1.
Nashville, Tennessee
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Nashville is the capital of the U. S. state of Tennessee and the county seat of Davidson County. It is located on the Cumberland River in the central part of the state. The city is a center for the music, healthcare, publishing, banking and transportation industries and it is known as a center of the country music industry, earning it the nickname Music City, U. S. A. Since 1963, Nashville has had a consolidated city-county government which includes six municipalities in a two-tier system. Nashville is governed by a mayor, vice-mayor, and 40-member Metropolitan Council, thirty-five of the members are elected from single-member districts, five are elected at-large. Reflecting the citys position in government, Nashville is home to the Tennessee Supreme Courts courthouse for Middle Tennessee. According to 2015 estimates from the U. S. Census Bureau, the balance population, which excludes semi-independent municipalities within Nashville, was 654,610. The 2015 population of the entire 13-county Nashville metropolitan area was 1,830,345, the 2015 population of the Nashville-Davidson–Murfreesboro–Columbia combined statistical area, a larger trade area, was 1,951,644. The town of Nashville was founded by James Robertson, John Donelson, and it was named for Francis Nash, the American Revolutionary War hero. Nashville quickly grew because of its location, accessibility as a port on the Cumberland River, a tributary of the Ohio River. By 1800, the city had 345 residents, including 136 African American slaves and 14 free blacks, in 1806, Nashville was incorporated as a city and became the county seat of Davidson County, Tennessee. In 1843, the city was named the permanent capital of the state of Tennessee, by 1860, when the first rumblings of secession began to be heard across the South, antebellum Nashville was a prosperous city. The citys significance as a port made it a desirable prize as a means of controlling important river. In February 1862, Nashville became the first state capital to fall to Union troops, the state was occupied by Union troops for the duration of the war. Within a few years after the Civil War, the Nashville chapter of the Ku Klux Klan was founded by Confederate veteran John W. Morton, meanwhile, the city had reclaimed its important shipping and trading position and developed a solid manufacturing base. The post–Civil War years of the late 19th century brought new prosperity to Nashville and these healthy economic times left the city with a legacy of grand classical-style buildings, which can still be seen around the downtown area. Circa 1950 the state approved a new city charter that provided for the election of city council members from single-member districts. This change was supported because at-large voting diluted the minority populations political power in the city and they could seldom gain a majority of the population to support a candidate of their choice
2.
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
3.
Vanderbilt University
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Vanderbilt University is a private research university founded in 1873 and located in Nashville, Tennessee. It was named in honor of shipping and rail magnate Cornelius Vanderbilt, Vanderbilt hoped that his gift and the greater work of the university would help to heal the sectional wounds inflicted by the Civil War. Today, Vanderbilt enrolls approximately 12,000 students from all 50 U. S. states and over 90 foreign countries in four undergraduate and six graduate, despite its urban surroundings, the campus itself is a national arboretum and features over 300 different species of trees and shrubs. Vanderbilt is ranked as one of the top universities for its teaching, research opportunities. It is ranked 15th on the list of best national universities generated by U. S. News & World Report, however, lack of funds and the ravaged state of the Reconstruction Era South delayed the opening of the college. Indeed, the McTyeires had met at St. Francis Street Methodist Church in Mobile, Cornelius Vanderbilt, who was the wealthiest man in the United States at the time, was considering philanthropy as he was at an advanced age. He had been planning to establish a university on Staten Island, New York, however, McTyeire convinced him to donate $500,000 to endow Central University in order to contribute to strengthening the ties which should exist between all sections of our common country. The endowment was increased to $1 million and would be only one of two philanthropic causes financially supported by Vanderbilt. Though he never expressed any desire that the university be named after himself, McTyeire, Vanderbilt died in 1877 without seeing the school named after him. One of the trustees, Hezekiah William Foote, was a Confederate veteran. The Treasurer of the Board of Trust from 1872 to 1875, Alexander Little Page Green, whose portrait hangs in Kirkland Hall, was a Methodist preacher and a former slave owner. His son-in-law, Robert A. Young, was a Methodist minister who served as the Financial Secretary on the Board of Trust from 1874 to 1882, retiring from the board in 1902. The first building, Main Building, later known as Kirkland Hall, was designed by William Crawford Smith, in the fall of 1875, about 200 students enrolled at Vanderbilt, and in October the university was dedicated. Bishop McTyeire was named Chairman of the Board of Trust for life by Vanderbilt as a stipulation of his endowment, McTyeire named Landon Garland, his mentor from Randolph-Macon College in Virginia and then-Chancellor of the University of Mississippi, as chancellor. Garland shaped the structure and hired the schools faculty, many of whom were renowned scholars in their respective fields. However, most of this faculty left after disputes with Bishop McTyeire, when the first fraternity chapter, Phi Delta Theta, was established on campus in 1876, it was shut down by the faculty, only to be reestablished as a secret society in 1877. Meanwhile, Old Gym, designed by Dutch-born architect Peter J. Williamson, was built in 1879–1880, by 1883, the Board of Trust passed a resolution allowing fraternities on campus, and more chapters were established in 1884. During the first 40 years, the Board of Trust, and therefore the university, was under the control of the General Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church, conflicts escalated after James H. Kirkland was appointed chancellor in 1893
4.
