Texas Revolution
The Texas Revolution was a rebellion of colonists from the United States and Tejanos in putting up armed resistance to the centralist government of Mexico. While the uprising was part of a larger one that included other provinces opposed to the regime of President Antonio López de Santa Anna, the Mexican government believed the United States had instigated the Texas insurrection with the goal of annexation; the Mexican Congress passed the Tornel Decree, declaring that any foreigners fighting against Mexican troops "will be deemed pirates and dealt with as such, being citizens of no nation presently at war with the Republic and fighting under no recognized flag." Only the province of Texas succeeded in breaking with Mexico, establishing the Republic of Texas, being annexed by the United States. The revolution began in October 1835, after a decade of political and cultural clashes between the Mexican government and the large population of American settlers in Texas; the Mexican government had become centralized and the rights of its citizens had become curtailed regarding immigration from the United States.
Colonists and Tejanos disagreed on whether the ultimate goal was independence or a return to the Mexican Constitution of 1824. While delegates at the Consultation debated the war's motives, Texians and a flood of volunteers from the United States defeated the small garrisons of Mexican soldiers by mid-December 1835; the Consultation declined to declare independence and installed an interim government, whose infighting led to political paralysis and a dearth of effective governance in Texas. An ill-conceived proposal to invade Matamoros siphoned much-needed volunteers and provisions from the fledgling Texian Army. In March 1836, a second political convention declared independence and appointed leadership for the new Republic of Texas. Determined to avenge Mexico's honor, Santa Anna vowed to retake Texas, his Army of Operations entered Texas in mid-February 1836 and found the Texians unprepared. Mexican General José de Urrea led a contingent of troops on the Goliad Campaign up the Texas coast, defeating all Texian troops in his path and executing most of those who surrendered.
Santa Anna led a larger force to San Antonio de Béxar, where his troops defeated the Texian garrison in the Battle of the Alamo, killing all of the defenders. A newly created Texian army under the command of Sam Houston was on the move, while terrified civilians fled with the army, in a melee known as the Runaway Scrape. On March 31, Houston paused his men at Groce's Landing on the Brazos River, for the next two weeks, the Texians received rigorous military training. Becoming complacent and underestimating the strength of his foes, Santa Anna further subdivided his troops. On April 21, Houston's army staged a surprise assault on Santa Anna and his vanguard force at the Battle of San Jacinto; the Mexican troops were routed, vengeful Texians executed many who tried to surrender. Santa Anna was taken hostage. Mexico refused to recognize the Republic of Texas, intermittent conflicts between the two countries continued into the 1840s; the annexation of Texas as the 28th state of the United States, in 1845, led directly to the Mexican–American War.
After a failed attempt by France to colonize Texas in the late 17th century, Spain developed a plan to settle the region. On its southern edge, along the Medina and Nueces Rivers, Spanish Texas was bordered by the province of Coahuila. On the east, Texas bordered Louisiana. Following the Louisiana Purchase of 1803, the United States claimed the land west of the Sabine River, all the way to the Rio Grande. From 1812 to 1813 anti-Spanish republicans and U. S. filibusters rebelled against the Spanish Empire in what is known today as the Gutiérrez–Magee Expedition during the Mexican War of Independence. They won battles in the beginning and captured many Texas cities from the Spanish that led to a declaration of independence of the state of Texas as part of the Mexican Republic on April 17, 1813; the new Texas government and army met their doom in the Battle of Medina in August 1813, 20 miles south of San Antonio, where 1,300 of the 1,400 rebel army were killed in battle or executed shortly afterwards by royalist soldiers.
