1.
Whitby, Ontario
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Whitby is a town in Durham Region. Whitby is located in Southern Ontario east of Ajax and west of Oshawa, on the shore of Lake Ontario. It is approximately 20 km east of the Toronto borough of Scarborough, Whitby Township was named after the seaport town of Whitby, Yorkshire, England. In addition to Whitby, Yorkshire, the Town of Whitby is also twinned with Longueuil, Quebec and Feldkirch. The original name of Whitby is Danish, dating from about 867 AD when the Danes invaded Britain and it is a contraction of Whitteby, meaning White Village. The allusion may be to the lighthouse on the pier at Whitby, Yorkshire. Although settlement dates back to 1800, it was not until 1836 that a business centre was established by Whitbys founder Peter Perry. Whitbys chief asset was its natural harbour on Lake Ontario. In the 1840s a road was built from Whitby Harbour to Lake Simcoe and Georgian Bay, to bring trade and settlement through the harbour to and from the rich hinterland to the north. The Town of Whitby was chosen as the seat of government for the newly formed County of Ontario in 1852, the remainder of Whitby Township remained a separate municipality, although the eastern half surrounding Oshawa was incorporated as the new Township of East Whitby in 1857. In the 1870s a railway, the Port Whitby and Port Perry Railway, was constructed from Whitby harbour to Port Perry, Whitby is also the site of Trafalgar Castle School, a private girls school founded in 1874. The school celebrated its 125th anniversary in 1999, during the Second World War, Whitby was the location of Camp X, a secret spy training facility established by Sir William Stephenson, the Man Called Intrepid. Although the buildings have since demolished, a monument was unveiled on the site of Camp X in 1984 by Ontarios Lieutenant Governor John Black Aird. Following the War, Soviet dissenter Igor Gouzenko was taken to the facility with his wife to live in secretive protective custody after fleeing Ottawa, in 1968, the Town of Whitby and Township of Whitby amalgamated to form the current municipality. Planning for the construction of a town hall intended to centralize municipal staff working in satellite offices began in 1970 under mayor Des Newman, construction began on the Raymond Moriyama designed building in 1975 and was opened by Mayor Jim Gartshore on January 8,1977. Municipal boundaries were not changed during the 1974 formation of Durham Region, today, Whitby is the seat of government in Durham Region. It is commonly considered part of the Greater Toronto Area, although statistically it belongs to the greater Oshawa Metropolitan Area and they are both in the eastern part of the Golden Horseshoe region. Whitby borders Ajax to the west, Pickering to the north, like much of Durham Region, demographics in Whitby are characterized mainly by rapid population growth
2.
New York City
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The City of New York, often called New York City or simply New York, is the most populous city in the United States. With an estimated 2015 population of 8,550,405 distributed over an area of about 302.6 square miles. Located at the tip of the state of New York. Home to the headquarters of the United Nations, New York is an important center for international diplomacy and has described as the cultural and financial capital of the world. Situated on one of the worlds largest natural harbors, New York City consists of five boroughs, the five boroughs – Brooklyn, Queens, Manhattan, The Bronx, and Staten Island – were consolidated into a single city in 1898. In 2013, the MSA produced a gross metropolitan product of nearly US$1.39 trillion, in 2012, the CSA generated a GMP of over US$1.55 trillion. NYCs MSA and CSA GDP are higher than all but 11 and 12 countries, New York City traces its origin to its 1624 founding in Lower Manhattan as a trading post by colonists of the Dutch Republic and was named New Amsterdam in 1626. The city and its surroundings came under English control in 1664 and were renamed New York after King Charles II of England granted the lands to his brother, New York served as the capital of the United States from 1785 until 1790. It has been the countrys largest city since 1790, the Statue of Liberty greeted millions of immigrants as they came to the Americas by ship in the late 19th and early 20th centuries and is a symbol of the United States and its democracy. In the 21st century, New York has emerged as a node of creativity and entrepreneurship, social tolerance. Several sources have ranked New York the most photographed city in the world, the names of many of the citys bridges, tapered skyscrapers, and parks are known around the world. Manhattans real estate market is among the most expensive in the world, Manhattans Chinatown incorporates the highest concentration of Chinese people in the Western Hemisphere, with multiple signature Chinatowns developing across the city. Providing continuous 24/7 service, the New York City Subway is one of the most extensive metro systems worldwide, with 472 stations in operation. Over 120 colleges and universities are located in New York City, including Columbia University, New York University, and Rockefeller University, during the Wisconsinan glaciation, the New York City region was situated at the edge of a large ice sheet over 1,000 feet in depth. The ice sheet scraped away large amounts of soil, leaving the bedrock that serves as the foundation for much of New York City today. Later on, movement of the ice sheet would contribute to the separation of what are now Long Island and Staten Island. The first documented visit by a European was in 1524 by Giovanni da Verrazzano, a Florentine explorer in the service of the French crown and he claimed the area for France and named it Nouvelle Angoulême. Heavy ice kept him from further exploration, and he returned to Spain in August and he proceeded to sail up what the Dutch would name the North River, named first by Hudson as the Mauritius after Maurice, Prince of Orange
3.
