1.
New York City
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The City of New York, often called New York City or simply New York, is the most populous city in the United States. With an estimated 2015 population of 8,550,405 distributed over an area of about 302.6 square miles. Located at the tip of the state of New York. Home to the headquarters of the United Nations, New York is an important center for international diplomacy and has described as the cultural and financial capital of the world. Situated on one of the worlds largest natural harbors, New York City consists of five boroughs, the five boroughs – Brooklyn, Queens, Manhattan, The Bronx, and Staten Island – were consolidated into a single city in 1898. In 2013, the MSA produced a gross metropolitan product of nearly US$1.39 trillion, in 2012, the CSA generated a GMP of over US$1.55 trillion. NYCs MSA and CSA GDP are higher than all but 11 and 12 countries, New York City traces its origin to its 1624 founding in Lower Manhattan as a trading post by colonists of the Dutch Republic and was named New Amsterdam in 1626. The city and its surroundings came under English control in 1664 and were renamed New York after King Charles II of England granted the lands to his brother, New York served as the capital of the United States from 1785 until 1790. It has been the countrys largest city since 1790, the Statue of Liberty greeted millions of immigrants as they came to the Americas by ship in the late 19th and early 20th centuries and is a symbol of the United States and its democracy. In the 21st century, New York has emerged as a node of creativity and entrepreneurship, social tolerance. Several sources have ranked New York the most photographed city in the world, the names of many of the citys bridges, tapered skyscrapers, and parks are known around the world. Manhattans real estate market is among the most expensive in the world, Manhattans Chinatown incorporates the highest concentration of Chinese people in the Western Hemisphere, with multiple signature Chinatowns developing across the city. Providing continuous 24/7 service, the New York City Subway is one of the most extensive metro systems worldwide, with 472 stations in operation. Over 120 colleges and universities are located in New York City, including Columbia University, New York University, and Rockefeller University, during the Wisconsinan glaciation, the New York City region was situated at the edge of a large ice sheet over 1,000 feet in depth. The ice sheet scraped away large amounts of soil, leaving the bedrock that serves as the foundation for much of New York City today. Later on, movement of the ice sheet would contribute to the separation of what are now Long Island and Staten Island. The first documented visit by a European was in 1524 by Giovanni da Verrazzano, a Florentine explorer in the service of the French crown and he claimed the area for France and named it Nouvelle Angoulême. Heavy ice kept him from further exploration, and he returned to Spain in August and he proceeded to sail up what the Dutch would name the North River, named first by Hudson as the Mauritius after Maurice, Prince of Orange
2.
Boroughs of New York City
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New York City, in the U. S. state of New York, is composed of five county-level administrative entities called boroughs. They are Manhattan, the Bronx, Queens, Brooklyn, each borough is coextensive with a county of New York State. The county governments were dissolved when New York City consolidated in 1898, along all city, town. The term borough was adopted to describe a form of administration for each of the five fundamental constituent parts of the newly consolidated city in 1898. Under the 1898 City Charter adopted by the New York State Legislature, the term is also used by politicians to counter a frequent focus on Manhattan and thereby to place all five boroughs on equal footing. In the same vein, the outer boroughs refers to all of the boroughs excluding Manhattan. All of the boroughs were created in 1898 during consolidation, when the current boundaries were established. Ultimately in 1914, the present-day separate Bronx County became the last county to be created in the State of New York, the borough of Queens consists of what formerly was only the western part of a then-larger Queens County. The borough of Staten Island was officially the borough of Richmond until the name was changed in 1975 to reflect its common appellation, there are hundreds of distinct neighborhoods throughout the five boroughs of New York City, many with a definable history and character to call their own. Manhattan is the geographically smallest and most densely populated borough and is home to Central Park and most of the citys skyscrapers. Manhattans population density of 72,033 people per mile in 2015 makes it the highest of any county in the United States. Manhattan is often described as the financial and cultural center of the world, most of the borough is situated on Manhattan Island, at the mouth of the Hudson River. Manhattan Island is loosely divided into Lower, Midtown, and Uptown regions, Uptown Manhattan is divided by Central Park into the Upper East Side and the Upper West Side, and above the park is Harlem. The borough also includes a neighborhood on the United States mainland. New York Citys remaining four boroughs are collectively referred to as the outer boroughs, Brooklyn, on the western tip of Long Island, is the citys most populous borough. Brooklyn is known for its cultural, social, and ethnic diversity, an independent art scene, distinct neighborhoods, downtown Brooklyn is the only central core neighborhood in the outer boroughs. The borough has a long beachfront shoreline including Coney Island, established in the 1870s as one of the earliest amusement grounds in the country, marine Park and Prospect Park are the two largest parks in Brooklyn. Historically a collection of towns and villages founded by the Dutch
3.
