United States Postal Service
The United States Postal Service is an independent agency of the executive branch of the United States federal government responsible for providing postal service in the United States, including its insular areas and associated states. It is one of the few government agencies explicitly authorized by the United States Constitution; the U. S. Mail traces its roots to 1775 during the Second Continental Congress, when Benjamin Franklin was appointed the first postmaster general; the Post Office Department was created in 1792 from Franklin's operation. It was elevated to a cabinet-level department in 1872, was transformed by the Postal Reorganization Act in 1970 into the USPS as an independent agency; the USPS as of 2017 has 644,124 active employees and operated 211,264 vehicles in 2014. The USPS is the operator of the largest civilian vehicle fleet in the world; the USPS is obligated to serve all Americans, regardless of geography, at uniform price and quality. The USPS has exclusive access to letter boxes marked "U.
S. Mail" and personal letterboxes in the United States, but now has to compete against private package delivery services, such as United Parcel Service and FedEx. Since the early 1980s, many of the direct tax subsidies to the Post Office, with the exception of subsidies for costs associated with the disabled and overseas voters, have been reduced or eliminated in favor of indirect subsidies, in addition to the advantages associated with a government-enforced monopoly on the delivery of first-class mail. Since the 2006 all-time peak mail volume, after which Congress passed the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act which mandated that $5.5 billion per year be paid to prefund employee retirement health benefits, revenue dropped due to recession-influenced declining mail volume, prompting the postal service to look to other sources of revenue while cutting costs to reduce its budget deficit. In the early years of the North American colonies, many attempts were made to initiate a postal service.
These early attempts were of small scale and involved a colony, Massachusetts Bay Colony for example, setting up a location in Boston where one could post a letter back home to England. Other attempts focused on a dedicated postal service between two of the larger colonies, such as Massachusetts and Virginia, but the available services remained limited in scope and disjointed for many years. For example, informal independently-run postal routes operated in Boston as early as 1639, with a Boston to New York City service starting in 1672. A central postal organization came to the colonies in 1691, when Thomas Neale received a 21-year grant from the British Crown for a North American Postal Service. On February 17, 1691, a grant of letters patent from the joint sovereigns, William III and Mary II, empowered him: to erect and establish within the chief parts of their majesties' colonies and plantations in America, an office or offices for receiving and dispatching letters and pacquets, to receive and deliver the same under such rates and sums of money as the planters shall agree to give, to hold and enjoy the same for the term of twenty-one years.
The patent included the exclusive right to establish and collect a formal postal tax on official documents of all kinds. The tax was repealed a year later. Neale appointed Governor of New Jersey, as his deputy postmaster; the first postal service in America commenced in February 1692. Rates of postage were fixed and authorized, measures were taken to establish a post office in each town in Virginia. Massachusetts and the other colonies soon passed postal laws, a imperfect post office system was established. Neale's patent expired in 1710; the chief office was established in New York City, where letters were conveyed by regular packets across the Atlantic. Before the Revolution, there was only a trickle of business or governmental correspondence between the colonies. Most of the mail went forth to counting houses and government offices in London; the revolution made Philadelphia, the seat of the Continental Congress, the information hub of the new nation. News, new laws, political intelligence, military orders circulated with a new urgency, a postal system was necessary.
Journalists took the lead, securing post office legislation that allowed them to reach their subscribers at low cost, to exchange news from newspapers between the thirteen states. Overthrowing the London-oriented imperial postal service in 1774–1775, printers enlisted merchants and the new political leadership, created a new postal system; the United States Post Office was created on July 26, 1775, by decree of the Second Continental Congress. Benjamin Franklin headed it briefly. Before the Revolution, individuals like Benjamin Franklin and William Goddard were the colonial postmasters who managed the mails and were the general architects of a postal system that started out as an alternative to the Crown Post; the official post office was created in 1792 as the Post Office Department. It was based on the Constitutional authority empowering Congress "To establish post offices and post roads"; the 1792 law provided for a expanded postal network, served editors by charging newspapers an low rate.