It was the deadliest single battle in Texas history. 300 republican government officials in San Antonio were captured and executed by the Spanish royalists shortly after the battle. What is significant is a Spanish royalist lieutenant named Antonio López de Santa Anna fought in this battle and followed his superiors' orders to take no prisoners. Another interesting note is two founding fathers of the Republic of Texas and future signers of the Texas Declaration of Independence in 1836, José Antonio Navarro and José Francisco Ruiz, took part in the Gutiérrez–Magee Expedition. Although the United States renounced that claim as part of the Transcontinental Treaty with Spain in 1819, many Americans continued to believe that Texas should belong to their nation, over the next decade the United States made several offers to purchase the region. Following the Mexican War of Independence, Texas became part of Mexico. Under the Constitution of 1824, which defined the country as a federal republic, the provinces of Texas and Coahuila were combined to become the state Coahuila y Tejas.
Texas was granted only a single seat in the state legislature, which met in Saltillo, hundreds of miles away. After months of grumbling by Tejanos outraged at the loss of their political autonomy, state officials agreed to make Tex
Benny Goodman
Benjamin David Goodman was an American jazz clarinetist and bandleader known as the "King of Swing". In the mid-1930s, Goodman led one of the most popular musical groups in the United States, his concert at Carnegie Hall in New York City on January 16, 1938 is described by critic Bruce Eder as "the single most important jazz or popular music concert in history: jazz's'coming out' party to the world of'respectable' music."Goodman's bands started the careers of many jazz musicians. During an era of racial segregation, he led one of the first integrated jazz groups, he performed nearly to the end of his life. Goodman was the ninth of twelve children born to poor Jewish emigrants from the Russian Empire, his father, David Goodman, came to America in 1892 from Warsaw in partitioned Poland and became a tailor. His mother, Dora Grisinsky, came from Kovno, they met in Baltimore and moved to Chicago before Goodman's birth. With little income and a large family, they moved to the Maxwell Street neighborhood, an overcrowded slum near railroad yards and factories, populated by German, Italian, Polish and Jewish immigrants.
Money was a constant problem. On Sundays, his father took the children to free band concerts in Douglas Park, the first time Goodman experienced live professional performances. To give his children some skills and an appreciation for music, his father enrolled ten-year-old Goodman and two of his brothers in music lessons at the Kehelah Jacob Synagogue. During the next year Goodman joined the boys club band at Hull House, where he received lessons from director James Sylvester. By joining the band, he was entitled to spend two weeks at a summer camp near Chicago, it was the only time. He received two years of instruction from classically trained clarinetist Franz Schoepp; when he was 17, his father was killed by a passing car after stepping off a streetcar. His father's death was "the saddest thing that happened in our family", Goodman said, he attended Lewis Institute in 1924 as a high-school sophomore and played clarinet in a dance hall band. His early influences were New Orleans jazz clarinetists who worked in Chicago, such as Jimmie Noone, Johnny Dodds, Leon Roppolo.
He learned becoming a strong player at an early age, soon playing in bands. He made his professional debut in 1921 at the Central Park Theater on the West Side of Chicago, he entered Harrison Technical High School in Chicago in 1922. At fourteen he became a member of the musicians' union and worked in a band featuring Bix Beiderbecke. Two years he joined the Ben Pollack Orchestra and made his first recordings in 1926. Goodman moved to New York City and became a session musician for radio, Broadway musicals, in studios. In addition to clarinet, he sometimes played alto baritone saxophone. In a Victor recording session on March 21, 1928, he played alongside Glenn Miller, Tommy Dorsey, Joe Venuti in the All-Star Orchestra directed by Nathaniel Shilkret, he played with the bands of Red Nichols, Ben Selvin, Ted Lewis, Isham Jones and recorded for Brunswick under the name Benny Goodman's Boys, a band that featured Glenn Miller. In 1928, Goodman and Miller wrote "Room 1411", released as a Brunswick 78.
