary program that proselytizes and conducts humanitarian services worldwide. Faithful members adhere to church laws of sexual purity, health and Sabbath observance, contribute ten percent of their income to the church in tithing; the church teaches about sacred ordinances through which adherents make covenants with God, including baptism, the sacrament, priesthood ordination and celestial marriage —all of which are of great significance to church members. The history of the LDS Church is divided into three broad time periods: the early history during the lifetime of Joseph Smith, in common with all Latter Day Saint movement churches.
The LDS Church called the Church of Christ, was formally organized by Joseph Smith on April 6, 1830, in western New York. Smith changed the name to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints after he stated he had received a revelation to do so. Initial converts were drawn to the church in part because of the newly published Book of Mormon, a self-described chronicle of indigenous American prophets that Smith said he had translated from golden plates. Smith intended to establish the New Jerusalem in North America, called Zion. In 1831, the church moved to Kirtland and began establishing an outpost in Jackson County, where he planned to move the church headquarters. However, in 1833, Missouri settlers brutally expelled the Latter Day Saints from Jackson County, the church was unable via a paramilitary expedition to recover the land; the church flourished in Kirtland as Smith published new revelations and the church built the Kirtland Temple, culminating in a dedication of the building similar to the day of Pentecost.
The Kirtland era ended in 1838, after a financial scandal rocked the church and caused widespread defections. Smith regrouped with the remaining church in Far West, but tensions soon escalated into violent conflicts with the old Missouri settlers. Believing the Saints to be in insurrection, the Missouri governor ordered that the Saints be "exterminated or driven from the State." In 1839, the Saints converted a swampland on the banks of the Mississippi River into Nauvoo, which became the church's new headquarters. Nauvoo grew as missionaries sent to Europe and elsewhere gained new converts who flooded into Nauvoo. Meanwhile, Smith introduced polygamy to his closest associates, he established ceremonies, which he stated the Lord had revealed to him, to allow righteous people to become gods in the afterlife, a secular institution to govern the Millennial kingdom. He introduced the church to a full accounting of his First Vision, in which two heavenly "personages" (God the Father and his
Birth certificate
A birth certificate is a vital record that documents the birth of a child. The term "birth certificate" can refer to either the original document certifying the circumstances of the birth or to a certified copy of or representation of the ensuing registration of that birth. Depending on the jurisdiction, a record of birth might or might not contain verification of the event by such as a midwife or doctor; the documentation of births is a practice held throughout human civilization in China, Greece and Persia. The original purpose of vital statistics was for tax purposes and for the determination of available military manpower. In England, births were registered with churches, who maintained registers of births; this practice continued into the 19th century. The compulsory registration of births with the United Kingdom government is a practice that originated at least as far back as 1853; the entire United States did not get a standardized system until 1902. Most countries have laws that regulate the registration of births.
In all countries, it is the responsibility of the mother's physician, hospital administrator, or the parent of the child to see that the birth is properly registered with the appropriate government agency. The actual record of birth is stored with a government agency; that agency will issue certified copies or representations of the original birth record upon request, which can be used to apply for government benefits, such as passports. The certification is signed and/or sealed by the registrar or other custodian of birth records, commissioned by the government; the right of every child to a name and nationality, the responsibility of national governments to achieve this are contained in Articles 7 and 8 in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child: "The child shall be registered after birth and shall have the right from birth to a name, the right to acquire a nationality..." and "States Parties undertake to respect the right of the child to preserve his or her identity, including nationality and family relations..."....it's a small paper but it establishes who you are and gives access to the rights and the privileges, the obligations, of citizenship.
Despite 191 countries ratifying the Convention, the births of millions of children worldwide go unregistered. By their nature, data concerning unregistered children are approximate. About 29% of countries don't have available or sufficient data to assess global progress towards the SDG goal of universal coverage. However, from the data, available, UNICEF estimates that more than a quarter of children under 5 worldwide are unregistered; the lowest levels of birth registration are found in sub-Saharan Africa. This phenomenon disproportionately indigenous populations. In many developed countries, it contributes to difficulties in accessing civic rights. Birth registration opens the door to rights to children and adults which many other human beings take for granted: to prove their age. There are many reasons why births go unregistered, including social and cultural beliefs and attitudes. Retrospective registration may be necessary where there is a backlog of children whose births have gone unregistered.