Vaudeville
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Vaudeville is a theatrical genre of variety entertainment. It was especially popular in the United States and Canada from the early 1880s until the early 1930s, a typical vaudeville performance is made up of a series of separate, unrelated acts grouped together on a common bill. A vaudeville performer is often referred to as a vaudevillian, Vaudeville developed from many sources, including the concert saloon, minstrelsy, freak shows, dime museums, and literary American burlesque. Called the heart of American show business, vaudeville was one of the most popular types of entertainment in North America for several decades, the origin of this term is obscure, but is often explained as being derived from the French expression voix de ville. A second speculation is that it comes from the songs on satire by poet Olivier Basselin. Some, however, preferred the term variety to what manager Tony Pastor called its sissy. Thus, vaudeville was marketed as variety well into the 20th century, with its first subtle appearances within the early 1860s, vaudeville was not initially a common form of entertainment. The form gradually evolved from the saloon and variety hall into its mature form throughout the 1870s and 1880s. This more gentle form was known as Polite Vaudeville, in the years before the American Civil War, entertainment existed on a different scale. Certainly, variety theatre existed before 1860 in Europe and elsewhere, in the US, as early as the first decades of the 19th century, theatregoers could enjoy a performance consisting of Shakespeare plays, acrobatics, singing, dancing, and comedy. As the years progressed, people seeking diversified amusement found a number of ways to be entertained. Vaudeville was characterized by traveling companies touring through cities and towns, a significant influence also came from Dutch minstrels and comedians. Vaudeville incorporated these various itinerant amusements into a stable, institutionalized form centered in Americas growing urban hubs, pastors experiment proved successful, and other managers soon followed suit. B. F. Keith took the step, starting in Boston. Later, E. F. Albee, adoptive grandfather of the Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Edward Albee, circuits such as those managed by Keith-Albee provided vaudevilles greatest economic innovation and the principal source of its industrial strength. They enabled a chain of allied vaudeville houses that remedied the chaos of the booking system by contracting acts for regional and national tours. These could easily be lengthened from a few weeks to two years, Albee also gave national prominence to vaudevilles trumpeting polite entertainment, a commitment to entertainment equally inoffensive to men, women and children. Acts that violated this ethos were admonished and threatened with expulsion from the remaining performances or were canceled altogether
4.
