Long Island
Long Island is a densely populated island off the East Coast of the United States, beginning at New York Harbor 0.35 miles from Manhattan Island and extending eastward into the Atlantic Ocean. The island comprises four counties in the U. S. state of New York. Kings and Queens Counties and Nassau County share the western third of the island, while Suffolk County occupies the eastern two-thirds. More than half of New York City's residents now live in Brooklyn and Queens. However, many people in the New York metropolitan area colloquially use the term Long Island to refer to Nassau and Suffolk Counties, which are suburban in character, conversely employing the term the City to mean Manhattan alone. Broadly speaking, "Long Island" may refer both to the main island and the surrounding outer barrier islands. North of the island is Long Island Sound, across which lie Westchester County, New York, the state of Connecticut. Across the Block Island Sound to the northeast is the state of Rhode Island. To the west, Long Island is separated from the island of Manhattan by the East River.
To the extreme southwest, it is separated from Staten Island and the state of New Jersey by Upper New York Bay, the Narrows, Lower New York Bay. To the east lie Block Island—which belongs to the State of Rhode Island—and numerous smaller islands. Both the longest and the largest island in the contiguous United States, Long Island extends 118 miles eastward from New York Harbor to Montauk Point, with a maximum north-to-south distance of 23 miles between Long Island Sound and the Atlantic coast. With a land area of 1,401 square miles, Long Island is the 11th-largest island in the United States and the 149th-largest island in the world—larger than the 1,214 square miles of the smallest U. S. state, Rhode Island. With a Census-estimated population of 7,869,820 in 2017, constituting nearly 40% of New York State's population, Long Island is the most populated island in any U. S. state or territory, the 18th-most populous island in the world. Its population density is 5,595.1 inhabitants per square mile.
If Long Island geographically constituted an independent metropolitan statistical area, it would rank fourth most populous in the United States. S. state, Long Island would rank 13th in population and first in population density. Long Island is culturally and ethnically diverse, featuring some of the wealthiest and most expensive neighborhoods in the Western Hemisphere near the shorelines as well as working-class areas in all four counties; as a hub of commercial aviation, Long Island contains two of the New York City metropolitan area's three busiest airports, JFK International Airport and LaGuardia Airport, in addition to Islip MacArthur Airport. Nine bridges and 13 tunnels connect Brooklyn and Queens to the three other boroughs of New York City. Ferries connect Suffolk County northward across Long Island Sound to the state of Connecticut; the Long Island Rail Road is the busiest commuter railroad in North America and operates 24/7. Nassau County high school students feature prominently as winners of the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair and similar STEM-based academic awards.
Biotechnology companies and scientific research play a significant role in Long Island's economy, including research facilities at Brookhaven National Laboratory, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, Plum Island Animal Disease Center, State University of New York at Stony Brook, the New York University Tandon School of Engineering, the City University of New York, Hofstra Northwell School of Medicine. Prior to European contact, the Lenape people inhabited the western end of Long Island, spoke the Munsee dialect of Lenape, one of the Algonquian language family. Giovanni da Verrazzano was the first European to record an encounter with the Lenapes, after entering what is now New York Bay in 1524; the eastern portion of the island was inhabited by speakers of the Mohegan-Montauk-Narragansett language group of Algonquian languages. In 1609, the English navigator Henry Hudson explored the harbor and purportedly landed at Coney Island. Adriaen Block followed in 1615, is credited as the first European to determine that both Manhattan and Long Island are islands.
