Massachusetts has 14 counties. Massachusetts abolished eight of its fourteen county governments between 1997 and 2000, but the counties in the southeastern portion of the state retain county-level local government or, in one case, combined county/town government. Vestigial judicial and law enforcement districts still follow county boundaries in the counties whose county-level government has been disestablished, the counties are still recognized as geographic entities if not political ones, along with continuing to provide geographical demarcation for National Weather Service weather warnings. Three counties have formed new county regional compacts to serve as a form of regional governance. Mismanagement of Middlesex County's public hospital in the mid-1990s left that county on the brink of insolvency, in 1997 the Massachusetts legislature stepped in by assuming all assets and obligations of the county; the government of Middlesex County was abolished on July 11, 1997. That year, the Franklin County Commission voted itself out of existence.

The law abolishing Middlesex County provided for the elimination of Hampden County and Worcester County on July 1, 1998. This law was amended to abolish Hampshire County on January 1, 1999. Chapter 34B of the Massachusetts General Laws allows other counties either to abolish themselves, or to reorganize as a "regional council of governments", as Hampshire and Franklin Counties have done; the governments of Bristol and Norfolk Counties remain unchanged. Barnstable and Dukes Counties have adopted modern county charters, enabling them to act as efficient regional governments. Dukes County in particular has a strong regional planning agency known as the Martha's Vineyard Commission. Jurisdictional areas for District Attorneys are created by state law and while some follow traditional county boundaries and geographic areas covered are different. Criminal matters in Essex County are handled by the District Attorney for the Eastern District; the districts for the counties of Berkshire, Hampden, Norfolk and Suffolk are the same in geography and nomenclature as the respective counties, the District Attorneys for the Eastern and Northern Districts are known as the Essex County, Worcester County, Middlesex County District Attorneys, respectively.

Eleven other historical counties have existed in Massachusetts, most becoming defunct when their lands were absorbed into the colony of New Hampshire or the state of Maine, both of which were created out of territory claimed by Massachusetts colonists. The oldest counties still in Massachusetts are Essex County, Middlesex County, Suffolk County, created in 1643 with the original Norfolk County, absorbed by New Hampshire and bears no relation to the modern Norfolk County; when these counties were created, they were a part of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, which would remain separate from the Plymouth Colony and that colony's counties until 1691. Hampden County, created in 1812, is the most created county still in Massachusetts, although Penobscot County, Maine bore that distinction until Maine broke off from Massachusetts in 1820; the majority of Massachusetts counties are named in honor of English place names, reflecting Massachusetts' colonial heritage. The term shire town is the statutory term for the Massachusetts town having a county court and administration offices.

County seat is the standard term used in general communications by the Massachusetts government. The Federal Information Processing Standard code, used by the United States government to uniquely identify counties, is provided with each entry. FIPS codes are five-digit numbers; the FIPS code for each county in the table links to census data for that county. Administrative divisions of Massachusetts List of former United States counties Government of Massachusetts – section on local government Historical Data Relating to the Incorporation of and Abolishment of Counties in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, Secretary of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts

Herbert Ebsworth Jones was an English Thoroughbred horse racing jockey. He rode for King Edward VII, in 1909 he rode the first Derby winner owned by a British Monarch, he remains one of only fifteen jockeys to win the British Triple Crown. Son of the jumping trainer Jack Jones, young Herbert was apprenticed to Richard Marsh at the age of ten and rode his first winner in 1896. In 1900, he won the British Triple Crown when he rode Diamond Jubilee to victory in the 2,000 Guineas Stakes, Epsom Derby and St. Leger Stakes, he was the work rider for the temperamental Diamond Jubilee and it was noted that this wayward colt went better for him than for any more established jockey. Diamond Jubilee had rolled on his race rider Mornington Cannon after a gallop just before the 2000 Guineas. Hence the young Jones won the Triple Crown on the Prince of Wales's horse. Among his other Classic victories, he won the 1905 Epsom Oaks, a second Derby in 1909, the 2,000 Guineas on three more occasions. In 1909 at the Epsom Derby on 26 May, Jones rode Minoru to victory at odds of 7/2 in a field of fifteen.