Baseball
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Baseball is a bat-and-ball game played between two teams of nine players each, who take turns batting and fielding. A run is scored when a player advances around the bases, Players on the batting team take turns hitting against the pitcher of the fielding team, which tries to prevent runs by getting hitters out in any of several ways. A player on the team who reaches a base safely can later attempt to advance to subsequent bases during teammates turns batting. The teams switch between batting and fielding whenever the team records three outs. One turn batting for both teams, beginning with the team, constitutes an inning. A game is composed of nine innings, and the team with the number of runs at the end of the game wins. Baseball has no clock, although almost all games end in the ninth inning. Baseball evolved from older bat-and-ball games already being played in England by the mid-18th century and this game was brought by immigrants to North America, where the modern version developed. By the late 19th century, baseball was widely recognized as the sport of the United States. Baseball is now popular in North America and parts of Central and South America, the Caribbean, in the United States and Canada, professional Major League Baseball teams are divided into the National League and American League, each with three divisions, East, West, and Central. The major league champion is determined by playoffs that culminate in the World Series, the top level of play is similarly split in Japan between the Central and Pacific Leagues and in Cuba between the West League and East League. The evolution of baseball from older bat-and-ball games is difficult to trace with precision, a French manuscript from 1344 contains an illustration of clerics playing a game, possibly la soule, with similarities to baseball. Other old French games such as thèque, la balle au bâton, consensus once held that todays baseball is a North American development from the older game rounders, popular in Great Britain and Ireland. Baseball Before We Knew It, A Search for the Roots of the Game, by David Block, suggests that the game originated in England, recently uncovered historical evidence supports this position. Block argues that rounders and early baseball were actually regional variants of other. It has long believed that cricket also descended from such games. The earliest known reference to baseball is in a 1744 British publication, A Little Pretty Pocket-Book, David Block discovered that the first recorded game of Bass-Ball took place in 1749 in Surrey, and featured the Prince of Wales as a player. William Bray, an English lawyer, recorded a game of baseball on Easter Monday 1755 in Guildford and this early form of the game was apparently brought to Canada by English immigrants
5.