The law guaranteed the sanctity of personal correspondence, provided the entire country with low-cost access to information on public affairs, while establishing a right to personal privacy. Rufus Easton was appointed by Thomas Jefferson first postmaster of St. Louis under the recommendation of Postmaster General Gideon Granger. Rufus Easton was the first postmaster and built the first post office west o
International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement
The International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement is an international humanitarian movement with 17 million volunteers and staff worldwide, founded to protect human life and health, to ensure respect for all human beings, to prevent and alleviate human suffering. The movement consists of several distinct organizations that are independent from each other, but are united within the movement through common basic principles, symbols and governing organisations; the movement's parts are: The International Committee of the Red Cross is a private humanitarian institution founded in 1863 in Geneva, Switzerland, in particular by Henry Dunant and Gustave Moynier. Its 25-member committee has a unique authority under international humanitarian law to protect the life and dignity of the victims of international and internal armed conflicts; the ICRC was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize on three occasions. The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies was founded in 1919 and today it coordinates activities between the 190 National Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies within the Movement.
On an international level, the Federation leads and organizes, in close cooperation with the National Societies, relief assistance missions responding to large-scale emergencies. The International Federation Secretariat is based in Switzerland. In 1963, the Federation was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize jointly with the ICRC. National Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies exist in nearly every country in the world. 190 National Societies are recognized by the ICRC and admitted as full members of the Federation. Each entity works in its home country according to the principles of international humanitarian law and the statutes of the international Movement. Depending on their specific circumstances and capacities, National Societies can take on additional humanitarian tasks that are not directly defined by international humanitarian law or the mandates of the international Movement. In many countries, they are linked to the respective national health care system by providing emergency medical services.
Until the middle of the 19th century, there were no organized and/or well-established army nursing systems for casualties and no safe and protected institutions to accommodate and treat those who were wounded on the battlefield. A devout Reformed Christian, the Swiss businessman Jean-Henri Dunant, in June 1859, traveled to Italy to meet French emperor Napoléon III with the intention of discussing difficulties in conducting business in Algeria, at that time occupied by France, he arrived in the small town of Solferino on the evening of 24 June after the Battle of Solferino, an engagement in the Austro-Sardinian War. In a single day, about 40,000 soldiers on both sides were left wounded on the field. Jean-Henri Dunant was shocked by the terrible aftermath of the battle, the suffering of the wounded soldiers, the near-total lack of medical attendance and basic care, he abandoned the original intent of his trip and for several days he devoted himself to helping with the treatment and care for the wounded.
He took point in organizing an overwhelming level of relief assistance with the local villagers to aid without discrimination. Back in his home in Geneva, he decided to write a book entitled A Memory of Solferino which he published using his own money in 1862, he sent copies of the book to leading political and military figures throughout Europe, people he thought could help him make a change. In addition to penning a vivid description of his experiences in Solferino in 1859, he explicitly advocated the formation of national voluntary relief organizations to help nurse wounded soldiers in the case of war, an idea, inspired by Christian teaching regarding social responsibility, as well as his experience after the battlefield of Solferino. In addition, he called for the development of an international treaty to guarantee the protection of medics and field hospitals for soldiers wounded on the battlefield. In 1863, Gustave Moynier, a Geneva lawyer and president of the Geneva Society for Public Welfare, received a copy of Dunant's book and introduced it for discussion at a meeting of that society.