Native American land deeds recorded by the Dutch from 1636 state that the Indians referred to Long Island as Sewanhaka. Sewan was one of the terms for wampum, is translated as "loose" or "scattered", which may refer either to the wampum or to Long Island; the name "'t Lange Eylandt alias Matouwacs" appears in Dutch maps from the 1650s. The English referred to the land as "Nassau Island", after the Dutch Prince William of Nassau, Prince of Orange, it is unclear. Another indigenous name from colonial time, comes from the Native American name for Long Island and means "the island that pays tribute." The first settlements on Long Island were by settlers from England and its colonies in present-day New England. Lion Gardiner settled nearby Gardiners Island. T
Cupola
In architecture, a cupola is a small, most dome-like, tall structure on top of a building. Used to provide a lookout or to admit light and air, it crowns a larger roof or dome; the word derives, via Italian, from the lower Latin cupula "small cup" indicating a vault resembling an upside down cup. The cupola is a development during the Renaissance of the oculus, an ancient device found in Roman architecture, but being weatherproof was superior for the wetter climates of northern Europe; the chhatri, seen in Indian architecture, fits the definition of a cupola when it is used atop a larger structure. Cupolas appear as small buildings in their own right, they serve as a belfry, belvedere, or roof lantern above a main roof. In other cases they may crown tower, or turret. Barns have cupolas for ventilation; the square, dome-like segment of a North American railroad train caboose that contains the second-level or "angel" seats is called a cupola. Some armored fighting vehicles have cupolas, called commander's cupola, a raised dome or cylinder with armored glass to provide 360-degree vision around the vehicle.
Daylighting Windcatcher
Michele Sindona
Michele Sindona was an Italian banker and convicted felon. Known in banking circles as "The Shark", Sindona was a member of Propaganda Due, a secret lodge of Italian Freemasonry, had clear connections to the Sicilian Mafia, he was fatally poisoned in prison while serving a life sentence for the murder of lawyer Giorgio Ambrosoli. Born at Patti, Sicily, of poor parents, Michele Sindona was educated by the Jesuits, showed early in his life an unusual aptitude for mathematics and economics, he graduated with a law degree from the University of Messina in 1942. He moved from Sicily to the north where he worked as a tax lawyer and an accountant for companies such as Società Generale Immobiliare and SNIA Viscosa, but turned away from the law and began working in smuggling operations with the Mafia, he soon moved to Milan, his skill and dexterity in transferring money to avoid taxation soon became known to Mafia bosses. By 1957, he had become associated with the Gambino family and was chosen to manage their profits from heroin sales.
Within a year of the Gambino family's choosing him to manage their heroin profits, Sindona had bought his first bank. He became a friend of future Pope Giovanni Battista Montini's. By the time Montini became Pope Paul VI, Sindona had acquired, through his holding company Fasco, many more Italian banks, his progress continued right up to the beginning of his association with the Vatican Bank in 1969. Huge amounts of money moved from Sindona's banks through the Vatican to Swiss banks, he began speculating against major currencies on a large scale. In 1972, Sindona purchased a controlling interest in Long Island's Franklin National Bank from Lawrence Tisch, he was hailed as "the saviour of the lira" and was named "Man of the Year" in January 1974 by the US ambassador to Italy, John Volpe. But that April, a sudden stock market crash led to; the Franklin Bank's profit fell by as much as 98% compared to the previous year, Sindona suffered a 40 million dollar loss. He began losing most of the banks he had acquired over the previous seventeen years.
On October 8, 1974, the bank was declared insolvent due to mismanagement and fraud, involving losses in foreign currency speculation and poor loan policies. Part of the losses involved Sindona's transfer of $30,000,000 of Bank funds to Europe to recover his losses. According to the Mafia pentito Francesco Marino Mannoia, Sindona laundered the proceeds of heroin trafficking for the Bontade-Spatola-Inzerillo-Gambino network; the mafiosi were determined to get their money back and would play an important role in Sindona's attempt to save his banks. On July 11, 1979, Giorgio Ambrosoli, the lawyer, commissioned as liquidator of Sindona's banks, was murdered in Milan. Milanese Councilman Antonio Amati turned the case over to Giuliano Turone, it was discovered. At the same time, the Mafia killed police superintendent Boris Giuliano in Palermo, he was investigating the Mafia’s heroin trafficking and had contacted Ambrosoli just two weeks before that to compare investigations. While under indictment in the US, Sindona pretended to have been kidnapped in August 1979, to conceal a mysterious 11-week trip to Sicily before his scheduled fraud trial.