Broadway (Manhattan)
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Broadway /ˈbrɔːdweɪ/ is a road in the U. S. state of New York. It is the oldest north–south main thoroughfare in New York City, dating to the first New Amsterdam settlement, the name Broadway is the English language literal translation of the Dutch name, Brede weg. Broadway is known widely as the heart of the American theatre industry, Broadway was originally the Wickquasgeck Trail, carved into the brush of Manhattan by its Native American inhabitants. Wickquasgeck means birch-bark country in the Algonquian language and this trail originally snaked through swamps and rocks along the length of Manhattan Island. Upon the arrival of the Dutch, the trail became the main road through the island from Nieuw Amsterdam at the southern tip. The Dutch explorer and entrepreneur David Pietersz. de Vries gives the first mention of it in his journal for the year 1642, the Dutch named the road Heerestraat. Although current street signs are simply labeled as Broadway, in a 1776 map of New York City, in the mid-eighteenth century, part of Broadway in what is now lower Manhattan was known as Great George Street. An 1897 City Map shows a segment of Broadway as Kingsbridge Road in the vicinity of what is now the George Washington Bridge. In the 18th century, Broadway ended at the town north of Wall Street, where traffic continued up the East Side of the island via Eastern Post Road. The western Bloomingdale Road would be widened and paved during the 19th century, on February 14,1899, the name Broadway was extended to the entire Broadway/Bloomingdale/Boulevard road. Broadway once was a street for its entire length. The present status, in which it runs one-way southbound south of Columbus Circle, on 6 June 1954, Seventh Avenue became southbound and Eighth Avenue became northbound south of Broadway. On 3 June 1962, Broadway became one-way south of Canal Street, with Trinity Place, northbound traffic on Broadway now needs to take Amsterdam Avenue to 73rd Street, make a sharp turn on the very narrow 73rd and then right turn on Broadway. Otherwise, and effectively, the traffic on Broadway has been diverted into Amsterdam Avenue. In August 2008, two lanes from 42nd to 35th Streets were taken out of service and converted to public plazas. Additionally, bike lanes were added on Broadway from 42nd Street down to Union Square, the city decided that the experiment was successful and decided to make the change permanent in February 2010. Additionally, portions of Broadway in the Madison Square and Union Square have been dramatically narrowed, Broadway runs the length of Manhattan Island, roughly parallel to the North River, from Bowling Green at the south to Inwood at the northern tip of the island. South of Columbus Circle, it is a southbound street
4.