As a result of this initial discussion the society established an investigatory commission to examine the feasibility of Dunant's suggestions and to organize an international conference about their possible implementation. The members of this committee, which has subsequently been referred to as the "Committee of the Five," aside from Dunant and Moynier were physician Louis Appia, who had significant experience working as a field surgeon. Eight days the five men decided to rename the committee to the "International Committee for Relief to the Wounded". In October 1863, the international conference organized by the committee was held in Geneva to develop possible measures to improve medical services on the battlefield; the conference was attended by 36 individuals: eighteen official delegates from national governments, six delegates from other non-governmental organizations, seven non-official foreign delegates, the five members of the International Committee. The states and kingdoms represented by official delegates were: Austrian Empire, Grand Duchy of Baden, Kingdom of Bavaria, Second French Empire, Kingdom of Hanover, Grand Duchy of Hesse, Kingdom of Italy, Kingdom of the Netherlands, Kingdom of Prussia, Russian Empire, Kingdom of Saxony, Spanish Empire, United Kingdoms of Sweden and Norway, United Kingdom
George W. Bush
George Walker Bush is an American politician and businessman who served as the 43rd president of the United States from 2001 to 2009. He had served as the 46th governor of Texas from 1995 to 2000. Bush was born in New Haven and grew up in Texas. After graduating from Yale University in 1968 and Harvard Business School in 1975, he worked in the oil industry. Bush married Laura Welch in 1977 and unsuccessfully ran for the U. S. House of Representatives shortly thereafter, he co-owned the Texas Rangers baseball team before defeating Ann Richards in the 1994 Texas gubernatorial election. Bush was elected President of the United States in 2000 when he defeated Democratic incumbent Vice President Al Gore after a close and controversial win that involved a stopped recount in Florida, he became the fourth person to be elected president while receiving fewer popular votes than his opponent. Bush is a member of a prominent political family and is the eldest son of Barbara and George H. W. Bush, the 41st president of the United States.
He is only the second president to assume the nation's highest office after his father, following the footsteps of John Adams and his son, John Quincy Adams. His brother Jeb Bush, a former Governor of Florida, was a candidate for the Republican presidential nomination in the 2016 presidential election, his paternal grandfather, Prescott Bush, was a U. S. Senator from Connecticut; the September 11 terrorist attacks occurred eight months into Bush's first term. Bush responded with what became known as the Bush Doctrine: launching a "War on Terror", an international military campaign that included the war in Afghanistan in 2001 and the Iraq War in 2003, he signed into law broad tax cuts, the Patriot Act, the No Child Left Behind Act, the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act, Medicare prescription drug benefits for seniors, funding for the AIDS relief program known as PEPFAR. His tenure included national debates on immigration, Social Security, electronic surveillance, torture. In the 2004 presidential race, Bush defeated Democratic Senator John Kerry in another close election.
After his re-election, Bush received heated criticism from across the political spectrum for his handling of the Iraq War, Hurricane Katrina, other challenges. Amid this criticism, the Democratic Party regained control of Congress in the 2006 elections. In December 2007, the United States entered its longest post-World War II recession referred to as the "Great Recession", prompting the Bush administration to obtain congressional passage of multiple economic programs intended to preserve the country's financial system. Nationally, Bush was both one of the most popular and unpopular U. S. presidents in history, having received the highest recorded presidential approval ratings in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, as well as one of the lowest approval ratings during the 2008 financial crisis. Bush finished his term in office in 2009 and returned to Texas, where he had purchased a home in Dallas. In 2010, he published Decision Points, his presidential library was opened in 2013. His presidency has been ranked among the worst in historians' polls that were published in the late 2000s and 2010s.
However, his favorability ratings with the public have improved after leaving office. George Walker Bush was born on July 6, 1946, at Yale–New Haven Hospital in New Haven, while his father was a student at Yale, he was his wife, Barbara Pierce. He was raised in Midland and Houston, with four siblings, Neil and Dorothy. Another younger sister, died from leukemia at the age of three in 1953, his grandfather, Prescott Bush, was a U. S. Senator from Connecticut, his father was Ronald Reagan's vice president from 1981 to 1989 and the 41st U. S. president from 1989 to 1993. Bush has English and some German ancestry, along with more distant Dutch, Irish and Scottish roots. Bush attended public schools in Midland, until the family moved to Houston after he had completed seventh grade, he spent two years at The Kinkaid School, a prep school in Piney Point Village in the Houston area. Bush attended high school at Phillips Academy, a boarding school in Andover, where he played baseball and was the head cheerleader during his senior year.