The brother-in-law of Mafia boss Stefano Bontade, Giacomo Vitale, was one of the persons who organized Sindona’s travel. The real purpose of the "kidnapping" was to issue thinly-disguised blackmail notes to Sindona’s past political allies – among them Prime Minister Giulio Andreotti – to engineer the rescue of his banks and recover the Cosa Nostra’s money, he threatened Enrico Cuccia, president of the Mediobanca, opposed to the reorganization/rescue plan. In Palermo, Sindona went to the house of Dr. Joseph Miceli Crimi, an American-Italian doctor and Freemason. Crimi admitted to the judges that he went to Arezzo to talk with Licio Gelli about Sindona's situation. Licio Gelli started to interest two judges, Giuliano Turone and Gherardo Colombo; the plot failed. After his supposed release from the kidnappers Sindona surrendered to the FBI, he was convicted in 1980 in the United States on 65 counts, including fraud, false bank statements, misappropriation of bank funds. He was represented by one of Ivan Fisher.
While Sindona was serving time in US Federal Prison, the Italian government applied for his extradition back to Italy to stand trial for murder. "The Shark" was sentenced to 25 years in Italian prison on March 27, 1984. On March 18, 1986, he was poisoned with cyanide in his coffee, in his cell at the prison in Voghera while serving a life sentence for the murder of Giorgio Ambrosoli. List of unsolved deaths DiFonzo, Luigi. St. Peter's Banker. Franklin Watts. Sterling, Claire. Octopus. How the long reach of the Sicilian Mafia controls the global narcotics trade. New York: Simon & Schuster. ISBN 0-671-73402-4. Tosches, Nick. Power on Earth. Arbor House. Yallop, David. In God's Name: An Investigation Into The Murder of Pope John Paul I. Jonathan Cape. "A Forcibly Retired Moneyman". TIME. September 13, 1982. Article on Propaganda Due
Sicilian Mafia
The Sicilian Mafia known as the Mafia and referred to by its own members as Cosa Nostra, is a Mafia-terrorist-type organized crime syndicate originating in Sicily, Italy. It is a loose association of criminal groups that share a common organisational structure and code of conduct; the basic group is known as "clan", or cosca. Each family claims sovereignty over a territory a town or village or a neighbourhood of a larger city, in which it operates its rackets, its members call themselves "men of honour", although the public refers to them as mafiosi. The Mafia's core activities are protection racketeering, the arbitration of disputes between criminals, the organizing and oversight of illegal agreements and transactions. Following waves of emigration, the Mafia has spread to other countries such as Canada and the United States; the word mafia originated in Sicily. The Sicilian adjective mafiusu translates to mean "swagger," but can be translated as "boldness, bravado". In reference to a man, mafiusu in 19th century Sicily was ambiguous, signifying a bully, arrogant but fearless and proud, according to scholar Diego Gambetta.
In reference to a woman, the feminine-form adjective "mafiusa" means beautiful and attractive. The Sicilian word mafie refers to the caves near Trapani and Marsala, which were used as hiding places for refugees and criminals. Sicily was once an Islamic emirate, therefore mafia might have Arabic roots. Possible Arabic roots of the word include: ma'afi = exempted. In Islamic law, Jizya, is the yearly tax imposed on non-Muslims residing in Muslim lands, and people who pay it are "exempted" from prosecution. Mahyas = aggressive boasting, bragging marfud = rejected mu'afa = safety, protection Ma àfir = the name of an Arab tribe that ruled PalermoThe public's association of the word with the criminal secret society was inspired by the 1863 play "I mafiusi di la Vicaria" by Giuseppe Rizzotto and Gaspare Mosca; the words mafia and mafiusi are never mentioned in the play. The play is about a Palermo prison gang with traits similar to the Mafia: a boss, an initiation ritual, talk of "umirtà" and "pizzu".