This was the first time. The victory for the "Royal" colt provoked "the wildest scenes of enthusiasm known in England", including a mass rendition of the National Anthem as the King led his horse to the winner's enclosure. In 1913, Jones rode the King's Horse, in the Epsom Derby, he was involved in a collision with Emily Davison, the suffragette, fatally injured. Jones suffered significant injuries himself, including a mild concussion. Fifteen years after the death of Emily Davison, Herbert Jones laid a wreath at the funeral of Emmeline Pankhurst in honour of her and Emily Davison. Jones retired from riding in 1923. In 1951, soon after his wife's death and his onset of depression, he was discovered to have committed suicide after his son found him in a gas-filled kitchen. Biography of Herbert Jones at the National Horseracing Museum

Eric Miller was an American jazz record producer. Born in Cleveland, Miller was raised in Los Angeles, he began his career as a tape archivist for MGM's recording studios in Hollywood. A protégé of Norman Granz, Miller assisted him in launching Pablo Records in 1972, he continued to work with Pablo as a producer and artists-and-repertoire man, after Fantasy acquired the label from Granz in 1987. Miller, a jazz fanatic, began his career in the music business in the mid 1960s working as a tape archivist at MGM’s recording studios in Hollywood. In the late 60’s, he was hired as an assistant by celebrated jazz producer and empresario Norman Granz, founder of Verve Records and promoter of the Jazz at the Philharmonic tours. Miller soon became a close friend and protégé of Granz, working with him on various concert tours and recording projects and helping him launch Pablo Records in 1972. Miller was Pablo’s head of artists & repertoire, oversaw numerous album projects for Pablo, producing new recordings, unreleased sessions for a who’s who of artists including Ella Fitzgerald, Duke Ellington, Oscar Peterson, Art Tatum, Jimmy Smith, John Coltrane, Count Basie, Joe Pass, Billie Holiday, Thelonious Monk, Dizzy Gillespie, Ray Charles, many more.

When Granz sold Pablo to Fantasy Records in 1987, Miller continued to work with the label as a producer and head of artist & repertoire until the early 2000s. Miller’s extensive archive of unreleased jazz master tapes has been used for numerous reissue projects, most Verve’s 2-CD sets The Complete Charlie Parker With Strings and Unheard Bird: The Unissued Takes, he died from a suspected heart attack at home in Los Angeles on February 25, 2017

Liar's poker is an American bar game that combines statistical reasoning with bluffing, is played with the eight digits of the serial number on U. S. dollar bills. The digits are ranked with the 1 as "ace" as the highest value, followed by 0 as "10", down to 2 as the lowest; each player holds one bill, unseen by the other players. The objective is to guess how a particular digit appears among all the bills held by all the players; each guess or bid must be higher in quantity, or equal in quantity but higher in value, than the previous bid. The round ends; the game is played with random bills obtained from the cash register. Each player takes a dollar bill and looks at its serial number without letting any other players see it; the starting player makes an opening bid on how many of a particular digit appears across all serial numbers held by the group. For example, if the first player bids three 6s, he is predicting there are at least three 6s among all the players including himself; the next player can bid a higher number at that level, any number at a higher level, or challenge the bid.

The game continues clockwise around the table until a particular bid is challenged by every other player. If the challenge is correct, the total number of the digit on all the bills is lower than the bid, the bidder loses a dollar to each of the other players. If the challenge is incorrect, the bidder wins a dollar from each player; the game is similar in structure to Liar's dice. In the 1965 film Cat Ballou, the sheriff is confronted playing liar's poker at the barn dance. In the 1972 film "The Getaway", Steve McQueen’s character Doc McCoy challenges Ali MacGraw’s character to a game while looking at a bill, by saying "Five fours". Elliott Gould's and Jim Bouton's characters play a round as friends in the beginning of the 1973 neo noir film, The Long Goodbye. In the 1977 movie Semi-Tough, Burt Reynolds' and Jill Clayburgh's characters play an ongoing game of liar's poker periodically throughout the movie. Characters on the show Quincy M. E. were seen playing Liar's poker. In the WKRP in Cincinnati episode "Herb's Dad", Herb's father, Herb himself, play liar's poker with Johnny and Venus.