He attended Yale University from 1964 to 1968. During this time, he was a cheerleader and a member of the Delta Kappa Epsilon, serving as the president of the fraternity during his senior year. Bush became a member of the Skull and Bones society as a senior. Bush was a rugby union player and was on Yale's 1st XV, he characterized himself as an average student. His GPA during his first three years at Yale was 77, he had a similar average under a nonnumeric rating system in his final year. In the fall of 1973, Bush entered Harvard Business School, he graduated in 1975 with an MBA degree. He is the only U. S. president to have earned an MBA. Bush was engaged to Cathryn Lee Wolfman in 1967, but the engagement fizzled out. Bush and Wolfman remained on good terms after the end of the relationship. While Bush was at a backyard barbecue in 1977, friends introduced him to Laura Welch, a schoolteacher and librarian. After a three-month courtship, she accepted his marriage proposal and they wed on November 5 of that year.
The couple settled in Texas. Bush left his family's Episcopal Church to join his wife's United Methodist Church. On November 25, 1981, Laura Bush gave birth to fraternal twin daughters and Jenna. Prior to getting married, Bush struggled with multiple episodes of alcohol abuse. In one instance on September 4, 1976, he was pulled over near his fami
Rosendo Matienzo Cintrón
Rosendo Matienzo Cintrón was a Puerto Rican lawyer and politician, a member of the Puerto Rican House of Representatives, a lifelong political contrarian. He favored Puerto Rican autonomy. After the Spanish–American War, when the island was ceded to the United States, he advocated statehood for Puerto Rico. In years, Matienzo Cintrón supported Puerto Rico's independence. Matienzo Cintrón was born in the town of Luquillo, Puerto Rico where he received his primary and secondary education, he moved to Spain to continue his education at the University of Barcelona, earned his law degree there in 1875. His daughter, Carlota Matienzo Román, was born in 1881 in Barcelona. Upon his return to Puerto Rico with his wife and new daughter, he moved to the city of Mayagüez and established his law practice. In November 1885 Matienzo Cintrón was accused by the colonial government of being a Freemason, illegal as it was opposed by the state Catholic Church, he was imprisoned. After his release, he ran for the position of provisional representative for the district of Mayagüez and was elected.
In 1887, Matienzo Cintrón assisted the Assembly of Autonomists in Teatro La Perla in the city of Ponce. During the assembly, Luis Muñoz Rivera proposed founding the Puerto Rican Autonomist Party. Matienzo Cintrón supported the proposal, became one of the party's most prominent figures. From the beginning, Matienzo Cintrón had some differences with Muñoz Rivera. At first he was against Muñoz Rivera's suggestion that their party make a pact with the Spanish Liberal Fusionist Party, headed by Práxedes Mateo Sagasta, he came to agree that such a pact would be to their benefit. Matienzo Cintrón was named to the commission which, along with Luis Muñoz Rivera, José Gómez Brioso and Federico Degetau, traveled to Spain to make official the pact with the Spanish Liberal Fusionist Party. On February 12, 1897, the Puerto Rican Autonomist Party held an assembly in San Juan, where new suggestions to the pact made by Matienzo Cintrón were approved, he recommended renaming the Puerto Rican Autonomist Party as the Puerto Rican Liberal Fusionist Party.