Sixth Avenue (Manhattan)
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It is commercial for much of its length. Sixth Avenues northern end is at Central Park South, adjacent to the Artists Gate traffic entrance to Central Park at Center Drive, historically, Sixth Avenue continued north of Central Park, but that segment was renamed Lenox Avenue in 1887 and co-named Malcolm X Boulevard in 1987. Sixth Avenue was laid out in the Commissioners Plan of 1811, as originally designed, Sixth Avenues southern terminus was at Carmine Street in Greenwich Village. In the early and mid 1800s it passed by the roadhouse and tavern Old Grapevine at the corner of 11th street. The IRT Sixth Avenue Line elevated railway was constructed on Sixth Avenue in 1878, darkening the street, proposals to extend the street south from Carmine Street, to allow easier access to lower Manhattan, were discussed by the citys Board of Aldermen as early as the mid-1860s. Construction of the resulted in considerable dislocation to existing residents. One historian said that ten people were displaced, most of them Italian immigrants who knew no other home in America. According to the WPA Guide to New York City, the resulted in blank side walls facing the uninspiring thoroughfare. Dozens of buildings, including the original Church of Our Lady of Pompeii, were demolished, by the mid-20th century, a coalition of commercial establishments and building owners along Sixth Avenue campaigned to have the El removed. The El was closed on December 4,1938 and came down in stages, beginning in Greenwich Village in 1938–39, demolition of the Sixth Avenue elevated railway, meanwhile, resulted in accelerated commercial development of the avenue in Midtown. Beginning in the 1960s, the avenue was rebuilt above 42nd Street as an all-but-uninterrupted avenue of corporate headquarters housed in glass slab towers of International Modernist style. On March 10,1957, Sixth Avenue was reconfigured to carry one-way traffic north of its intersection with Broadway in Herald Square, the rest of the avenue followed on November 10,1963. In the mid-1970s, the city spruced up the street, including the addition of patterned brick crosswalks, repainting of streetlamps, special lighting, rare throughout the rest of the city, was also installed. The avenues official name was changed to Avenue of the Americas in 1945 by the City Council, at the behest of Mayor Fiorello La Guardia, who signed the bill into law on October 2,1945. The intent was to honor Pan-American ideals and principles and the nations of Central and South America and it was felt at the time that the name would provide greater grandeur to a shabby street, and to promote trade with the Western Hemisphere. After the name change, round signs were attached to streetlights on the avenue, however, New Yorkers seldom used the avenues newer name, and the street has been labelled as both Avenue of the Americas and Sixth Avenue in recent years. Most of the old round signs with country emblems were gone by the late 1990s, R. Grace Building, International Center of Photography, Rockefeller Center — including the Time-Life Building, News Corp. Building, Exxon Building and McGraw-Hill Building, as well as Radio City Music Hall, the Steinway Hall of New York was moved to 1130 Sixth Avenue in October 2014
5.
New York City Subway
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Opened in 1904, the New York City Subway is one of the worlds oldest public transit systems, one of the worlds most used metro systems, and the metro system with the most stations. It offers service 24 hours per day, every day of the year, the New York City Subway is the largest rapid transit system in the world by number of stations, with 472 stations in operation. Stations are located throughout the boroughs of Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, the Port Authority Trans-Hudson and the AirTrain JFK, in Manhattan and Queens respectively, accept the subways MetroCard but are not operated by the MTA and do not allow free transfers. Another mass transit service that is not operated by the MTA, the system is also one of the worlds longest. Overall, the system contains 236 miles of routes, translating into 665 miles of track. In 2015, the subway delivered over 1.76 billion rides, averaging approximately 5.7 million daily rides on weekdays and a combined 5.9 million rides each weekend. Of the systems 25 services,22 of them pass through Manhattan, the exceptions being the G train, the Franklin Avenue Shuttle, and the Rockaway Park Shuttle. Large portions of the subway outside Manhattan are elevated, on embankments, or in open cuts, in total, 40% of track is not underground despite the subway moniker. Many lines and stations have both express and local services and these lines have three or four tracks. Normally, the two are used for local trains, while the inner one or two are used for express trains. Stations served by express trains are typically major transfer points or destinations, alfred Ely Beach built the first demonstration for an underground transit system in New York City in 1869 and opened it in February 1870. The tunnel was never extended for political and financial reasons, although extensions had been planned to take the tunnel southward to The Battery, the Great Blizzard of 1888 helped demonstrate the benefits of an underground transportation system. A plan for the construction of the subway was approved in 1894, the first underground line of the subway opened on October 27,1904, almost 36 years after the opening of the first elevated line in New York City, which became the IRT Ninth Avenue Line. The fare was $0.05 and on the first day the trains carried over 150,000 passengers, the oldest structure still in use opened in 1885 as part of the BMT Lexington Avenue Line in Brooklyn and is now part of the BMT Jamaica Line. The oldest right-of-way, which is part of the BMT West End Line near Coney Island Creek, was in use in 1864 as a railroad called the Brooklyn, Bath. By the time the first subway opened, the lines had been consolidated into two privately owned systems, the Brooklyn Rapid Transit Company and the Interborough Rapid Transit Company, the city built most of the lines and leased them to the companies. This required it to be run at cost, necessitating fares up to double the five-cent fare popular at the time, in 1940, the city bought the two private systems. Some elevated lines ceased service immediately while others closed soon after, integration was slow, but several connections were built between the IND and BMT, these now operate as one division called the B Division
6.