Buffalo, New York
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Buffalo is a city in western New York state and the county seat of Erie County, on the eastern shores of Lake Erie at the head of the Niagara River. As of 2014, Buffalo is New York states 2nd-most populous city after New York City, the metropolitan area has a population of 1.13 million. After an economic downturn in the half of the 20th century, Buffalos economy has transitioned to sectors that include financial services, technology, biomedical engineering. Residents of Buffalo are called Buffalonians, the citys nicknames include The Queen City, The Nickel City and The City of Good Neighbors. The city of Buffalo received its name from a creek called Buffalo Creek. British military engineer Captain John Montresor made reference to Buffalo Creek in his journal of 1764, there are several theories regarding how Buffalo Creek received its name. In 1804, as principal agent opening the area for the Holland Land Company, Joseph Ellicott, designed a radial street and grid system that branches out from downtown like bicycle spokes similar to the street system he used in the nations capital. Although Ellicott named the settlement New Amsterdam, the name did not catch on, during the War of 1812, on December 30,1813, Buffalo was burned by British forces. The George Coit House 1818 and Samuel Schenck House 1823 are currently the oldest houses within the limits of the City of Buffalo, on October 26,1825, the Erie Canal was completed with Buffalo a port-of-call for settlers heading westward. At the time, the population was about 2,400, the Erie Canal brought about a surge in population and commerce, which led Buffalo to incorporate as a city in 1832. In 1845, construction began on the Macedonia Baptist Church, an important meeting place for the abolitionist movement, Buffalo was a terminus point of the Underground Railroad with many fugitive slaves crossing the Niagara River to Fort Erie, Ontario in search of freedom. During the 1840s, Buffalos port continued to develop, both passenger and commercial traffic expanded with some 93,000 passengers heading west from the port of Buffalo. Grain and commercial goods shipments led to repeated expansion of the harbor, in 1843, the worlds first steam-powered grain elevator was constructed by local merchant Joseph Dart and engineer Robert Dunbar. Darts Elevator enabled faster unloading of lake freighters along with the transshipment of grain in bulk from barges, canal boats, by 1850, the citys population was 81,000. At the dawn of the 20th century, local mills were among the first to benefit from hydroelectric power generated by the Niagara River, the city got the nickname City of Light at this time due to the widespread electric lighting. It was also part of the revolution, hosting the brass era car builders Pierce Arrow. President William McKinley was shot and mortally wounded by an anarchist at the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo on September 6,1901, McKinley died in the city eight days later and Theodore Roosevelt was sworn in at the Wilcox Mansion as the 26th President of the United States. The Great Depression of 1929–39 saw severe unemployment, especially working class men
5.
Tony Pastor
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Tony Pastor was an American impresario, variety performer and theatre owner who became one of the founding forces behind American vaudeville in the mid- to late-nineteenth century. He was sometimes referred to as the Father of Vaudeville, after his Spanish father came to New York and met his future wife Cornelia Buckley, from New Haven, Connecticut, they lived in Manhattan. Their third child, and first son, Antonio Pastor, was born in Manhattan on May 28,1832, at his parents residence at 400 Greenwich Street and his father was a Spanish immigrant who supported his family as a barber and part-time musician. Pastor embarked on a business career at a very young age. During the next few years he worked in minstrel shows, the circus business, Pastor published songsters, books of his lyrics which were sung to popular tunes. The music had no notation, as it was assumed that the audience had a knowledge of popular song. The subject matter of his music was intended to be bawdy, though Pastor was popular with the nearly all-male variety theater audiences, he knew that his ticket sales would double if he attracted a female audience. Soon he began to produce variety shows, presenting an evening of fun that was a distinct alternative to the bawdy shows of the time. In 1865 Pastor opened Tony Pastors Opera House on the Bowery in partnership with minstrel show performer, Sam Sharpley, the same year he organized traveling minstrel troupes who toured the country annually between April and October. With shows that appealed to women and children as well as the male audience, his theater. In 1874, Pastor moved his company a few blocks to take over Michael Bennett Leavitts former theater at 585 Broadway. The theater district was moving uptown to Union Square, however and he alternated his theaters presentations between operettas and family-oriented variety shows, creating what became known as vaudeville. Harry S. Sanderson was his business manager from 1878 until 1908, the business records from this period are available to researchers. The song Put On Your Sunday Clothes includes the line, Well join the Astors at Tony Pastors and it also references seeing the shows at Delmonicos, which suggests that the character does not really know about upper class social life in New York. Tony Pastor died in Elmhurst, New York on August 26,1908 and was interred in the Cemetery of the Evergreens, in Brooklyn. He was 71, and though greatly mourned at his death as one of the last gentlemen of the early vaudeville halls, Pastor had remained a local showman in an epoch that increasingly came to be dominated by regional and national chains. Fighting against the monopolies for the rights of individual local showmen was an undertaking that marked the last years of his life, earning him the nickname of Little Man Tony. According to the humor of the time, Pastor wrote several songs that negatively portrayed ethnic stereotypes, such as The Contrabands Adventures, after the slave is set free by Union soldiers, he attends an anti-slavery meeting where the abolitionists try to scrub off his dark pigment
6.