The play had great success throughout Italy. Soon after, the use of the term "mafia" began appearing in the Italian state's early reports on the phenomenon; the word made its first official appearance in 1865 in a report by the prefect of Palermo Filippo Antonio Gualterio. The term mafia has become a generic term for any organized criminal network with similar structure and interests. Giovanni Falcone, the anti-Mafia judge murdered by the Mafia in 1992, objected to the conflation of the term "Mafia" with organized crime in general: While there was a time when people were reluctant to pronounce the word "Mafia"... nowadays people have gone so far in the opposite direction that it has become an overused term... I am no longer willing to accept the habit of speaking of the Mafia in descriptive and all-inclusive terms that make it possible to stack up phenomena that are indeed related to the field of organised crime but that have little or nothing in common with the Mafia. According to Mafia turncoats, the real name of the Mafia is "Cosa Nostra".
Italian-American mafioso Joseph Valachi testified before the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations of the U. S. Senate Committee on Government Operations in 1963, he revealed. At the time, it was fostered by the FBI and disseminated by the media; the FBI added the article la to the term. In 1984, Mafia turncoat Tommaso Buscetta revealed to anti-mafia magistrate Giovanni Falcone that the term was used by the Sicilian Mafia, as well. Buscetta dismissed the word "mafia" as a mere literary creation. Other defectors such as Antonino Calderone and Salvatore Contorno confirmed the use of Cosa Nostra by members. Mafiosi introduce known members to each other as belonging to cosa nostra or la stessa cosa, meaning "he is the same thing as you — a mafioso." The Sicilian Mafia has used other names to describe itself throughout its history, such as "The Honoured Society". Mafiosi are known among themselves as "men of honour" or "men of respect". Cosa Nostra should not be confused with other mafia-type organisations in Southern Italy, such as the'Ndrangheta in Calabria, the Camorra in Campania, or the Sacra Corona Unita in Apulia.
It is difficult to define the single function or goal of the phenomenon of the Mafia. Until the early 1980s, mafia was considered a unique Sicilian cultural attitude and form of power, excluding any corporate or organisational dimension; some used it as a defensive attempt to render the Mafia benign and romantic — not a criminal association, but the sum of Sicilian values that outsiders will never understand. Leopoldo Franchetti was an Italian deputy who travelled to Sicily and who wrote one of the first authoritative reports on the mafia in 1876, he saw the Mafia as an "industry of violence" and described the designation of the term "mafia": the term mafia found a class of violent criminals ready and waiting for a name to define them, given their special character and importance in Sicilian society, they had the right to a different name from that defining
Republican Party (United States)
The Republican Party referred to as the GOP, is one of the two major political parties in the United States. The GOP was founded in 1854 by opponents of the Kansas-Nebraska Act, which had expanded slavery into U. S. territories. The party subscribed to classical liberalism and took ideological stands that were anti-slavery and pro-economic reform. Abraham Lincoln was the first Republican president in the history of the United States; the Party was dominant over the Democrats during the Third Party System and Fourth Party System. In 1912, Theodore Roosevelt formed the Progressive Party after being rejected by the GOP and ran unsuccessfully as a third-party presidential candidate calling for social reforms. After the 1912 election, many Roosevelt supporters left the Party, the Party underwent an ideological shift to the right; the liberal Republican element in the GOP was overwhelmed by a conservative surge begun by Barry Goldwater in 1964 that continued during the Reagan Era in the 1980s. After the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the party's core base shifted, with the Southern states becoming more reliably Republican in presidential politics and the Northeastern states becoming more reliably Democratic.