A group of members, headed by Dr. José Celso Barbosa, did not agree with some of the new by-laws, the party divided into two factions. In 1898, the United States declared war against Spain in -- American War; the United States forces under the command of Major General Nelson A. Miles invaded Puerto Rico via the town of Guanica in a military operation known as the Puerto Rico Campaign. Miles and his men were greeted that following August by a committee headed by Matienzo Cintrón, who provided the general with a banquet in his honor. Miles named Matienzo Cintrón President of the Ponce Audience, a position which he held until 1899. On July 4, 1899, Barbosa founded the pro-statehood Puerto Rican Republican Party and Matienzo Cintrón became a member. Although he belonged to the executive counsel of the party, Cintrón still had personal differences with Barbosa, he quit the party. Together with Luis Muñoz Rivera, Antonio R. Barceló, Eduardo Georgetti, José de Diego, he founded the Union of Puerto Rico Party.
Their political ideology was based on repeal of the Foraker Act, the enhancement of Puerto Rican autonomy, as a pathway to full independence. On June 5, 1900, President William McKinley named Matienzo Cintrón, together with José Celso Barbosa, José de Diego, Manuel Camuñas and Andrés Crosas to an Executive Cabinet under U. S.-appointed Governor Charles H. Allen, the first civilian governor of Puerto Rico; the Executive Cabinet included six American members. In 1904, Matienzo Cintrón was elected to the Puerto Rico House of Representatives from the district of Humacao. In 1906 and 1908, he was elected to represent the district of Mayagüez, he served as Presidente de la Camara from 1905 to 1906. In 1912, Matienzo Cintrón became convinced the party was not doing enough to promote Puerto Rico's independence, he left to organize the Partido de la Independencia. On February 8, 1912, together with Luis Lloréns Torres, Manuel Zeno Gandía and others, he wrote a manifesto demanding the independence of Puerto Rico from the United States.
The Independence Party, which included Eugenio Benítez Castaño and Pedro Franceschi as founding members, was the first party in the history of Puerto Rico to establish an absolute and non-negotiable demand for Puerto Rican independence. In this manner, the Independence Party established a precedent for future organizations with similar ideologies. Matienzo Cintrón died on December 1913, in his hometown of Luquillo; the government of Puerto Rico honored his memory by naming an elementary school in the town of Sabana Grande, a plaza in Luquillo, after him. List of famous Puerto Ricans Rosendo Matienzo Cintrón, Orientador y Guardián de una Cultura.
Spanish–American War
The Spanish–American War was an armed conflict between Spain and the United States in 1898. Hostilities began in the aftermath of the internal explosion of USS Maine in Havana harbor in Cuba, leading to U. S. intervention in the Cuban War of Independence. The war led to emergence of U. S. predominance in the Caribbean region, resulted in U. S. acquisition of Spain's Pacific possessions. That led to U. S. involvement in the Philippine Revolution and in the Philippine–American War. The main issue was Cuban independence. Revolts had been occurring for some years in Cuba against Spanish rule; the U. S. backed these revolts upon entering the Spanish–American War. There had been war scares before, as in the Virginius Affair in 1873, but in the late 1890s, American public opinion was agitated by reports of gruesome Spanish atrocities; the business community had just recovered from a deep depression and feared that a war would reverse the gains. It lobbied vigorously against going to war. President William McKinley sought a peaceful settlement.
The United States Navy armored cruiser USS Maine mysteriously sank in Havana Harbor. McKinley signed a joint Congressional resolution demanding Spanish withdrawal and authorizing the President to use military force to help Cuba gain independence on April 20, 1898. In response, Spain severed diplomatic relations with the United States on April 21. On the same day, the U. S. Navy began a blockade of Cuba. Both sides declared war; the ten-week war was fought in both the Pacific. As U. S. agitators for war well knew, U. S. naval power would prove decisive, allowing expeditionary forces to disembark in Cuba against a Spanish garrison facing nationwide Cuban insurgent attacks and further wasted by yellow fever. The invaders obtained the surrender of Santiago de Cuba and Manila despite the good performance of some Spanish infantry units and fierce fighting for positions such as San Juan Hill. Madrid sued for peace after two Spanish squadrons were sunk in Santiago de Cuba and Manila Bay and a third, more modern, fleet was recalled home to protect the Spanish coasts.