He reached the charts for the first time when he recorded "He's Not Worth Your Tears" with a vocal by Scrappy Lambert for Melotone. After signing with Columbia in 1934, he had top ten hits with "Ain't Cha Glad?" and "I Ain't Lazy, I'm Just Dreamin'" sung by Jack Teagarden, "Ol' Pappy" sung by Mildred Bailey, "Riffin' the Scotch" sung by Billie Holiday. An invitation to play at the Billy Rose Music Hall led to his creation of an orchestra for the four-month engagement; the orchestra recorded "Moonglow", which became a number one hit and was followed by the Top Ten hits "Take My Word" and "Bugle Call Rag". NBC hired for Goodman for the radio program Let's Dance. John Hammond asked Fletcher Henderson if he wanted to write arrangements for Goodman, Henderson agreed. During the Depression, Henderson disbanded his orchestra. Goodman hired Henderson's band members to teach his musicians. Goodman's band was one of three to perform on Let's Dance, playing arrangements by Henderson along with hits such as "Get Happy" and "Limehouse Blues" by Spud Murphy.
Goodman's portion of the program was broadcast too late at night to attract a large audience on the east coast. He and his band remained on Let's Dance until May of that year when a strike by employees of the series' sponsor, forced the cancellation of the radio show. An engagement was booked at Manhattan's Roosevelt Grill filling in for Guy Lombardo, but the audience expected "sweet" music and Goodman's band was unsuccessful. Goodman spent six months performing on Let's Dance, during that time he recorded six more Top Ten hits for Columbia. On July 31, 1935, "King Porter Stomp" was released with "Sometimes I'm Happy" on the B-side, both arranged by Henderson and recorded on July 1. In Pittsburgh at the Stanley Theater some members of the audience danced in the aisles, but these arrangements had little impact on the tour until August 19 at McFadden's Ballroom in Oakland, California. Goodman and his band, which included Bunny Berrigan, drummer Gene Krupa, singer Helen Ward were met by a large crowd of young dancers who cheered the music they had heard on Let's Dance.
Herb Caen wrote, "from the first note, the place was in an uproar." One night at Pismo Beach, the show was a flop, the band thought the overwhelming reception in Oakland had been a fluke. The next night, August 21, 1935, at the Palomar Ballroom in Los A
2010 United States Census
The 2010 United States Census is the twenty-third and most recent United States national census. National Census Day, the reference day used for the census, was April 1, 2010; the census was taken via mail-in citizen self-reporting, with enumerators serving to spot-check randomly selected neighborhoods and communities. As part of a drive to increase the count's accuracy, 635,000 temporary enumerators were hired; the population of the United States was counted as 308,745,538, a 9.7% increase from the 2000 Census. This was the first census in which all states recorded a population of over half a million, as well as the first in which all 100 largest cities recorded populations of over 200,000; as required by the United States Constitution, the U. S. census has been conducted every 10 years since 1790. The 2000 U. S. Census was the previous census completed. Participation in the U. S. Census is required by law in Title 13 of the United States Code. On January 25, 2010, Census Bureau Director Robert Groves inaugurated the 2010 Census enumeration by counting World War II veteran Clifton Jackson, a resident of Noorvik, Alaska.
More than 120 million census forms were delivered by the U. S. Post Office beginning March 15, 2010; the number of forms mailed out or hand-delivered by the Census Bureau was 134 million on April 1, 2010. Although the questionnaire used April 1, 2010 as the reference date as to where a person was living, an insert dated March 15, 2010 included the following printed in bold type: "Please complete and mail back the enclosed census form today." The 2010 Census national mail participation rate was 74%. From April through July 2010, census takers visited households that did not return a form, an operation called "non-response follow-up". In December 2010, the U. S. Census Bureau delivered population information to the U. S. President for apportionment, in March 2011, complete redistricting data was delivered to states. Identifiable information will be available in 2082; the Census Bureau did not use a long form for the 2010 Census. In several previous censuses, one in six households received this long form, which asked for detailed social and economic information.