In Senegal, the government is facilitating retrospective registration through free local court hearings and the number of unregistered children has fallen as a result. In Sierra Leone, the government gave the National Office of Births and Deaths special permission to issue birth certificates to children over seven. In Bolivia, there was a successful three-year amnesty for the free registration of young people aged between 12 and 18. Statelessness, or the lack of effective nationality, impacts the daily lives of some 11-12 million people around the world; those who suffer most are stateless infants and youth. Although born and raised in their parents' country of habitual residence, they lack formal recognition of their existence. States and territories of Australia are responsible for the issuance of birth certificates, through agencies titled "Registry of Births Deaths and Marriages" or similar. Registering a birth is done by a hospital through a "Birth Registration Statement" or similar, signed by appropriately licensed and authorized health professionals, provided to the state or territory registry.
Home births are permitted, but a statement is required from a registered midwife, doctor or 2 other witnesses other than the parent. Unplanned births require in some states. Once registered, a separate application can be made for a birth certificate at a cost; the person named or the parent can apply for a certificate at any time. There is no restriction on re-applying for a certificate at a date, so it could be possible to hold multiple original copies; the Federal government requires that births be registered through a "Proof of Birth Declaration" signed as above by a doctor or
John Wayne Gacy
John Wayne Gacy was an American serial killer and rapist who sexually assaulted and murdered at least 33 teenage boys and young men between 1972 and 1978 in Cook County, Illinois. All of Gacy's known murders were committed inside his Norwood Park ranch house, his victims were induced to his address by force or deception, all except one of his victims were murdered by either asphyxiation or strangulation with a makeshift tourniquet, as his first victim was stabbed to death. Gacy buried 26 of his victims in the crawl space of his home. Three other victims were buried elsewhere on his property, while the bodies of his last four known victims were discarded in the Des Plaines River. Convicted of 33 murders, Gacy was sentenced to death on March 1980 for 12 of those murders, he spent 14 years on death row before he was executed by lethal injection at Stateville Correctional Center on May 10, 1994. Gacy became known as the "Killer Clown" because of his charitable services at fund-raising events and children's parties where he would dress as "Pogo the Clown" or "Patches the Clown", characters he had devised.
John Wayne Gacy was born in Chicago, Illinois, on March 17, 1942, the second child and only son of three children born to John Stanley Gacy, an auto repair machinist and World War I veteran, his wife Marion Elaine Robinson, a homemaker. Gacy was of Danish ancestry, his paternal grandparents had immigrated to the United States from Poland. As a child, Gacy was not athletic, he was close to his two sisters and mother but endured a difficult relationship with his father, an alcoholic, physically abusive to his wife and children. Throughout his childhood, Gacy strove to make his stern father proud of him, but received his approval; this friction was constant throughout his adolescence. One of Gacy's earliest childhood memories was of his father beating him with a leather belt at the age of four for accidentally disarranging car engine components that his father had assembled. On another occasion, his father struck him across the head with a broomstick, rendering him unconscious, his father belittled him and compared him unfavorably with his sisters, disdainfully accusing him of being "dumb and stupid".
Gacy, while commenting that he was "never good enough" in his father's eyes, always vehemently denied hating his father in interviews after his arrest. When he was six years old, Gacy stole a toy truck from a neighborhood store, his mother made him return the toy and apologize to the owners. His mother informed his father. After this incident, Gacy's mother attempted to shield her son from his father's verbal and physical abuse, yet this only succeeded in Gacy earning accusations that he was a "sissy" and a "Mama's boy" who would "...probably grow up queer". In 1949, Gacy's father was informed that his son and another boy had been caught sexually fondling a young girl. Gacy's father whipped him with a razor strop as punishment; the same year, Gacy himself was molested by a family friend, a contractor who would take Gacy for rides in his truck fondle him. Gacy never told his father about these incidents; because of a heart condition, Gacy was ordered to avoid all sports at school. An average student with few friends, he was an occasional target for bullying by neighborhood children and classmates.
He was known to assist the school truancy officer and volunteer to run errands for teachers and neighbors. During the fourth grade, Gacy began to experience blackouts, he was hospitalized because of these seizures, in 1957 for a burst appendix. Gacy estimated that between the ages of 14 and 18, he had spent a year in the hospital for these episodes, attributed the decline of his grades to his missing school, his father suspected the episodes were an effort to gain sympathy and attention, accused his son of faking the condition as the boy lay in a hospital bed. Although his mother and few close friends never doubted his illness, Gacy's medical condition was never conclusively diagnosed. One of Gacy's friends at high school recalled several instances in which Gacy Sr. ridiculed or beat his son without provocation. On one occasion in 1957, the same friend witnessed an incident at the Gacy household in which Gacy's father began shouting at his son for no reason began hitting him. Gacy's mother attempted to intervene.