The result was the 1898 Treaty of Paris, negotiated on terms favorable to the U. S. which allowed it temporary control of Cuba and ceded ownership of Puerto Rico and the Philippine islands. The cession of the Philippines involved payment of $20 million to Spain by the U. S. to cover infrastructure owned by Spain. The defeat and loss of the last remnants of the Spanish Empire was a profound shock to Spain's national psyche and provoked a thorough philosophical and artistic reevaluation of Spanish society known as the Generation of'98; the United States gained several island possessions spanning the globe and a rancorous new debate over the wisdom of expansionism. The combined problems arising from the Peninsular War, the loss of most of its colonies in the Americas in the early 19th-century Spanish American wars of independence, three Carlist Wars marked the low point of Spanish colonialism. Liberal Spanish elites like Antonio Cánovas del Castillo and Emilio Castelar offered new interpretations of the concept of "empire" to dovetail with Spain's emerging nationalism.
Cánovas made clear in an address to the University of Madrid in 1882 his view of the Spanish nation as based on shared cultural and linguistic elements – on both sides of the Atlantic – that tied Spain's territories together. Cánovas saw Spanish imperialism as markedly different in its methods and purposes of colonization from those of rival empires like the British or French. Spaniards regarded the spreading of civilization and Christianity as Spain's major objective and contribution to the New World; the concept of cultural unity bestowed special significance on Cuba, Spanish for four hundred years, was viewed as an integral part of the Spanish nation. The focus on preserving the empire would have negative consequences for Spain's national pride in the aftermath of the Spanish–American War. In 1823, the fifth American President James Monroe enunciated the Monroe Doctrine, which stated that the United States would not tolerate further efforts by European governments to retake or expand their colonial holdings in the Americas or to interfere with the newly independent states in the hemisphere.
S. would respect the status of the existing European colonies. Before the American Civil War, Southern interests attempted to have the United States purchase Cuba and convert it into a new slave territory; the pro-slavery element proposed the Ostend Manifesto proposal of 1854. It was rejected by anti-slavery forces. After the American Civil War and Cuba's Ten Years' War, U. S. businessmen began monopolizing the devalued sugar markets in Cuba. In 1894, 90% of Cuba's total exports went to the United States, which provided 40% of Cuba's imports. Cuba's total exports to the U. S. were twelve times larger than the export to her mother country, Spain. U. S. business interests indicated that while Spain still held political authority over Cuba, economic authority in Cuba, acting-authority, was shifting to the US. The U. S. became interested in a trans-isthmus canal either in Nicaragua, or in Panama, where the Panama Canal would be built, realized the need for naval protection. Captain Alfred Thayer Mahan was an influential theorist.
S. built a p
United States
The United States of America known as the United States or America, is a country composed of 50 states, a federal district, five major self-governing territories, various possessions. At 3.8 million square miles, the United States is the world's third or fourth largest country by total area and is smaller than the entire continent of Europe's 3.9 million square miles. With a population of over 327 million people, the U. S. is the third most populous country. The capital is Washington, D. C. and the largest city by population is New York City. Forty-eight states and the capital's federal district are contiguous 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 and across the Bering Strait from Russia to the west. The State of Hawaii is an archipelago in the mid-Pacific Ocean; the U. S. territories are scattered about the Pacific Ocean and the Caribbean Sea, stretching across nine official time zones. The diverse geography and wildlife of the United States make it one of the world's 17 megadiverse countries.