The 2010 Census used only a short form asking ten basic questions: How many people were living or staying in this house, apartment, or mobile home on April 1, 2010? Were there any additional people staying here on April 1, 2010 that you did not include in Question 1? Mark all that apply: Is this house, apartment, or mobile home – What is your telephone number? What is Person 1's name? What is Person 1's sex? What is Person 1's age and Person 1's date of birth? Is Person 1 of Hispanic, Latino, or Spanish origin? What is Person 1's race? Does Person 1 sometimes live or stay somewhere else? The form included space to repeat all of these questions for up to twelve residents total. In contrast to the 2000 census, an Internet response option was not offered, nor was the form available for download. Detailed socioeconomic information collected during past censuses will continue to be collected through the American Community Survey; the survey provides data about communities in the United States on a 1-year or 3-year cycle, depending on the size of the community, rather than once every 10 years.
A small percentage of the population on a rotating basis will receive the survey each year, no household will receive it more than once every five years. In June 2009, the U. S. Census Bureau announced. However, the final form did not contain a separate "same-sex married couple" option; when noting the relationship between household members, same-sex couples who are married could mark their spouses as being "Husband or wife", the same response given by opposite-sex married couples. An "unmarried partner" option was available for couples; the 2010 census cost $13 billion $42 per capita. Operational costs were $5.4 billion under the $7 billion budget. In December 2010 the Government Accountability Office noted that the cost of conducting the census has doubled each decade since 1970. In a detailed 2004 report to Congress, the GAO called on the Census Bureau to address cost and design issues, at that time, had estimated the 2010 Census cost to be $11 billion. In August 2010, Commerce Secretary Gary Locke announced that the census operational costs came in under budget.
Locke credited the management practices of Census Bureau director Robert Groves, citing in particular the decision to buy additional advertising in locations where responses lagged, which improved the overall response rate. The agency has begun to rely more on questioning neighbors or other reliable third parties when a person could not be reached at home, which reduced the cost of follow-up visits. Census data for about 22% of U. S. househol
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
Harris County, Texas
Harris County is a county located in the U. S. state of Texas, located in the southeastern part of the state near Galveston Bay. As of the 2010 Census, the population was 4,092,459, making it the most populous county in Texas and the third most populous county in the United States, its county seat is the largest city in Texas and fourth largest city in the United States. The county was founded in 1836 and organized in 1837, it is named for John Richardson Harris, who founded the town of Harrisburg on Buffalo Bayou in 1826. According to a July 2017 Census estimate, Harris County's population had grown to 4,652,980, comprising over 16 percent of Texas's population. Harris County is included in the nine-county Houston–The Woodlands–Sugar Land metropolitan statistical area, the fifth most populous metropolitan area in the United States. Human remains date habitation to about 4,000 BCE. Other evidence of humans in the area dates from about 1400 BCE, 1 CE, in the first millenium; the region became uninhabited from 1 AD until European contact.
On the other hand, little European activity predates 1821. Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca may have visited the area in 1529. French traders recorded passing through in the 18th century. Spaniards attempted to establish a fort in the area around the same time, but did not persist for long; the first recorded European settlers in Harris County arrived in 1822. Their schooner ran aground on the Red Fish Bar; some of those passengers traveled further up the bay system, but it is not known whether they settled up Buffalo Bayou or the San Jacinto River. One of these passengers, a Mr. Ryder, settled at what is now known as Texas. In 1822, John Iiams settled his family at Cedar Point after sailing from Berwick’s Bay, Louisiana. Dr. Johnson Hunter arrived just after Iiams, he wrecked his boat near Galveston. He was a grantee of land there. Nathaniel Lynch operated a ferry. In 1824, the land empresario, Stephen F. Austin convened at the house of William Scott for the purpose of conveying titles for Mexican headrights.
He was joined by the land commissioner, Baron von Bastrop, Austin’s secretary, Samuel May Williams. About thirty families gained legal titles to land in what would be known as Harris County. A few immigrants settled on Buffalo Bayou in these early years, including Moses Callahan, Ezekial Thomas, the Vince brothers. Nicolas Clopper arrived in the Galveston Bay area from Ohio in the 1820s, he attempted to develop Buffalo Bayou as a trading conduit for the Brazos River valley. He acquired land at Morgan’s Point in 1826. John Richardson Harris, for whom the county was named, arrived in 1824. Harris had moved his family to Sainte Genevieve, Missouri Territory, where they had been residing until the early 1820s. Harris was granted a league of land at Buffalo Bayou, he platted the town of Harrisburg in 1826, while he established a trading post and a grist mill there. He ran boats transporting goods between New Orleans and Harrisburg until his death in the fall of 1829; the First Congress of the Republic of Texas established Harrisburg County on December 22, 1836.