Augustin Daly
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John Augustin Daly was one of the most influential men in American theatre during his lifetime. Drama critic, theatre manager, playwright, and adapter, he became the first recognized stage director in America and he exercised a fierce and tyrannical control over all aspects of his productions. His rules of conduct for actors and actresses imposed heavy fines for late appearances and forgotten lines and he formed a permanent company in New York and opened Dalys Theatre in New York in 1879 and a second one in London in 1893. Augustin Daly was born in Plymouth, North Carolina of Captain Denis Daly a sea-captain and ship owner and he was educated at Norfolk, Virginia, and in the public schools of New York City. He was dramatic critic for several New York papers from 1859, in 1869 he became the manager of the Fifth Avenue Theatre on 24th St. and in 1873 the Fifth Avenue Theatre on 28th. In 1879 he built and opened Dalys Theatre at Broadway and 30th Street in New York and he took his entire company on tour, visiting England, Germany and France, and some of the best actors on the American stage have owed their training and first successes to him. Dalys willingness to, as he put it, stoop to the curb and bestow upon the low and his play Leah the Forsaken, adapted from the Deborah of Hermann Salomon Mosenthal, was a star vehicle for Margaret Mather. His Shakespeare productions were often criticized by George Bernard Shaw. Shaw took Daly severely to task for cutting Shakespeares plays and for presenting them in unorthodox ways, several of Shaws criticisms of Dalys Shakespeare productions were reprinted in the anthology Shaw on Shakespeare. Daly was a great book-lover, and his library was dispersed by auction after his death. Besides plays, original and adapted, he wrote Woffington, a Tribute to the Actress, dora Knowlton Ranous, a onetime actress in the Daly company, published a 1910 memoir of her experiences entitled Diary of a Daly Débutante. Under the Gaslight is an example of Dalys mixture of realism and melodrama, seen in the authenticity of his depiction of real locations and in his use of social commentary. The play introduced the device of the villain tying someone to railroad tracks, although in a reversal of the usual roles it was the hero who was tied up. In the book Vagrant Memories, the author, William Winter recalls how Daly came up with the device and he says, He once told me under what circumstances he hit upon this device. I was near my door, he said, and I rushed into the house, threw myself into a chair, grasping my injured foot with both hands, for the pain was great, and exclaiming, over and over again, and it beats hot-irons all to pieces. I wasnt even thinking of the hurt, I had the thought of having my hero tied on a railroad track and rescued by his sweetheart, just in the nick of time, before the swift passage of an express train across a dark stage. A Flash of Lightning, like Under the Gaslight, is melodrama, with water and fire spectacles providing action scenes. Divorce and Pique, both adaptations of British novels, demonstrate Dalys attempts to create social comedy, although the plays remain somewhat melodramatic
7.