Paleo-Indians migrated from Siberia to the North American mainland at least 12,000 years ago. European colonization began in the 16th century; the United States emerged from the thirteen British colonies established along the East Coast. Numerous disputes between Great Britain and the colonies following the French and Indian War led to the American Revolution, which began in 1775, the subsequent Declaration of Independence in 1776; the war ended in 1783 with the United States becoming the first country to gain independence from a European power. The current constitution was adopted in 1788, with the first ten amendments, collectively named the Bill of Rights, being ratified in 1791 to guarantee many fundamental civil liberties; the United States embarked on a vigorous expansion across North America throughout the 19th century, acquiring new territories, displacing Native American tribes, admitting new states until it spanned the continent by 1848. During the second half of the 19th century, the Civil War led to the abolition of slavery.
By the end of the century, the United States had extended into the Pacific Ocean, its economy, driven in large part by the Industrial Revolution, began to soar. The Spanish–American War and World War I confirmed the country's status as a global military power; the United States emerged from World War II as a global superpower, the first country to develop nuclear weapons, the only country to use them in warfare, a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council. Sweeping civil rights legislation, notably the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and the Fair Housing Act of 1968, outlawed discrimination based on race or color. During the Cold War, the United States and the Soviet Union competed in the Space Race, culminating with the 1969 U. S. Moon landing; the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 left the United States as the world's sole superpower. The United States is the world's oldest surviving federation, it is a representative democracy.
The United States is a founding member of the United Nations, World Bank, International Monetary Fund, Organization of American States, other international organizations. The United States is a developed country, with the world's largest economy by nominal GDP and second-largest economy by PPP, accounting for a quarter of global GDP; the U. S. economy is post-industrial, characterized by the dominance of services and knowledge-based activities, although the manufacturing sector remains the second-largest in the world. The United States is the world's largest importer and the second largest exporter of goods, by value. Although its population is only 4.3% of the world total, the U. S. holds 31% of the total wealth in the world, the largest share of global wealth concentrated in a single country. Despite wide income and wealth disparities, the United States continues to rank high in measures of socioeconomic performance, including average wage, human development, per capita GDP, worker productivity.
The United States is the foremost military power in the world, making up a third of global military spending, is a leading political and scientific force internationally. In 1507, the German cartographer Martin Waldseemüller produced a world map on which he named the lands of the Western Hemisphere America in honor of the Italian explorer and cartographer Amerigo Vespucci; the first documentary evidence of the phrase "United States of America" is from a letter dated January 2, 1776, written by Stephen Moylan, Esq. to George Washington's aide-de-camp and Muster-Master General of the Continental Army, Lt. Col. Joseph Reed. Moylan expressed his wish to go "with full and ample powers from the United States of America to Spain" to seek assistance in the revolutionary war effort; the first known publication of the phrase "United States of America" was in an anonymous essay in The Virginia Gazette newspaper in Williamsburg, Virginia, on April 6, 1776. The second draft of the Articles of Confederation, prepared by John Dickinson and completed by June 17, 1776, at the latest, declared "The name of this Confederation shall be the'United States of America'".
The final version of the Articles sent to the states for ratification in late 1777 contains the sentence "The Stile of this Confederacy shall be'The United States of America'". In June 1776, Thomas Jefferson wrote the phrase "UNITED STATES OF AMERICA" in all capitalized letters in the headline of his "original Rough draught" of the Declaration of Independence; this draft of the document did not surface unti
Cataño, Puerto Rico
Cataño is a municipality located on the northern coast of Puerto Rico, bordering the Atlantic Ocean and adjacent to the north and east by San Juan. Cataño is spread over Cataño Pueblo, it is part of the San Juan-Caguas-Guaynabo Metropolitan Statistical Area. Hernando de Cataño was chosen to offer his medical services in Puerto Rico during Francisco Bahamonde de Lugo's tenure as Governor of Puerto Rico, he was one of the first physicians who arrived in Puerto Rico during its colonization and, upon accepting his position, received as payment a piece of land across the San Juan islet. From that time, the region started to be recognized by the name of its original owner; as people started establishing in the area, Cataño was declared as a barrio of Bayamón. However, there wasn't much success in the town's development during these years due to its swamp-like terrain. Still, around 1690, a hermitage was established to allow residents to receive religious services without having to travel to Bayamón.