The original county boundaries included Galveston Island, but were redrawn to its current configuration in May 1838. The area has had a number of severe weather events, such as: 1900 Galveston Hurricane Hurricane Carla Hurricane Alicia Tropical Storm Allison Hurricane Rita Tropical Storm Erin Hurricane Ike Hurricane Harvey According to the U. S. Census Bureau, the county has a total area of 1,777 square miles, of which 1,703 square miles is land and 74 square miles is covered by water. Both its total area and land area are larger than the state of Rhode Island. Montgomery County Liberty County Chambers County Galveston County Brazoria County Fort Bend County Waller County As of the 2015 Texas Population Estimate Program, the population of the county was 4,530,268, non-Hispanic whites 1,323,437. Black Americans 817,096. Other non-Hispanic 395,206. Hispanics and Latinos 1,994,529; as of the 2010 Census, the population of the county was 4,092,459, White Americans made up 56.6% of Harris County's population.
Black Americans made up 25.9% of the population. Native Americans made up 0.7% of Harris County's population. Asian Americans made up 6.2% of the population. Pacific Islander Americans made up just 0.1% of the population. Individuals from other races made up 14.3% of the population. Hispanics and Latinos made up 40.8% of Harris County's population. As of the 2010 census, there were about 6.2 same-sex couples per 1,000 households in the county. As of the census of 2000, 3,400,578 people, 1,205,516 households, 834,217 families resided in the county, making it the largest county by population in Texas; the population density was 1,967 people per square mile. The 1,298,130 housing units averaged 751 per square mile; the racial makeup of the county was 58.7% White, 18.5% Black or African American, 0.5% Native American, 5.1% Asian, 0.1% Pacific Islander, 14.2% from other races, 3.0% from two or more races. About 32.9% of the population were Hispanic or Latino of any race. About 63.8 % spoke only English at home, while 28.8 % spoke 1.6 % Vietnamese.
In 2000, o
Guy Lombardo
Gaetano Alberto "Guy" Lombardo was a Canadian-American bandleader and violinist. Lombardo formed the Royal Canadians in 1924 with his brothers Carmen and Victor, other musicians from his hometown, they billed themselves as creating "the sweetest music this side of Heaven". The Lombardos are believed to have sold between 100 and 300 million records during their lifetimes, many featuring the band's lead singer, Kenny Gardner. Lombardo was born in Ontario, to Italian immigrants Gaetano Alberto and Angelina Lombardo, his father, who had worked as a tailor, was an amateur singer with a baritone voice and had four of his five sons learn to play instruments so they could accompany him. Lombardo and his brothers formed their first orchestra while still in grammar school and rehearsed in the back of their father's tailor shop. Lombardo first performed in public with his brother Carmen at a church lawn party in London in 1914, his first recording session took place where trumpeter Bix Beiderbecke made his legendary recordings—in Richmond, Indiana, at the Gennett Studios—both during early 1924.
After that solitary Gennett session, they recorded two sessions for Brunswick, a rejected session in Cleveland in late 1926 and an issued session for Vocalion in early 1927. The band signed to Columbia and recorded prolifically between 1927 and 1931. In early 1932, they signed to Brunswick and continued their success through 1934 when they signed to Decca, they signed to Victor in 1935 and stayed until the middle of 1938 when again they signed to Decca. In 1938, Lombardo became a naturalized citizen of the United States. Although Lombardo's "sweet" big-band music was viewed by some in the jazz and big-band community of the day as "boring, mainstream pap", trumpeter Louis Armstrong named Lombardo's band his favorite orchestra. Lombardo is remembered for a half-century of New Year's Eve big band remotes, first on radio on television, his orchestra played at the Roosevelt Grill in the Roosevelt Hotel in New York City from 1929 to 1959, from until 1976 at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel. Live broadcasts of their performances were a large part of New Year's celebrations across North America.