White voters identified with the Republican Party after the 1960s. Following the Supreme Court's 1973 decision in Roe v. Wade, the Republican Party made opposition to abortion a key plank of its national party platform and grew its support among evangelicals. By 2000, the Republican Party was aligned with Christian conservatism; the Party's core support since the 1990s comes chiefly from the South, the Great Plains, the Mountain States and rural areas in the North. The 21st century Republican Party ideology is American conservatism, which contrasts with the Democrats' liberal platform and progressive wing; the GOP supports lower taxes, free market capitalism, a strong national defense, gun rights and restrictions on labor unions. The GOP was committed to protectionism and tariffs from its founding until the 1930s when it was based in the industrial Northeast and Midwest, but has grown more supportive of free trade since 1952. In addition to advocating for conservative economic policies, the Republican Party is conservative.
Founded in the Northern states in 1854 by abolitionists, modernizers, ex-Whigs and ex-Free Soilers, the Republican Party became the principal opposition to the dominant Democratic Party and the popular Know Nothing Party. The party grew out of opposition to the Kansas–Nebraska Act, which repealed the Missouri Compromise and opened Kansas Territory and Nebraska Territory to slavery and future admission as slave states; the Northern Republicans saw the expansion of slavery as a great evil. The first public meeting of the general anti-Nebraska movement, at which the name Republican was suggested for a new anti-slavery party, was held on March 20, 1854 in a schoolhouse in Ripon, Wisconsin; the name was chosen to pay homage to Thomas Jefferson's Republican Party. The first official party convention was held on July 1854 in Jackson, Michigan. At the 1856 Republican National Convention, the party adopted a national platform emphasizing opposition to the expansion of slavery into U. S. territories. While Republican candidate John C.
Frémont lost the 1856 United States presidential election to James Buchanan, he did win 11 of the 16 northern states. The Republican Party first came to power in the elections of 1860 when it won control of both houses of Congress and its candidate, former congressman Abraham Lincoln, was elected President. In the election of 1864, it united with War Democrats to nominate Lincoln on the National Union Party ticket. Under Republican congressional leadership, the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution—which banned slavery in the United States—passed the Senate in 1864 and the House in 1865; the party's success created factionalism within the party in the 1870s. Those who felt that Reconstruction had been accomplished, was continued to promote the large-scale corruption tolerated by President Ulysses S. Grant, ran Horace Greeley for the presidency; the Stalwart faction defended Grant and the spoils system, whereas the Half-Breeds pushed for reform of the civil service. The Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act was passed in 1883.
The Republican Party supported hard money, high tariffs to promote economic growth, high wages and high profits, generous pensions for Union veterans, the annexation of Hawaii. The Republicans had strong support from pietistic Protestants, but they resisted demands for Prohibition; as the Northern postwar economy boomed with heavy and light industry, mines, fast-growing cities, prosperous agriculture, the Republicans took credit and promoted policies to sustain the fast growth. The GOP was dominant over the Democrats during the Third Party System. However, by 1890 the Republicans had agreed to the Sherman Antitrust Act and the Interstate Commerce Commission in response to complaints from owners of small businesses and farmers; the high McKinley Tariff of 1890 hurt the party and the Democrats swept to a landslide in the off-year elections defeating McKinley himself. The Democrats elected Grover Cleveland in 1884 and 1892; the election of William McKinley in 1896 was marked by a resurgence of Republican dominance that lasted until 1932.
McKinley promised that high tariffs would end the severe hardship caused by the Pa
Presidency of Richard Nixon
The presidency of Richard Nixon began on January 20, 1969, when Richard Nixon was inaugurated as the 37th President of the United States, ended on August 9, 1974 when he resigned from office, the first U. S. president to do so. A Republican, Nixon took office after the 1968 presidential election, in which he defeated Hubert Humphrey, the then–incumbent Vice President. Four years in 1972, he won reelection in a landslide victory over U. S. Senator George McGovern. Nixon, the 37th United States president, succeeded Lyndon B. Johnson, who had launched the Great Society, a set of domestic programs financed and run by the federal government. In contrast, Nixon advocated a "New Federalism" domestic program model, one in which certain powers would devolve back to the states; the creation of the EPA, passage of the Endangered Species Act, the integration of Southern public schools happened during his presidency, as did the end of military draft and the Apollo program, which landed Americans on the Moon.