Stadium
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Pausanias noted that for about half a century the only event at the ancient Greek Olympic festival was the race that comprised one length of the stade at Olympia, where the word stadium originated. In modern times, a stadium is officially a stadium when at least 50% of the capacity is an actual building. If the majority of the capacity is formed by grasshills, the venue is not officially considered a stadium. Most of the stadiums with a capacity of at least 10,000 are used for football, or soccer. A large amount of sports venues are also used for concerts. Stadium is the Latin form of the Greek word stadion, a measure of length equalling the length of 600 human feet, as feet are of variable length the exact length of a stadion depends on the exact length adopted for 1 foot at a given place and time. Although in modern terms 1 stadion =600 ft, in a historical context it may actually signify a length up to 15% larger or smaller. The equivalent Roman measure, the stadium, had a similar length — about 185 m -, the English use of stadium comes from the tiered infrastructure surrounding a Roman track of such length. Most dictionaries provide for both stadiums and stadia as valid English plurals, although etymological purists sometimes apply stadia only to measures of length in excess of 1 stadium. The oldest known stadium is the one in Olympia, in the western Peloponnese, Greece, initially the Games consisted of a single event, a sprint along the length of the stadium. The stadion, a measure of length, may be related to the Stadium, Greek and Roman stadiums have been found in numerous ancient cities, perhaps the most famous being the Stadium of Domitian, in Rome. The excavated and refurbished ancient Panathenaic stadium hosted a version of the Olympic Games in 1870,1875,1896 and 1906. The excavation and refurbishment of the stadium was part of the legacy of the Greek national benefactor Evangelos Zappas, the first stadiums to be built in the modern era were basic facilities, designed for the single purpose of fitting as many spectators in as possible. One such early stadium was the Lansdowne Road Stadium, the brainchild of Henry Dunlop, banned from locating sporting events at Trinity College, Dunlop built the stadium in 1872. Some 300 cartloads of soil from a trench beneath the railway were used to raise the ground, other early stadiums from this period in the UK include the Stamford Bridge stadium and Anfield stadium. In the U. S. However, many of these caught fire. All of the 19th-century wooden parks were replaced, some only a few years. Goodison Park was the first purpose-built football stadium in the world, walton-based building firm Kelly brothers were instructed to erect two uncovered stands that could each accommodate 4,000 spectators
6.
Green Monster
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The Green Monster is a popular nickname for the 372 high left field wall at Fenway Park, home to the Boston Red Sox baseball team. The wall is only 310 feet from home plate and is a target for right-handed hitters. The wall was part of the original construction of 1912. It is made of wood and was covered in tin and concrete in 1934 and it was then covered with hard plastic in 1976. A manual scoreboard is set into the wall, despite the name, the Green Monster was not painted green until 1947, before that, it was covered with advertisements. The Monster designation is relatively new, for most of its history it was simply called The Wall. The wall might also reduce the number of home runs due to the barriers relatively close distance to home plate. Fenway is the last of the exceptionally high-walled major league ballparks, relatively high walls in modern ballparks have been constructed for their novelty rather than by necessity, as Fenways wall had been. The Green Monster is famous for preventing home runs on line drives that would clear the walls of other ballparks. A side effect of this is to increase the prevalence of doubles, some left fielders, predominantly those with vast Fenway experience, have become adept at fielding caroms off the wall to throw runners out at second base or hold the batter to a single. With this short distance, many fly balls that could be caught by the fielder in a deeper park rebound off the wall for base hits. And while the wall turns many would-be line-drive homers into doubles it also allows some high yet shallow fly balls to clear the field of play for a home run. During 2001 and 2002, the Green Monsters height record was beaten by the center field wall at Riverfront Stadium in Cincinnati. The entire wall was in play and this new wall was often called The Black Monster. When Riverfront Stadium was demolished in 2002, the Green Monster reclaimed the record, in honor of the famed wall, the Red Sox mascot is a furry green monster named Wally. From 1912 to 1933, there was a 10-foot-high mound that formed an incline in front of the Green Monster and it also served to double as a seating area to handle overflow crowds, another common practice of that era. As a result of the terrace, a fielder in Fenway Park had to play the territory running uphill. Bostons first star left fielder, Duffy Lewis, mastered the skill so well that the area known as Duffys Cliff
7.