London
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London /ˈlʌndən/ is the capital and most populous city of England and the United Kingdom. Standing on the River Thames in the south east of the island of Great Britain and it was founded by the Romans, who named it Londinium. Londons ancient core, the City of London, largely retains its 1. 12-square-mile medieval boundaries. London is a global city in the arts, commerce, education, entertainment, fashion, finance, healthcare, media, professional services, research and development, tourism. It is crowned as the worlds largest financial centre and has the fifth- or sixth-largest metropolitan area GDP in the world, London is a world cultural capital. It is the worlds most-visited city as measured by international arrivals and has the worlds largest city airport system measured by passenger traffic, London is the worlds leading investment destination, hosting more international retailers and ultra high-net-worth individuals than any other city. Londons universities form the largest concentration of education institutes in Europe. In 2012, London became the first city to have hosted the modern Summer Olympic Games three times, London has a diverse range of people and cultures, and more than 300 languages are spoken in the region. Its estimated mid-2015 municipal population was 8,673,713, the largest of any city in the European Union, Londons urban area is the second most populous in the EU, after Paris, with 9,787,426 inhabitants at the 2011 census. The citys metropolitan area is the most populous in the EU with 13,879,757 inhabitants, the city-region therefore has a similar land area and population to that of the New York metropolitan area. London was the worlds most populous city from around 1831 to 1925, Other famous landmarks include Buckingham Palace, the London Eye, Piccadilly Circus, St Pauls Cathedral, Tower Bridge, Trafalgar Square, and The Shard. The London Underground is the oldest underground railway network in the world, the etymology of London is uncertain. It is an ancient name, found in sources from the 2nd century and it is recorded c.121 as Londinium, which points to Romano-British origin, and hand-written Roman tablets recovered in the city originating from AD 65/70-80 include the word Londinio. The earliest attempted explanation, now disregarded, is attributed to Geoffrey of Monmouth in Historia Regum Britanniae and this had it that the name originated from a supposed King Lud, who had allegedly taken over the city and named it Kaerlud. From 1898, it was accepted that the name was of Celtic origin and meant place belonging to a man called *Londinos. The ultimate difficulty lies in reconciling the Latin form Londinium with the modern Welsh Llundain, which should demand a form *lōndinion, from earlier *loundiniom. The possibility cannot be ruled out that the Welsh name was borrowed back in from English at a later date, and thus cannot be used as a basis from which to reconstruct the original name. Until 1889, the name London officially applied only to the City of London, two recent discoveries indicate probable very early settlements near the Thames in the London area
8.
Folly Theatre
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This article is about the former theatre in London, named, for a time, the Charing Cross Theatre. For the nearby music hall of the same name see Charing Cross Music Hall. For theatre of the name in Kansas City see Folly Theater The Folly Theatre was a London theatre of the late 19th century, in William IV Street, near Charing Cross. It was converted from the house of an order, and became a small theatre, with a capacity of 900 seated. The theatre specialised in presenting music hall, burlesque and opera bouffe, the Beefsteak Club had quarters above the theatre. The theatre was demolished in 1895, possibly due to disturbance caused to the neighbouring Charing Cross Hospital, the building opened as the Lowther Rooms in 1840. It was the residence of the Fathers of the London Oratory of St. Philip Neri from 1848–56 and was used for lectures, here, in 1850, John Henry Newman delivered his Lectures on Anglican Difficulties, after his conversion to Catholicism. On the departure of the order, which moved to the Brompton Oratory, the hall became Woodins Polygraphic Hall in 1855. The theatre opened on 19 June 1869 with W. S. Gilberts burlesque of Norma, called The Pretty Druidess, on the bill, and in 1870 it held Gilbert and Frederic Clays The Gentleman in Black. In 1872, it hosted J. S. Clarkes revival of Sheridans The Rivals, the name Charing Cross Music Hall was also adopted in the late 1880s by the brothers Carlo and Giovanni Gatti for their Gattis-Under-the-Arches Music hall. This became the Hungerford Music Hall in 1883, later returning to the former name, the first piece was a successful burlesque of Blue Beard. In 1877, Up the River, or the Strict Kew-Tea, Farnie and Robert Reece played at the theatre as did a Farnie and Reece adaptation of Offenbach called The Creole. Florence St. John got her start in the piece on tour, Farnie and Reeces burlesque Stars and Garters then played. Reeces successful burlesque, Carmen, or Sold for a Song, T. W. Robertons Dublin Bay played here in 1880. The theatre was described in Dickens Dictionary of London as A little bandbox of a place, very prettily fitted up, on 7 November 1879, John Lawrence Toole took over the management, with a stock company. Presentations included farces, burlesques and travesties of popular plays, beginning with H. J. Byrons A Fool, Tooles only son, Frank, died on 7 December 1879 following an earlier football injury from which he never fully recovered. Toole was both a comedian and a friend of Charles Dickens. In 1882, after rebuilding, Toole re-opened the theatre as Tooles Theatre
9.