New York Herald
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The New York Herald was a large distribution newspaper based in New York City that existed between May 6,1835, and 1924. The first issue of the paper was published by James Gordon Bennett, by 1845, it was the most popular and profitable daily newspaper in the United States. In 1861, it circulated 84,000 copies and called itself the most largely circulated journal in the world, Bennett stated that the function of a newspaper is not to instruct but to startle and amuse. His politics tended to be anti-Catholic and he had tended to favor the Know-Nothing faction, during the American Civil War, his policy as expressed by the newspaper was to staunchly support the Democratic Party. Frederic Hudson served as managing editor of the paper from 1846–1866, Bennett turned over control of the paper to his son James Gordon Bennett, Jr. in 1866. Under Gordon Bennett Jr. the paper financed Henry Morton Stanleys expeditions into Africa to find David Livingstone, the paper also supported Stanleys trans-Africa exploration, and in 1879 supported the ill-fated expedition of George W. DeLong to the arctic region. On October 4,1887, Bennett Jr. sent Julius Chambers to Paris, Bennett himself later moved to Paris, but the New York Herald suffered from his attempt to manage its operation in New York by telegram. In 1924, after Bennett Jr. s death, the New York Herald was acquired by its rival the New York Tribune. In 1959, the New York Herald Tribune and its European edition were sold to John Hay Whitney, in 1966, the New York paper ceased publication. The Washington Post and the New York Times acquired joint control of the European edition, when the Herald was still under the authority of its original publisher Bennett, it was considered to be the most invasive and sensationalist of the leading New York papers. Its ability to entertain the public with timely daily news made it the leading circulation paper of its time, the New York Evening Telegram was founded in 1867 by the junior Bennett, and was considered by many to be an evening edition of the Herald. Frank Munsey acquired the Telegram in 1920, which ceased its connection to the Herald, New Yorks Herald Square is named after the New York Herald newspaper, in the north side of the square there is a sculpture commemorating the Bennetts. The statue of Minerva, the Bellringers, and Owls by Antonin Carles originally graced the New York Herald building and rang every hour until it was moved to Herald Square, the chorus of Give My Regards to Broadway includes the phrase, emember me to Herald Square. North of Herald Square is Times Square, which is named after rival The New York Times, New York Herald Tribune Three months with the New York Herald, or, Old news on board of a homeward. By John Henry Potter Photographs and architectural sketches of the New York Herald Building
7.