Fenway Park
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Fenway Park is a baseball park located in Boston, at 4 Yawkey Way near Kenmore Square. Since 1912, it has been the home for the Boston Red Sox and it is the oldest ballpark in MLB. It is the fourth-smallest among MLB ballparks by seating capacity, second-smallest by total capacity, Fenway has hosted the World Series ten times, with the Red Sox winning five of them, and the Boston Braves winning one. The first, in the inaugural season, was the 1912 World Series. April 20,2012, marked Fenway Parks centennial, on March 7 of that year, the park was added to the National Register of Historic Places. Former pitcher Bill Lee has called Fenway Park a shrine and it is a pending Boston Landmark which will regulate further changes to the park. Today, the park is considered to be one of the most well-known sports venues in the world, the Red Sox moved to Fenway Park from the old Huntington Avenue Grounds. In 1911, owner John I. Taylor purchased the land bordered by Brookline Avenue, Jersey Street, Van Ness Street and Lansdowne Street and developed it into a larger baseball stadium. However, given that Taylors family also owned the Fenway Realty Company, like many classic ballparks, Fenway Park was constructed on an asymmetrical block, with consequent asymmetry in its field dimensions. The General Contractor was the Charles Logue Building Company, the first game was played April 20,1912, with mayor John F. Fitzgerald throwing out the first pitch and Boston defeating the New York Highlanders, 7-6 in 11 innings. Newspaper coverage of the opening was overshadowed by continuing coverage of the Titanic sinking a few days earlier, Fenway Park has historically drawn low attendance, its lowest occurring late in the 1965 season with two games having paid attendance under 500 spectators. On Wednesday, June 17,2009, the park celebrated its 500th consecutive Red Sox sellout, according to WBZ-TV, the team joined three NBA teams which achieved 500 consecutive home sellouts. The sellout streak ended on April 11,2013, in all the Red Sox sold out 794 regular season games, the parks address was originally 24 Jersey Street. In 1977, the section of Jersey Street nearest the park was renamed Yawkey Way in honor of longtime Red Sox owner Tom Yawkey, and the parks address is now 4 Yawkey Way. Some of the include, In 1934, a hand-operated scoreboard was added, with what was then considered high-technology lights to indicate balls. The scoreboard is updated by hand today from behind the wall. The National League scores were removed in 1976, but restored in 2003, in 1946, upper deck seats were installed, Fenway Park is essentially the first double-tiered ballpark in Boston since the South End Grounds of the 1880s. In 1947, arc lights were installed at Fenway Park, the Boston Red Sox were the third-to-last team out of 16 major league teams to have lights in their home park
8.
Weight training
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Weight training is a common type of strength training for developing the strength and size of skeletal muscles. It utilizes the force of gravity in the form of weighted bars, weight training uses a variety of specialized equipment to target specific muscle groups and types of movement. Sports where strength training is central are bodybuilding, weightlifting, powerlifting, and strongman, highland games, shot put, discus throw, strength training for other sports and physical activities is becoming increasingly popular. Strength training is a term that describes all exercises devoted toward increasing physical strength. Weight training is a type of training that uses weights. Endurance training is associated with aerobic exercise while flexibility training is associated with stretching exercise like yoga or pilates, weight training is often used as a synonym for strength training, but is actually a specific type within the more inclusive category. Contrary to popular belief, weight training can be beneficial for men and women. The genealogy of lifting can be traced back to the beginning of history where humanitys fascination with physical abilities can be found numerous ancient writings. Another Greek, the physician Galen, described strength training using the halteres in the 2nd century. Ancient Greek sculptures also depict lifting feats, the weights were generally stones, but later gave way to dumbbells. The dumbbell was joined by the barbell in the half of the 19th century. Early barbells had hollow globes that could be filled with sand or lead shot, another early device was the Indian club, which came from ancient Persia where it was called the meels. It subsequently became popular during the 19th century, and has made a comeback in the form of the clubbell. The 1960s saw the introduction of exercise machines into the still-rare strength training gyms of the time. Weight training became popular in the 1970s, following the release of the bodybuilding movie Pumping Iron. The specific combinations of reps, sets, exercises, and weights depends on the aims of the performing the exercise. In addition to the principles of strength training, a further consideration added by weight training is the equipment used. Types of equipment include barbells, dumbbells, pulleys and stacks in the form of weight machines, different types of weights will give different types of resistance, and often the same absolute weight can have different relative weights depending on the type of equipment used
9.