The friend recalled that Gacy "put up his hands to defend himself", adding that he never struck his father back during these physical altercations. In 1960, at the age of 18, Gacy became involved in politics, working as an assistant precinct captain for a Democratic Party candidate in his neighborhood; this decision earned more criticism from his father, who accused his son of being a "patsy". Gacy speculated the decision may have been an attempt to seek the acceptance from others that he never received from his father; the same year Gacy became a Democratic Party candidate, his father bought him a car, with the title of the vehicle being in his father's name until Gacy had completed the monthly repayments. These repayments took several years to complete, his father would confiscate the keys to the vehicle if Gacy did not do as his father said. On one occasion in 1962, Gacy bought an extra set of keys after his father confiscated the original set. In response, his father removed the distributor cap from the vehicle, withholding the component for three days.
Gacy recalled that as a res
Paramedic
A paramedic is a specialist healthcare professional who responds to emergency calls for medical help outside of a hospital. Paramedics work as part of the emergency medical services, most in ambulances; the scope of practice of a paramedic varies among countries, but includes autonomous decision making around the emergency care of patients. Not all ambulance personnel are paramedics, although the term is sometimes used informally to refer to any ambulance personnel. In English-speaking countries, there is an official distinction between paramedics and emergency medical technicians, in which paramedics have additional qualifications and are accountable to a professional regulatory body; the paramedic role is related to other healthcare positions the emergency medical technician role, with paramedics being a higher grade role, with more responsibility and autonomy. The role of a paramedic varies across the world, as EMS providers operate with many different models of care. In the Anglo-American model, paramedics are autonomous decision-makers.
In some countries such as the United Kingdom and South Africa, the paramedic role has developed into an autonomous health profession. In the Franco-German model, ambulance care is led by physicians. In some versions of this model, such as France, there is no direct equivalent to a paramedic. Ambulance staff have either the more advanced qualifications of a physician or less advanced training in first aid. In other versions of the Franco-German model, such as Germany, paramedics do exist, their role is to support a physician in the field, in a role more akin to a hospital nurse, rather than operating with clinical autonomy. The development of the profession has been a gradual move from transporting patients to hospital, to more advanced treatments in the field. In some countries, the paramedic may take on the role as part of a system to prevent hospitalisation and, through practitioners, are able to prescribe certain medications, or undertaking'see and refer' visits, where the paramedic directly refers a patient to specialist services without taking them to hospital.
Throughout the evolution of pre-hospitalisation care, there has been an ongoing association with military conflict. One of the first indications of a formal process for managing injured people dates from the Imperial Legions of Rome, where aging Centurions, no longer able to fight, were given the task of organizing the removal of the wounded from the battlefield and providing some form of care; such individuals, although not physicians, were among the world's earliest surgeons by default, being required to suture wounds and complete amputations. A similar situation existed in the Crusades, with the Knights Hospitaller of the Order of St. John of Jerusalem filling a similar function. While civilian communities had organized ways to deal with prehospitalisation care and transportation of the sick and dying as far back as the bubonic plague in London between 1598 and 1665, such arrangements were ad hoc and temporary. In time, these arrangements began to formalize and become permanent. During the American Civil War, Jonathan Letterman devised a system of mobile field hospitals employing the first uses of the principles of triage.
After returning home, some veterans began to attempt to apply what had they had seen on the battlefield to their own communities, commenced the creation of volunteer life-saving squads and ambulance corps. These early developments in formalized ambulance services were decided at local levels, this led to services being provided by diverse operators such as the local hospital, fire brigade, or funeral directors who possessed the only local transport allowing a passenger to lie down. In most cases these ambulances were operated by drivers and attendants with little or no medical training, it was some time before formal training began to appear in some units. An early example was the members of the Toronto Police Ambulance Service receiving a mandatory five days of training from St. John as early as 1889. Prior to World War I motorized ambulances started to be developed, but once they proved their effectiveness on the battlefield during the war the concept spread to civilian systems. In terms of advanced skills, once again the military led the way.
During World War II and the Korean War battlefield medics administered painkilling narcotics by injection in emergency situations, pharmacists' mates on warships were permitted to do more without the guidance of a physician. The Korean War marked the first widespread use of helicopters to evacuate the wounded from forward positions to medical units, leading to the rise of the term "medivac"; these innovations would not find their way into the civilian sphere for nearly twenty more years. By the early 1960s experiments in improving medical care had begun in some civilian centres. One early experiment involved the provision of pre-hospital cardiac care by physicians in Belfast, Northern Ireland, in 1966; this was repeated in Toronto, Canada in 1968 using a single ambulance called Cardiac One, staffed by a regular ambulance crew, along with a hospital intern to perform the advanced procedures. While both of these experiments had certain levels of success, the technology had not yet reached a sufficiently advanced level to be effective.