Minerva
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Minerva was the Roman goddess of wisdom and sponsor of arts, trade, and strategy. She was born with weapons from the head of Jupiter, after impregnating the titaness Metis, Jupiter recalled a prophecy that his own child would overthrow him. Fearing that their child would grow stronger than he and rule the Heavens in his place, the titaness forged weapons and armor for her child while within the father-god, and the constant pounding and ringing gave him a headache. To relieve the pain, Vulcan used a hammer to split Jupiters head and, from the cleft, Minerva emerged, whole, adult, from the 2nd century BC onwards, the Romans equated her with the Greek goddess Athena. She was the goddess of music, poetry, medicine, wisdom, commerce, weaving. She is often depicted with her sacred creature, an owl usually named as the owl of Minerva, stemming from an Italic moon goddess *Meneswā, the Etruscans adopted the inherited Old Latin name, *Menerwā, thereby calling her Menrva. It is assumed that her Roman name, Minerva, is based on this Etruscan mythology, Minerva was the goddess of wisdom, war, art, schools and commerce. She was the Etruscan counterpart to Greek Athena, like Athena, Minerva was born from the head of her father, Jupiter. The word mens is built from the Proto-Indo-European root *men- mind, the Etruscan Menrva was part of a holy triad with Tinia and Uni, equivalent to the Roman Capitoline Triad of Jupiter-Juno-Minerva. Minerva was the daughter of Jupiter, as Minerva Medica, she was the goddess of medicine and doctors. As Minerva Achaea, she was worshipped at Lucera in Apulia where votive gifts, in Fasti III, Ovid called her the goddess of a thousand works. Minerva was worshipped throughout Italy, and when she eventually became equated with the Greek goddess Athena, unlike Mars, god of war, she was sometimes portrayed with sword lowered, in sympathy for the recent dead, rather than raised in triumph. In Rome her bellicose nature was emphasized less than elsewhere and her worship was also spread throughout the empire—in Britain, for example, she was syncretized with the local goddess Sulis, who was often invoked for restitution for theft. The Romans celebrated her festival from March 19 to March 23 during the day which is called, in the plural, Quinquatria, the fifth after the Ides of March, the nineteenth. A lesser version, the Minusculae Quinquatria, was held on the Ides of June, June 13, by the flute-players, in 207 BC, a guild of poets and actors was formed to meet and make votive offerings at the temple of Minerva on the Aventine Hill. Among others, its members included Livius Andronicus, the Aventine sanctuary of Minerva continued to be an important center of the arts for much of the middle Roman Republic. When it was founded, the emperor himself was present and was believed to be of divine nature as a result of its construction, Minerva is featured on the coinage of different Roman Emperors. She is often represented on the side of a coin holding an owl
8.
Horace Greeley
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Horace Greeley was founder and editor of the New-York Tribune, among the great newspapers of its time. Greeley was born to a family in Amherst, New Hampshire. He was apprenticed to a printer in Vermont and went to New York City in 1831 to seek his fortune and he wrote for or edited several publications and involved himself in Whig Party politics, taking a significant part in William Henry Harrisons successful 1840 presidential campaign. The following year, he founded the Tribune, which became the newspaper in the country through weekly editions sent by mail. Among many other issues, he urged the settlement of the American West, which he saw as a land of opportunity for the young and the unemployed. He popularized the phrase Go West, young man, and grow up with the country, Greeleys alliance with William H. Seward and Thurlow Weed led to him serving three months in the House of Representatives, where he angered many by investigating Congress in his newspaper. In 1854, he helped found and may have named the Republican Party, Republican newspapers across the nation regularly reprinted his editorials. During the Civil War, he mostly supported Lincoln, though urging him to commit to the end of slavery before the President was willing to do so, after Lincolns assassination, he supported the Radical Republicans in opposition to President Andrew Johnson. He broke with Republican president Ulysses Grant because of corruption and Greeleys sense that Reconstruction policies were no longer needed, Greeley was the new Liberal Republican Partys candidate in the 1872 U. S. presidential election. He lost in a landslide, despite having the support of the Democratic Party. He was devastated by the death of his wife, who died five days before the election, Horace Greeley was born on February 3,1811, on a farm about five miles from Amherst, New Hampshire. He could not breathe for the first twenty minutes of his life and he was of English descent, and his forebears included early settlers of Massachusetts and New Hampshire. Greeley was the son of poor farmers Zaccheus and Mary Greeley, Zaccheus was not successful, and moved his family several times, as far west as Pennsylvania. Horace attended the schools, and was a brilliant student. Seeing the boys intelligence, some neighbors offered to pay Horaces way at Phillips Exeter Academy, in 1820, Zaccheuss financial reverses caused him to flee New Hampshire with his family lest he be imprisoned for debt, and settle in Vermont. Even as his father struggled to make a living as a hired hand, in 1822, Horace ran away from home to become a printers apprentice, but was told he was too young. In 1826, at age 15, he was made an apprentice to Amos Bliss, editor of the Northern Spectator. There, he learned the mechanics of a job, and acquired a reputation as the town encyclopedia
9.