Peabody College
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Peabody College of Education and Human Development was founded in 1875 when the University of Nashville, located in Nashville, Tennessee, split into two separate educational institutions. Peabody was merged into Vanderbilt University in 1979, Peabody has been ranked as the top graduate school of education in the nation during the 2009,2010,2011,2012, and 2013 editions of the U. S. News & World Report graduate school rankings. Peabody traces its history to 1785, when Davidson Academy was chartered by the state of North Carolina, in 1806 the school was rechartered and used the name Cumberland College until 1826. The name changed to University of Nashville in 1827, in 1875, when the school was receiving financial assistance from the Peabody Education Fund started by George Peabody, the state legislature amended the charter to establish the State Normal School. In 1889 it became Peabody Normal College, after 1911, Peabody College was located directly across the street from the campus of Vanderbilt University. It later became affiliated with Vanderbilt University, and is now known as the Peabody College of Education and it was located on the site of the campus of the former Roger Williams University, a school for African American students which burned around 1906. The site was occupied by Peabody, which was then for whites. Peabody became a school of education, especially in the South. It seemed financially strong, due in part to an endowment that had been funded in part by its namesake, also, Peabody students were eligible for participation in Vanderbilt ROTC and the Vanderbilt Marching Band. In the early 1970s Peabody students became eligible to participate on Vanderbilt athletic teams, in 1954, Nancy Reed won the womens individual intercollegiate golf championship. The 50-acre campus with its 22 main buildings was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1965 for its association with George Peabodys funding efforts. The former path was chosen, and Peabody became a part of Vanderbilt in 1979, for many years following the merger, Peabody maintained a considerable separate identity within Vanderbilt, but this is now somewhat diminished. In 2008, Peabody became the site of The Commons, the housing for all first-year Vanderbilt students, in an organizational sense, too, Peabody College constitutes a vital part of todays Vanderbilt. It is now the host of two government-funded national research centers, the National Center on School Choice and the National Center on Performance Incentives. Peabody was ranked first among American graduate schools of education in the 2009,2010,2011,2012, theodore Bilbo, Mississippi State Senator, Lt. Governor, Governor, and U. S. Senator Elizabeth Lee Bloomstein, history professor and clubwoman in Nashville George Doherty, Louisiana football coach, McGinnis was named acting president in 1944 on the retirement of Leon Renfroe Meadows and served until August 1946. The McGinnis Theater was named after him
10.
Owen Graduate School of Management
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The Vanderbilt University Owen Graduate School of Management is the graduate business school of Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, United States. Owen is renowned for its Health Care MBA, a program that provides students an in-depth educational experience tailored to the health care industry. Owen also offers programs for undergraduates and executives. The student to faculty ratio is about 9 to 1, with 577 students and 49 full-time faculty members, the school’s 8,304 living MBA alumni are found throughout the U. S. and around the world. Owens two-year MBA program is ranked among the top business schools in the nation by major publications. In 2016, Owen was ranked #22 in U. S. News & World Reports rankings, bloomberg Businessweek ranked the full-time MBA program #30 in 2014. The school is named for Ralph “Peck” Owen and his wife, Ralph Owen, a Vanderbilt alumnus, was a founder of Equitable Securities Corporation in Nashville, and he became the chairman of the American Express Company. Vanderbilt University Owen Graduate School of Management has been in operation since 1969 and they called it the Commercial College Department. No program was established then, however, and it was the mid-1950s before a program of business administration was offered in the Department of Economics and they were concerned that too many aspiring young businessmen would attend schools in other parts of the country and then remain in those regions. The BOT passed the school’s founding resolution on May 5,1967, and operations as the Graduate School of Management began in September 1969 with twelve faculty members and six students. Classes met in a funeral home, a gift from Mr. and Mrs. David K. Wilson, he was one of those concerned Nashville businessmen, a Vanderbilt alum. The building was named Alexander Hall in honor of Henry Clay Alexander, a Vanderbilt alum, a Vanderbilt BOT member, and president of J. P. Morgan. The first dean, Igor Ansoff, held masters degrees in engineering and in mathematics and physics from the Stevens Institute of Technology and he had most recently been a professor of industrial administration at Carnegie-Mellon but previously worked at Lockheed, where his specialty was strategies of diversification. He had also written and published works on education and business management. It was under the leadership of Dean Samuel B, Richmond, a statistician from Columbia University, who had been acting dean of Columbia Graduate School, that the school was named for Ralph and Lulu Owen. In 1930, two years after graduating from Vanderbilt University, Ralph Owen became a member of Equitable Securities Corporation in Nashville. By 1950, the firm was recognized as the second largest investment banking firm in the United States, Equitable purchased controlling interest in American Express in 1949 and 1950, and Owen became American Express chairman. Following the deaths of both Mr. and Mrs. Owen, their estates gave $33.5 million to The Owen School and that sum raised the total of their gifts to more than $62 million