In 1966, a report called Accid
New York (state)
New York is a state in the Northeastern United States. New York was one of the original thirteen colonies. With an estimated 19.54 million residents in 2018, it is the fourth most populous state. To distinguish the state from the city with the same name, it is sometimes called New York State; the state's most populous city, New York City, makes up over 40% of the state's population. Two-thirds of the state's population lives in the New York metropolitan area, nearly 40% lives on Long Island; the state and city were both named for the 17th century Duke of York, the future King James II of England. With an estimated population of 8.62 million in 2017, New York City is the most populous city in the United States and the premier gateway for legal immigration to the United States. The New York metropolitan area is one of the most populous in the world. New York City is a global city, home to the United Nations Headquarters and has been described as the cultural and media capital of the world, as well as the world's most economically powerful city.
The next four most populous cities in the state are Buffalo, Rochester and Syracuse, while the state capital is Albany. The 27th largest U. S. state in land area, New York has a diverse geography. The state is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south and Connecticut and Vermont to the east; the state has a maritime border with Rhode Island, east of Long Island, as well as an international border with the Canadian provinces of Quebec to the north and Ontario to the northwest. The southern part of the state is in the Atlantic coastal plain and includes Long Island and several smaller associated islands, as well as New York City and the lower Hudson River Valley; the large Upstate New York region comprises several ranges of the wider Appalachian Mountains, the Adirondack Mountains in the Northeastern lobe of the state. Two major river valleys – the north-south Hudson River Valley and the east-west Mohawk River Valley – bisect these more mountainous regions. Western New York is considered part of the Great Lakes region and borders Lake Ontario, Lake Erie, Niagara Falls.
The central part of the state is dominated by the Finger Lakes, a popular vacation and tourist destination. New York had been inhabited by tribes of Algonquian and Iroquoian-speaking Native Americans for several hundred years by the time the earliest Europeans came to New York. French colonists and Jesuit missionaries arrived southward from Montreal for trade and proselytizing. In 1609, the region was visited by Henry Hudson sailing for the Dutch East India Company; the Dutch built Fort Nassau in 1614 at the confluence of the Hudson and Mohawk rivers, where the present-day capital of Albany developed. The Dutch soon settled New Amsterdam and parts of the Hudson Valley, establishing the multicultural colony of New Netherland, a center of trade and immigration. England seized the colony from the Dutch in 1664. During the American Revolutionary War, a group of colonists of the Province of New York attempted to take control of the British colony and succeeded in establishing independence. In the 19th century, New York's development of access to the interior beginning with the Erie Canal, gave it incomparable advantages over other regions of the U.
S. built its political and cultural ascendancy. Many landmarks in New York are well known, including four of the world's ten most-visited tourist attractions in 2013: Times Square, Central Park, Niagara Falls, Grand Central Terminal. New York is home to the Statue of Liberty, a symbol of the United States and its ideals of freedom and opportunity. In the 21st century, New York has emerged as a global node of creativity and entrepreneurship, social tolerance, environmental sustainability. New York's higher education network comprises 200 colleges and universities, including Columbia University, Cornell University, New York University, the United States Military Academy, the United States Merchant Marine Academy, University of Rochester, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Rockefeller University, which have been ranked among the top 40 in the nation and world; the tribes in what is now New York were predominantly Algonquian. Long Island was divided in half between the Wampanoag and Lenape; the Lenape controlled most of the region surrounding New York Harbor.
North of the Lenape was the Mohicans. Starting north of them, from east to west, were three Iroquoian nations: the Mohawk, the original Iroquois and the Petun. South of them, divided along Appalachia, were the Susquehannock and the Erie. Many of the Wampanoag and Mohican peoples were caught up in King Philip's War, a joint effort of many New England tribes to push Europeans off their land. After the death of their leader, Chief Philip Metacomet, most of those peoples fled inland, splitting into the Abenaki and the Schaghticoke. Many of the Mohicans remained in the region until the 1800s, however, a small group known as the Ouabano migrated southwest into West Virginia at an earlier time, they may have merged with the Shawnee. The Mohawk and Susquehannock were the most militaristic. Trying to corner trade with the Europeans, they targeted other tribes; the Mohawk were known for refusing white settlement on their land and banishing any of their people who converted to Christianity. They posed a major threat to the Abenaki and Mohicans, while the Susquehannock conquered the Lenape in the 1600s.
The most devastating event of the century, was the Beaver Wars. From 1640–1680, Iroquoian peoples waged campaigns which extended from modern-day Michigan to Virginia against Algonquian and Siouan tribes, as well as each other; the ai
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