Macy's
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Macys, originally R. H. Macy & Co. is a department store owned by Macys, Inc. It is one of two owned by the company, with the other being Bloomingdales. Macys has conducted the annual Macys Thanksgiving Day Parade in New York City since 1924 and has sponsored the citys annual Fourth of July fireworks display since 1976, Macys Herald Square is one of the largest department stores in the world. The value of Herald Square has been estimated at around $3 billion, in 2015 Macys was the largest U. S. department store company by retail sales. Macys was the 15th-largest retailer in the United States for 2014 by revenue and they all failed, but he learned from his mistakes. On the companys first day of business on October 28,1858 sales totaled US$11.08, equal to $306.15 today. From the beginning, Macys logo has included a star, which comes from a tattoo that Macy got as a teenager when he worked on a Nantucket whaling ship and it also offered a money back guarantee, although it accepted only cash into the 1950s. The store also produced its own clothing for both men and women, assembled in an on-site factory. In 1875, Macy took on two partners, Robert M. Valentine, a nephew, and Abiel T, la Forge of Wisconsin, who was the husband of a cousin. Macy died in 1877 from inflammatory kidney disease, la Forge died the following year, and Valentine died in 1879. This latter 5-story building was purchased by Robert H. Macys ignored the tactic, and simply built around the building, in 1912, Isidor Straus died in the sinking of the Titanic at the age of 67 with his wife, Ida. The original Broadway store was designed by architects De Lemos & Cordes, was built in 1901–02 by the Fuller Company and has a Palladian facade, but has been updated in many details. There were further additions to the west in 1924 and 1928, and the Seventh Avenue building in 1931, all designed by architect Robert D. Kohn, the newer buildings were increasingly Art Deco in style. In 2012, Macys began the first full renovation of the iconic Herald Square flagship store at a reported cost of US$400,000,000, STUDIO V Architecture, a New York-based firm, was the overall Master Plan architect of the project. STUDIO Vs fresh design of the department store raised controversy over the nature of contemporary design, the building was added to the National Register of Historic Places as a National Historic Landmark in 1978. The store has several wooden escalators still in operation, the problem of pre-existing buildings also presented itself when Macys built a store on Queens Boulevard in Elmhurst, in the New York City borough of Queens. This resulted in a unique round department store on 90 percent of the lot, Macys no longer fully occupies this building, which now contains the Queens Place Mall, with Macys Furniture Gallery as a tenant, instead it moved its full outlet to the nearby Queens Center. This relocation was the result of Macys merger with Federated Department Stores, the parent company of Abraham & Straus, in 1994, more distant acquisitions included Lasalle & Koch, Davison-Paxon-Stokes, L. Bamberger & Co
10.