In Season 3, episode 8 of Magnum, P. I. "Foiled Again," Magnum and his two friends pass the time by playing liar's poker. In his 1989 book Liar's Poker, Michael Lewis details how Salomon Brothers traders would play liar's poker, he recounts how John Meriwether was once challenged by CEO John Gutfreund to a game of liar's poker for stakes of one million dollars and declined a counter-offer of ten million from Merriwether. A game of liar's poker was played in an episode of the TV series Hustle where one of the main characters plays and loses against two merchant bankers. In The Wire episode Dead Soldiers, Tommy Carcetti and Anthony Gray play a game. In the 2011 movie Hall Pass, the group of characters play a game. Anne O Faulk's novel Holding Out uses the game as a plot point. In John D. MacDonald's novel, A Tan and Sandy Silence, Travis McGee and Meyer play the game to determine who will pay for dinner and drinks. Liar's Poker by Michael Lewis

Ethiopian nationalism or Pan-Ethiopianism asserts that Ethiopians are a nation and promotes the cultural unity of all Ethiopians indiscriminate of constituent ethnic groups. Ethiopian nationalism is a type of civic nationalism in that it is multi-ethnic and promotes diversity. Ethiopian civic nationalism is in contrast to ethno-nationalist supremacy fueled by ethnic federalist policies; the conception of an Ethiopian nation by Ethiopian nationalists is stated to have begun with the Aksumite Kingdom in the 4th century A. D; the Aksumite Kingdom was a predominantly Christian state that at the height of its power controlled what is now the Ethiopian Highlands and the coastal regions of Southern Arabia. The Aksumite Kingdom was responsible for the development of the religious movement that became the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church. However, the expansion of Islam in the 7th century caused the decline of the Aksumite Kingdom, most of the lowland populations converted to Islam, while the highland people remained Christian.

Since the Aksumite people became divided between Christian highlands and Islamic lowlands and tribal tensions and rivalries between the people intensified. The Aksumite society changed into a loose confederation of city-states that maintained the language of Aksum; the establishment of modern Ethiopia was led by the Shawan people Amhara emperors Tewodros II of Gondar, who governed from 1855 to 1868, Yohannis IV,who was from Tigre governed from 1869 to 1889 and managed to expand his authority into Eritrea, Menelik II, who governed from 1889 to 1913 and repelled the Italian invasion of 1896. Ethiopia, unlike the rest of Africa, had never been colonized. Ethiopia was accepted as the first independent African-governed state at the League of Nations in 1922. Ethiopia was occupied by Italy after the Second Italo-Abyssinian War, but it was liberated by the Allies during World War II. After the war, Ethiopia annexed Eritrea. However, ethnic tensions surged between the Amhara and the Eritrean, Oromo and Tigray peoples, each of whom had formed separatist movements dedicated to leaving Amhara-dominated Ethiopia.

After the overthrow of the Ethiopian monarchy by the Derg military junta, the country became aligned with the Soviet Union and Cuba after the United States failed to support it in its military struggle with Somali separatists in the Ogaden region. After the end of military government in Ethiopia in 1993, Eritrea separated from Ethiopia. In March 1896 a definitive battle took place between the forces of colonial Italy, those of the Ethiopian Empire in a town in northern Ethiopia called Adwa; the battle was short but violent with tens of thousands of deaths. At the time Emperor Menelik II of Ethiopia had mobilized the Ethiopian people regardless of class and ethnicities; the mobilization drive would see millions of Ethiopian Citizens march from their towns and cities into the Northern Highlands for the preservation of their African Empire. This battle would end in a decisive victory for Ethiopia, marking the country with a unique legacy of independence in the face of European Aggression; the battle of Adwa is the foundation for Ethiopian Nationalist ideology.

For many Ethiopians, the threat of foreign invasion is the rallying cry for patriotic sacrifices and nationalist ideologues. By the time the battle of Adwa took place all of Africa was dominated by European forces. Ethiopian independence broke the mold of European superiority & provided a beacon of hope for black nations and peoples around the world. For many Ethiopians this moment represents a transitional moment, in which the nation realized its teleological doctrine. While the first war against Italy was a uniting war, the 1934 invasion by Benito Mussolini was divisive. In Observation on the Ethiopian Nation Charles McClellan argues that the Italo-Abyssinian war of 1934 was in fact “as much a civil war as one against foreign aggression.” McClellan argues that the political and factional differences which emerged in Ethiopia prior to the war, weren't resolved by the Italian invasion but instead were amplified. This in the authors opinion led to an era of bitter factionalism which would “define the dynamics of post-war Ethiopian politics.”