Because of this popularity, Lombardo was called "Mr. New Year's Eve"; the band's first New Year's Eve radio broadcast was in 1928. On December 31, 1956, the Lombardo band did their first New Year's TV special on CBS. Although CBS carried most of the Lombardo New Year's specials, there were a few years in the late 1960s and early 1970s when the special was syndicated live to individual TV stations instead of broadcast on a network. By the middle 1970s, the Lombardo TV show was facing competition for younger viewers, from Dick Clark's New Year's Rockin' Eve, but Lombardo remained popular among viewers older ones. After Lombardo's death, the band's New Year's specials continued for two more years on CBS; the Royal Canadians' recording of the traditional song "Auld Lang Syne" still plays as the first song of the new year in Times Square. Beginning June 14, 1953, Guy Lombardo and his orchestra had Guy Lombardo Time, the summer replacement for Jack Benny's radio program. In 1954, Lombardo hosted a half hour syndicated series called The Guy Lombardo Show, in 1956 Lombardo hosted a show on CBS for three months called Guy Lombardo's Diamond Jubilee.
Lombardo and his orchestra were part of the 1934 film Many Happy Returns. Lombardo was an important figure in hydroplane speedboat racing, winning the Gold Cup in 1946 in his record-breaking speedboat, Tempo VI, designed and built by John L. Hacker, he went on to win the Ford Memorial competition in 1948 and the President's Cup and the Silver Cup in 1952. From 1946 to 1949, he was the reigning US national champion. Before his retirement from the sport in the late 1950s, he had won every trophy in the field. In 1959 Lombardo was attempting a run on the absolute water speed record with the jet engine powered Tempo Alcoa when it was destroyed on a radio controlled test run doing over 250 miles per hour. After the destruction of the Tempo Alcoa, Lombardo retired from hydroplane racing. In 2002 he was inducted into the Canadian Motorsport Hall of Fame for his accomplishments. Beginning in 1958, Lombardo endorsed the Guy Lombardo Royal Fleet, a line of fiberglass boats manufactured and sold by the United States Boat Corporation of Newark, New Jersey, a division of U.
S. Pools Corporation; the boats were manufactured under license from Skagit Plastics of Washington. The endeavor ended in 1961 with the closure of Skagit Plastics. In his years, Lombardo lived in Freeport, Long Island, New York where he kept Tempo, Tempo VI, Tempo VII, he invested in a nearby seafood restaurant called "Liota's East Point House" that became "Guy Lombardo's East Point House". Lombardo became promoter and musical director of Jones Beach Marine Theater; the venue was built with him in mind by a fan of Lombardo. One of Lombardo's productions at Jones Beach was Paradise Island in 1961, his final production there was the 1977 staging of Finian's Rainbow with Christopher Hewett in the title role. On November 5, 1977, Lombardo suffered a fatal heart attack. Another source says he died "of a lung ailment." His wife was at his bedside. Victor Lombardo t
Baytown, Texas
Baytown is a city within Harris County and in Chambers County in the Gulf Coast region of the U. S. state of Texas. Located within the Houston–The Woodlands–Sugar Land metropolitan area, it lies on the northern side of the Galveston Bay complex near the outlets of the San Jacinto River and Buffalo Bayou, it is the sixth-largest city within this metropolitan area. Major highways serving the city include State Highway 146 and Interstate 10; as of 2010, Baytown had a population of 71,802, it had an estimated population of 75,992 in 2016. As of 2018 Baytown had an estimated population of 85,000 people; the area of Baytown began to be settled as early as 1822. One of its earliest residents was Nathaniel Lynch, who set up a ferry crossing at the junction of the San Jacinto River and Buffalo Bayou; the ferry service that he started is still in operation today, now known as the Lynchburg Ferry. Other early residents of Baytown include William Scott, one of Stephen F. Austin's Old Three Hundred, Ashbel Smith, who owned a plantation in the area.