Department store
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A department store or magazine is a retail establishment offering a wide range of consumer goods in different product categories known as departments. In modern major cities, the department store made a appearance in the middle of the 19th century, and permanently reshaped shopping habits. Similar developments were under way in London, in Paris and in New York, customers check out near the front of the store or, alternatively, at sales counters within each department. Some are part of a chain of many stores, while others may be independent retailers. In the 1970s, they came under pressure from discounters. Since 2010, they have come under even heavier pressure from online stores such as Amazon, big-box stores, hypermarkets, and discount stores are modern equivalent of historical department stores. Before shopping malls, department stores were standalone, the origins of the department store lay in the growth of the conspicuous consumer society at the turn of the 19th century. As the Industrial Revolution accelerated economy expansion, the affluent middle-class grew in size, urbanized social group, sharing a culture of consumption and changing fashion, was the catalyst for the retail revolution. One of the first department stores may have been Bennetts in Derby and it still stands to this day, trading in the same building. However, the first reliably dated department store to be established, was Harding, Howell & Co and it is fitted up with great taste, and is divided by glazed partitions into four departments, for the various branches of the extensive business, which is there carried on. Immediately at the entrance is the first department, which is appropriated to the sale of furs. The second contains articles of haberdashery of every description, silks, muslins, lace, gloves, &etc. The fourth is set apart for millinery and dresses, so there is no article of female attire or decoration. This venture is described as having all of the characteristics of the department store. This pioneering shop was closed down in 1820 when the partnership was dissolved. Department stores began large scale establishment in the 1840s and 50s, in France, the UK, all the major British cities had flourishing department stores by the mid-or late nineteenth century. Increasingly, women became the major shoppers and middle-class households, Kendals in Manchester lays claim to being one of the first department stores and is still known to many of its customers as Kendals, despite its 2005 name change to House of Fraser. The Manchester institution dates back to 1836 but had been trading as Watts Bazaar since 1796, at its zenith the store had buildings on both sides of Deansgate linked by a subterranean passage Kendals Arcade and an art nouveau tiled food hall
11.
Guinness World Records
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The book itself holds a world record, as the best-selling copyrighted book of all time. As of the 2017 edition, it is now in its 63rd year of publication, the international franchise has extended beyond print to include television series and museums. On 10 November 1951, Sir Hugh Beaver, then the director of the Guinness Breweries, went on a shooting party in the North Slob, by the River Slaney in County Wexford. After missing a shot at a golden plover, he involved in an argument over which was the fastest game bird in Europe. That evening at Castlebridge House, he realised that it was impossible to confirm in reference books whether or not the golden plover was Europes fastest game bird. Beaver knew that there must be numerous other questions debated nightly in pubs throughout Ireland and abroad and he realised then that a book supplying the answers to this sort of question might prove successful. Beavers idea became reality when Guinness employee Christopher Chataway recommended University friends Norris and Ross McWhirter, the twin brothers were commissioned to compile what became The Guinness Book of Records in August 1954. A thousand copies were printed and given away, after the founding of The Guinness Book of Records at 107 Fleet Street, the first 198-page edition was bound on 27 August 1955 and went to the top of the British best seller lists by Christmas. The following year, it launched in the US, and sold 70,000 copies, since then, Guinness World Records has become a household name and the global leader in world records. Because the book became a hit, many further editions were printed, eventually settling into a pattern of one revision a year, published in September/October. The McWhirters continued to compile it for many years, Ross McWhirter was assassinated by the Provisional Irish Republican Army in 1975. Following Ross assassination, the feature in the show where questions about records posed by children were answered was called Norris on the Spot, Guinness Superlatives Limited was formed in 1954 to publish the first book. Sterling Publishing owned the rights to the Guinness book in the US for decades, and, under their management, the group was owned by Guinness PLC and subsequently Diageo until 2001, when it was purchased by Gullane Entertainment. Gullane was itself purchased by HIT Entertainment in 2002, with offices in New York City and Tokyo, Guinness World Records global headquarters remain in London, while its museum attractions are based at Ripley headquarters in Orlando, Florida, US. Recent editions have focused on record feats by person competitors, many records also relate to the youngest person who achieved something, such as the youngest person to visit all nations of the world, being Maurizio Giuliano. Each edition contains a selection of the records from the Guinness database, as well as new records. The majority of records are no longer listed in the book or on the website. For those unable to wait the 4–6 weeks for a reply, the Guinness Book of Records is the worlds most sold copyrighted book, earning it an entry within its own pages
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