Since 1992 hitherto the appointment of Oromo Abiy Ahmed as Prime Minister the TPLF has had complete control of the government leveraging its power to concentrate wealth and development into the Tigray Region. The hegemonic rule of the Tigray people in Ethiopia was in many ways a reaction to the singular rule of Amharas for centuries; the hegemonic rule of a single ethnic group has marginalized many groups within Ethiopia and has led to a cycle of violence and retribution. In the early 1990s the TPLF believed that through an ethnic federalist state system, one in which regions were assigned and divided by ethnic population, they could “reduc the inter-ethnic conflict that has divided Ethiopian society for centuries, they argued they could use political and administrative devolution to promote these objectives without threatening other important objectives, such as economic growth and political stability.”While these region weren't given “extensive sub-national control over technical policies, laws and tax” their creation lent credibility to the different independence and ethnic movements around the country.

For Ethiopian Nationalists, this credibility has emboldened different groups, giving them more cohesion, whilst corroding national unity and notions of Ethiopianism. The increased autonomy of these groups contrasted with the increased repres

The Galician independence movement or the Galician separatist movement is a political movement, derived from Galician nationalism, which supports the independence of Galicia and Galicia estremeira or the unification with Portugal. The first realization was the organized political committee Comité Revoluzonareo Arredista Galego, formed by Fuco Gomez in Cuba in the 1920s, but during the Second Spanish Republic did not have much significance. In Argentina there was an association called Sociedade Nazonalista Pondal, active in the 1930s. In 1931, Galicia declared its independence; the next day, Galicia rejoined Spain. In the 1970s, a sector of the Galician People's Union near of Moncho Reboiras tried to organize a rebel group against Franco following the model of ETA, but ended with the death of Moncho Reboiras. In 1978, a sector of the Galician People's Union was split, constituting first the Galician People's Union-Proletarian Line and the Galician Party of the Proletariat, with secessionist character.

In 1986 the Communist Party of National Liberation, a secessionist splinter of the Galician People's Union, was expelled from the BNG for having supported the candidacy of Herri Batasuna during the Elections to the European Parliament. Beside the Galiza Ceive-OLN and several secessionist groups, they formed the Galician People's Front the following year, the main Galician secessionist organization since then. In that context appeared the Exército Guerrilheiro do Povo Galego Ceive, which carried out 90 terrorist actions in six years, the last one on 13 of September, 1991; as consequence two activists, a civil guard and a girl died. Several dozens of supposed members were arrested. Ten members of Assembleia da Mocidade Independentista and other groups were held in 2005 and two of them were suspected of having placed a bomb in an automatic cash dispenser in Santiago de Compostela; that same year the existence of a group named Resistência Galega, which has claimed responsibility for several bomb attacks, was made public.

The BNG and Anova-Nationalist Brotherhood, the two nationalist/secessionist political parties, have 15 of the 75 seats in the Galician Parliament. Xose Manuel Beiras, politician. Xosé Luís Méndez Ferrín, candidate to the Nobel Prize of Literature in 1999, ex-president of the Royal Galician Academy and member of the Galician People's Front. José Ignacio Fernández Palacios, ex-football player. Alfonso Daniel Rodríguez Castelao, Galician politician, writer and doctor. Camilo Nogueira Román, politician. Rosalia de Castro, Galician romanticist writer and poet. Ricardo Carvalho Calero, father of the reintegrationist movement, founder of the Galician Association of Language and writer. Uxío Novoneyra, poet and writer of children's literature. Teresa Moure and feminist, she lectures in Linguistics at the University of Santiago de Compostela. Lois Pereiro, poet. Rafa Villar, activist of the Nunca Máis movement and town councillor in Santiago de Compostela. Milladoiro and Celtic music band from A Coruña. Ricardo Flores Peres, political activist.

National and regional identity in Spain Galician Nationalist Bloc Kingdom of Galicia Portugalicia