Thomas F. Grady
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Thomas Francis Grady was an American lawyer and politician from New York. He attended St. James Parochial School from 1857 to 1863, De La Salle Institute from 1863 to 1867, then he worked for D. Appleton & Co. was Recording Clerk in the County Clerks office in 1874, and began to study law. Then he worked in the Corporation Counsels office, collecting evidence relative to the fraudulent claims of the Tweed era and he graduated from the New York University School of Law in 1877, was admitted to the bar, and practiced in New York City. In politics he always was a Tammany Hall man and he was a member of the New York State Assembly in 1877,1878 and 1879, and a member of the New York State Senate in 1882 and 1883. In 1883, State Senator Grady and Governor Grover Cleveland became political enemies, Grady was a delegate to the 1884 Democratic National Convention and worked hard against Clevelands nomination for U. S. President. During the following campaign, Grady supported Benjamin F. Butler. In 1887, he married actress Flo Irwin, and they later divorced. Grady was again a member of the State Senate in 1889, and he was the Democratic minority leader from 1899 to 1910. The Democrats were in the majority in 1911, and Grady expected to be chosen President pro tempore, due to his illness, Grady did not take his seat in the 135th New York State Legislature. He died on February 3,1912, at his home at 151 East 30th Street, in Manhattan, of diabetes, and was buried at the Calvary Cemetery in Queens
10.
African Americans
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African Americans are an ethnic group of Americans with total or partial ancestry from any of the Black racial groups of Africa. The term may also be used to only those individuals who are descended from enslaved Africans. As a compound adjective the term is usually hyphenated as African-American, Black and African Americans constitute the third largest racial and ethnic group in the United States. Most African Americans are of West and Central African descent and are descendants of enslaved peoples within the boundaries of the present United States. On average, African Americans are of 73. 2–80. 9% West African, 18–24% European, according to US Census Bureau data, African immigrants generally do not self-identify as African American. The overwhelming majority of African immigrants identify instead with their own respective ethnicities, immigrants from some Caribbean, Central American and South American nations and their descendants may or may not also self-identify with the term. After the founding of the United States, black people continued to be enslaved, believed to be inferior to white people, they were treated as second-class citizens. The Naturalization Act of 1790 limited U. S. citizenship to whites only, in 2008, Barack Obama became the first African American to be elected President of the United States. The first African slaves arrived via Santo Domingo to the San Miguel de Gualdape colony, the ill-fated colony was almost immediately disrupted by a fight over leadership, during which the slaves revolted and fled the colony to seek refuge among local Native Americans. De Ayllón and many of the colonists died shortly afterwards of an epidemic, the settlers and the slaves who had not escaped returned to Haiti, whence they had come. The first recorded Africans in British North America were 20 and odd negroes who came to Jamestown, as English settlers died from harsh conditions, more and more Africans were brought to work as laborers. Typically, young men or women would sign a contract of indenture in exchange for transportation to the New World, the landowner received 50 acres of land from the state for each servant purchased from a ships captain. An indentured servant would work for years without wages. The status of indentured servants in early Virginia and Maryland was similar to slavery, servants could be bought, sold, or leased and they could be physically beaten for disobedience or running away. Africans could legally raise crops and cattle to purchase their freedom and they raised families, married other Africans and sometimes intermarried with Native Americans or English settlers. By the 1640s and 1650s, several African families owned farms around Jamestown and some became wealthy by colonial standards and purchased indentured servants of their own. In 1640, the Virginia General Court recorded the earliest documentation of slavery when they sentenced John Punch. One of Dutch African arrivals, Anthony Johnson, would own one of the first black slaves, John Casor
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