One of Baytown's first babies born was Gertrude Gardner. The city now known as Baytown was three separate towns; the first of these was Goose Creek, named for the bayou of the same name where Canada geese wintered and whose name is still reflected in the area's Goose Creek school district, whose establishment dates back to before 1850. With the discovery of the Goose Creek Oil Field, the rival communities of Pelly in the late 1910s, East Baytown in the early 1920s, developed as early boomtowns; the "East" in East Baytown was dropped because it was west of Goose Creek. Serious talk of merging the three cities began shortly after World War I, but the community of Baytown was opposed to this idea. However, in 1947, the three cities agreed to consolidate; the citizens settled on the name Baytown for the new combined city. Baytown as it is known today was founded January 24, 1948. In 1916, the Humble Oil and Refining Company, founded by one-time Texas governor Ross S. Sterling and his associates, in developing the Goose Creek Oil Field, built the first offshore drilling operation in Texas and the second in the United States.
The company built the Baytown Refinery, which would become one of the largest Exxon refineries in the world. Since many other refineries have been built in the area. Exxon-Mobil now runs over 10 plants in the area. Following the discovery of oil nearby, the population of Baytown and the Tri-Cities boomed. Many immigrants arrived in Baytown, among them a number of Jewish families who founded a synagogue, K’nesseth Israel, in 1930. Steel manufacturing in Baytown began in 1970 when United States Steel opened the Texas Works near the city; the plant was closed in July 1986, due to a poor economic climate and the decline of American steel in the 1980s. The mill was purchased by Jindal Steel and now operates as JSW Steel USA, Inc. Baytown is located at the mouth of the San Jacinto River on Galveston Bay, 26 miles by road east of Houston. According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of 36.5 square miles, of which 35.4 square miles is land and 1.1 square miles, 2.92%, is covered by water.
Baytown is located on the Gulf coastal plain, its vegetation is classified as temperate grassland and marshes. The municipalities have been built on reclaimed marshes and prairies, which are all still visible in undeveloped parts of the Bay Area. Baytown is bordered by water on three sides. Along the south and west is Galveston Bay. On the east is Cedar Bayou; the city is bordered along the north by Interstate 10. Portions of the city to the east of Cedar Bayou lie in Chambers County. Flatness of the local terrain and proximity to the bay have made flooding a recurring problem for the area. Baytown and surrounding communities once relied on groundwater for its needs, but severe land subsidence has forced much the city to turn to ground-level water sources; the land beneath Baytown consists of layers of clay to great depths. These layers were created by millennia of river-borne sediments which incorporated plant and animal matter, creating the petroleum deposits for which the Gulf Coast is now known.
The region around the city has numerous faults, many considered active, but none has produced significant earthquakes in recorded history. These faults tend to move at a smooth rate in what is termed "fault creep", which reduces the risk of an earthquake; the one significant earthquake, reported in the area was the result of an underground water and petroleum extraction. Baytown's climate is classified as humid subtropical. Spring supercell thunderstorms sometimes create tornadoes. Prevailing winds from the south and southeast bring heat from the deserts of Mexico and moisture from the Gulf of Mexico. Summer temperatures have highs near 90 °F though higher temperatures are not uncommon; the city's proximity to the bay and the winds that it generates moderate the area's temperatures and ease the effects of the humidity, creating a more pleasant climate than inland communities like Houston. Winters in the area are temperate with typical January high of 61 °F and lows are near 42 °F. Snowfall is rare.
Annual rainfall averages exceed 53 inches. Excessive ozone levels can occur due to industrial activities; the industries located along the ship channel and the bay are a major cause of the pollution. Hurricanes are a substantial concern during the fall season. Though Galveston Island and the Bolivar Peninsula prov