Nixon's primary focus while in office was on foreign affairs. His foreign policy agenda, known as the Nixon Doctrine, called for indirect assistance to American allies in the Cold War, with the "Vietnamization" of the Vietnam War being the most notable example of this policy. Nixon ended American involvement in the Vietnam War, his administration succeeded in achieving a negotiated settlement. Nixon became the first U. S. president to visit the People's Republic of China, taking advantage of the Sino-Soviet split and altering the nature of the Cold War. Nixon pursued a strategy of detente with the Soviet Union, resulting in the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and SALT I, the first two landmark arms control treaties of their kind. Beginning in 1973, Nixon was forced to devote increasing attention to the Watergate scandal that enveloped his administration, he resigned from office in the face of near-certain impeachment. He was succeeded by Vice President Gerald Ford, who had become vice president nine months earlier, following Spiro Agnew's resignation from office.
While Nixon's premature departure from office tends to dominate contemporary assessments of his presidency – and Nixon's domestic and foreign policy accomplishments are overshadowed by the scandals that enveloped his administration – his legacy has undergone reevaluation in the more than 40 years since his resignation. Political historian and pollster Douglas Schoen argues that Nixon was the most important American figure in post-war U. S. politics, while constitutional law professor Cass Sunstein noted in 2017, "If you are listing the five most consequential Presidents in American history, you could make a good argument that Nixon belongs on the list." Richard Nixon had served as vice president from 1953 to 1961, had been defeated in the 1960 presidential election by John F. Kennedy. In the years after his defeat, Nixon established himself as an important party leader who appealed to both moderates and conservatives. One year prior to the 1968 Republican National Convention the early favorite for the party's presidential nomination was Michigan governor George Romney, but Romney's campaign foundered on the issue of the Vietnam War.
Nixon entered the race for the 1968 Republican presidential nomination confident that, with the Democrats torn apart over the war in Vietnam, a Republican had a good chance of winning the presidency in November, although he expected the election to be as close as in 1960. Nixon established himself as the clear front-runner after a series of early primary victories, his chief rivals for the nomination were Governor Ronald Reagan of California, who commanded the loyalty of many conservatives, Governor Nelson Rockefeller of New York, who had a strong following among party moderates. At the August Republican National Convention in Miami Beach, Florida and Rockefeller discussed joining forces in a stop-Nixon movement, with each hoping to be nominated in a brokered convention. No such movement materialized, Nixon secured the nomination on the first ballot, he selected Maryland governor Spiro Agnew as his running mate, a choice which Nixon believed would unite the party, appealing to both Northern moderates and Southerners disaffected with the Democrats.
The choice of Agnew was poorly received by many. In his acceptance speech, Nixon articulated a message of hope: We extend the hand of friendship to all people. To the Soviet people. To the Chinese people. To all the people of the world, and we work toward the goal of open sky, open cities, open hearts, open minds. At the start of 1968, most Democrats expected that President Lyndon B. Johnson would be re-nominated; those expectations were shattered by Senator Eugene McCarthy, who had entered the campaign late in November to give voice to those in the party opposed to Johnson's Vietnam policies. McCarthy narrowly lost to Johnson in the first Democratic Party primary on March 12 in New Hampshire, winning 42% of the vote to Johnson's 49%; the results startled the party establishment and spurred Senator Robert F. Kennedy of New York to enter the race. Two weeks Johnson told a stunned the nation that he would not seek a second term. In the weeks that followed, much of the momentum, moving the McCarthy campaign forward shifted toward Kennedy.
Vice President Hubert Humphrey declared his own candidacy, drawing support from many of Johnson's supporters. Kennedy was assassinated by Sirhan Sirhan in June 1968, leaving Humphrey and McCarthy as the two remaining major candidates in the race. Humphrey won the presidential nomination at the August Democratic National Convention in Chicago, Senator Edmu
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