In the middle of the 19th century, a transport company was founded to facilitate the transportation of merchandise and passengers through the San Juan Bay. This spurred a growth in the population of Cataño, transforming it into one of the most prosperous barrios of Bayamón. Still, attempts to separate themselves from Bayamón in 1839 were unsuccessful. On June 26, 1893, Bishop Antonio Puig y Montserrat separated the barrios of Cataño, Palo Seco, Palmas from Bayamón's parish and established an independent parish for the residents of these sectors. In 1927, Cataño was declared a municipality with the name "Hato de Palmas de Cataño", shortened to Cataño. Politics played a crucial part in the foundation of the town, since Bayamón was controlled by an administration with opposing ideologies to those of the island's Legislature; the separation of Cataño from Bayamón was a strategy to weaken that opposition. With only five square miles of territory, Cataño is the smallest municipality in Puerto Rico.
It is less than half the size of the next-smallest in area. The flag consists of nine horizontal stripes: five white stripes. A white and green band traverses diagonally the drape in all its extension, from the upper hoist to the lower fly; the green color represents the palm trees that are present in the coat of arms. The flag was adopted during José Alvarez Brunet tenure as mayor on September 5, 1974; the coat of arms of Cataño consists of nine horizontal stripes of same the width: four blue and five silver. The colors of the coat and the flag represent the coat of arms of the family of Don Hernando de Cataño, an Hidalgo to whom the town owes its name; the color silver represents the color blue was used by hidalgos on their armories. It symbolizes serenity. On top of the coat of arms, there's a crown with three towers distinct of others coat of arms; the coat itself is surrounded by two green palm trees, an allusion to one of the original names of the town: Hato de las Palmas de Cataño. Aside of its name, derived from its original owner, Cataño has several nicknames.
The city is known as "La Antesala de la Capital" because of its location across the bay from the capital-city of San Juan. In the 1960s, the residents of Cataño jokingly called it "Fanguito Town" because of its many muddy streets. Cataño consists of flat plains that belong to the Northern region of Puerto Rico, its northern shore falls on the San Juan Bay of the Atlantic Ocean. Located in Cataño are a number of rivers, streams and unnamed creeks, channels including: Caño La Malaria Río de Bayamón Río Hondo Cataño is divided into two districts: Cataño barrio-pueblo, Palmas; the Palmas district includes the following communities: One of the main tourist attractions in Cataño is the boardwalk or "Tablado" that commands a view of the San Juan Bay, including views of Fort San Felipe del Morro on the opposing side. There are several monuments and sculptures along the boardwalk, including a monument to Taíno culture called "India Taína"; the Bacardi Distillery offers tours of its facilities to visitors that want to see and learn about the rum manufacturing industry in the island and the Caribbean.
The town gained notoriety in 1998, when Mayor Edwin Rivera Sierra traveled to Russia and acquired a huge statue of Christopher Columbus called "Birth of the New World". The statue Columbus by Tsereteli was designed by artist Zurab Tsereteli and would measure 350 feet when erected. Tsereteli had offered the statue to the United States as a gift in 1992 with the intention to use it for the celebrations of the 500th year of its voyage. However, the United States rejected it; the transportation of the statue from Russia to Cataño cost $2.4 million. After arriving on the island, the 2,700 bronze pieces of the statue were scattered in a terrain awaiting for funds for the project, but Rivera Sierra was unable to garner enough public support and funding for it; the statue resides in Arecibo. Cataño has a number of professional sports teams, there are several important sports facilities located in the town, including the Perucho Cepeda Stadium, the Pedro Rodríguez Gaya Boxing Coliseum, the Cosme Beitía Salamo Coliseum.
Due to its location, Cataño has always played an important role as a port to the island. Fishing has been a main source of economy for centuries. Bacardi, one of the largest rum manufacturers of the world, has a distillery in Ca
